35. Brooks

CHAPTER 35

brOOKS

As it turned out, it didn’t take as much time to fly between the farm and the city as it took to drive. And for what might have been the first time ever, Kale’s incessant need to flash his money around had turned out for the better, getting us back to the city well before lunch time. Tate hadn’t said much, and outside of Dylan’s hospital room, Alex shot me a nervous look.

“Do you want to tell me what happened between the two of you now or wait until Tate is done in there?” I asked.

Alex leaned against the wall and scrubbed a hand down his face, turning his glare to the soda machine across the hall. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“The beginning, probably.”

“Oh.” He arched a brow. “Do you mean the beginning when you called me up begging me to set your boyfriend’s best friend straight?”

“It wasn’t going to be the first time you’d taken him in hand, or I wouldn’t have made the suggestion.”

“That was…” Alex snapped his jaw closed, narrowing his eyes .

“What was it?”

“For him?” He raised a brow. “Work.”

I leaned in closer, lowering my voice. “Are you trying to tell me he didn’t get off with you? That he didn’t enjoy it?”

“It was transactional,” he said, exhaling loudly and banging his head against the wall. “And you called me up, asking the impossible. I did my best, but…”

I saw the defeat in his eyes and realized what I’d asked of him had been too much. Not just for him, but for anyone. I’d misconstrued the situation between him and Dylan, and in doing so, I’d hoped that he’d have been able to keep Tate’s best friend on track. I’d been wrong on multiple accounts. Tapping my thumb and finger together, I turned and leaned against the wall beside my friend.

“I’m sorry I misjudged things with the two of you.”

“Thank you, but that’s not it.” Alex scratched the side of his nose and sighed. “If I didn’t think I could manage it, I would have said so. I really just overestimated myself, I think.”

“Dylan doesn’t strike me as being easy either.”

“He’s lost and I know the feeling. It should have worked.”

“Was the problem the discipline?” I asked.

“How much do you know about how I like to play?”

I stared down at my chest, rolling Alex’s question around in my head. I was still in pajamas, I realized, a loose pair of gray sweats and a white undershirt. Tate had been so upset after getting the call he hadn’t given any of us chance to get dressed. Thankfully, Kale for once had a level head and was able to get us to the airport in record time and then back to the city before I’d even had time to realize I hadn’t put on underwear. Kale and Christian had stayed with Boston, Ford, Dalton, and Beamer, which was either the exact—or the last—thing the group of them needed.

“I know you play as hard as I do,” I said carefully. “But different.”

Alex huffed a laugh under his breath. “I think I lean more into punishments and rewards than you do.”

“That feels like a polite way to put it.”

“It’s more than just the…” he trailed off and scanned the hallway to make sure we were still alone. The door to my left remained closed, Dylan and Tate on the other side. “More than just the physical parts of it for me. I like the psychological aspects, the mental strength required for more serious submission. I didn’t realize it until I started to play with Beamer.”

“So, what happened?” I pressed.

“Dylan wants it, but…he’s not ready.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t want to say there’s too much fight in him, but…we argued about restrictions, his drinking for one. He told me he’d just been playing along with my stupid ideas to make Tate happy.”

I cursed under my breath and pressed my fingers against my eyelids, blacking out my vision.

“I don’t know what Tate has told you, but Dylan’s parents said some horrible things to him when they cut him off. It’s been a lot for him. I don’t want to give up, but I can’t do anything without his consent,” Alex said.

“And he revoked it.”

“Vocally,” he agreed. “Repeatedly. Emphatically.”

The door to Dylan’s hospital room swung open and a weary—yet somehow fuming—Tate stopped in the middle of the hallway, an accusatory finger waffling from Alex to me and back again.

“You promised he would be okay,” Tate accused, the direction of his stare finally settling on Alex.

“I tried.”

“You tried,” he mocked.

“It’s complicated, darling,” I tried to explain, but Tate swiveled on me, full of unspoken vitriol, and I closed my mouth on a long inhale.

“Don’t darling me.”

“Tate,” I said simply. Sharply. “You know as well as I do that nothing can happen without consent and Dylan?—”

“Did not,” Alex finished.

Tate bracketed his hands on his hips and dropped his head back, turning his glare toward the ceiling. “What did you do wrong?” Tate asked. “Why did Dylan change his mind about being with you?”

“That’s not for me to answer,” he said, “and frankly, even if I had the answer, it’s not your business.”

“He’s my best friend!”

“You sound like Kale,” I said softly, and the fight left Tate’s shoulders like my words had siphoned it right out of him.

“I don’t know him well, but I know that was an insult.”

“You cannot control the lives of the people around you,” I clarified. “If you try, you will only push them away.”

Tate sighed heavily, spinning on his heel and slamming his palm against the wall. The slap drew the ire of a nurse down at the welcome station, and I sent her an apologetic look and small wave. She looked back at the chart in her hand, and I tentatively reached for Tate, who thankfully didn’t shy away. I pulled him across the hallway and into my arms where he willingly buried his face into the crook of my neck. Wrapping my arms around his back, I held him, counting our breaths until he moved next, gouging his chin into my shoulder to stare at the wall.

“I care about your friend,” Alex said from beside us. “I wish I could have helped him more.”

“You helped,” Tate grumbled, and I glanced over in time to see Alex’s face twist from the misery of the whole thing.

“Not enough,” Alex said, “obviously.”

“He’s okay,” Tate said, to us and also to the wall. “He was drugged and left unconscious on the curb outside the emergency room.”

The chin on my shoulder quivered, and I tightened my arms around Tate’s back.

“He said I could tell you this, by the way. I’m not?—”

“I know you’re not breaking his trust,” I whispered.

“He’s even more worried now about paying his half of the rent.” Tate sniffled, a tear falling from his eye and splattering against my shoulder.

“Darling.” I pulled away from him enough so I could wipe the tears from his face, but as quick as I cleared them, more fell.

“I didn’t want to assume, but I figured you would loan me the money to cover it until he’s back on his feet.”

“I won’t loan it to you, Tate. I’ll give it to you.”

“I hate that,” he said.

“ I’ll give it to you,” Alex said, clearing his throat.

“Fine.”

Tate exhaled, staring down at the floor, and I was barely able to bite back an amused laugh at how readily he would take my friend’s money over mine. Though I supposed coming from Alex, Tate would see the payment as some sort of penance, not a handout.

“Dylan said they want to keep him until tomorrow for observation.” Tate scrubbed a hand down his face. “He doesn’t want me to stay all day. He said he’ll call me when he’s ready to go home.”

“Do you believe him?” I asked, brushing Tate’s messy hair back from his face.

“This time.”

“Let’s get you home then,” I said. “Get you cleaned up and get some food in you and we’ll wait for the call.”

Tate nodded, frowning at Alex, even as the tight turndown of his mouth softened.

“Thank you for trying,” Tate said softly. “I know it’s not your fault.”

“I’ll try again if he wants me to,” Alex said.

Tate shrugged.

“We’ll talk soon?” I asked Alex, who eyed Dylan’s hospital door like it was a venomous snake.

“Soon.”

I looped my arm around Tate’s shoulders again and led him toward the elevator bank, pulling my almost-dead cell phone out of my pocket to get a ride home. I didn’t need to look back to see the debate raging across Alex’s face, whether to go in or go home, and when the elevator doors slid open for the two of us, not the three of us, I knew he’d made the right decision.

By the time we made it back to my penthouse, Tate was dead on his feet.

I stripped him down and walked him into the shower, only because it would take less time than a bath. I washed the dried cum off his skin, the physical proof that the past twelve hours hadn’t only been a fever dream. After getting him clean enough to drop him into bed, I turned off the taps, dried him as best I could, and walked him straight into bed.

“I’m so exhausted,” he said hoarsely, reaching for me.

“I know.”

I lay down beside him, pulling the sheets up to our waists. Tate rolled onto his side and tucked himself against me, and I’d have been a liar if I said I didn’t get hard over the way he tried to make himself small around me sometimes. I wasn’t dominant in the way my friends were dominant. I didn’t crave control or submission. For me, it had always been the trust, but with Tate…sometimes we walked the line of it and I didn’t hate the idea of sometimes falling over the other side of things.

“So exhausted I can’t sleep.” He tried to cover his face with his arm, but the light in the room wasn’t the problem.

“I’m sorry, Tate.”

“Make me come,” he begged. “It feels so wrong to get off after everything that’s happened, but you make me mindless, Brooks. Please.”

“Hush, darling.” I shifted him onto his back and braced myself over top of him. “You never have to ask me more than once to come.”

“I’ve had to ask you plenty of times to come.”

I hummed, reaching down and cupping his cock and balls in the palm of my hand. “Well, right now you only need to ask once,” I said.

Sliding down his body, I kissed my way across his chest, over each small nipple. He barely had the energy to moan, sighing softly and spreading his legs for me when I reached his navel. I swirled my tongue there, wishing I’d done so when it had been filled with his cum. I loved the taste of him, even though I’d never gone down on him before with the intent to make him come. It was a weekend of firsts apparently, and as soon as I swallowed the whole of him into my mouth, I knew it would be over sooner rather than later.

“Oh, God,” he rasped, fisting my hair before quickly letting go of me.

Blindly, I groped around for his wrist and returned his fingers to my head, holding him steady until I was sure he wasn’t going to let go. Satisfied, I hollowed my cheeks and bobbed up and down his length, sucking him with the intent to make him come as soon as possible.

He was on the cusp of release from the very first moment, and when I slid one spit-soaked finger against his crease, Tate cried out weakly, barely lifting off the bed as he shot jets of cum against the roof of my mouth. I swallowed him down and kissed the tender fold where his leg bent up toward his waist, and by the time I reached his mouth, his eyes were closed, jaw slack.

Asleep, and hopefully dreaming.