36. Tate

CHAPTER 36

TATE

I woke up disoriented, sweaty and tangled in the softest sheets I’d ever slept in. Sucking in a breath, I caught the taste of Brooks’ skin in the air, immediately settling down when I realized where I was. I was in his penthouse, his bedroom, his bed. Muffled voices drifted upstairs, and it was easy to pick out Brooks’ voice, which I’d know anywhere, and Alex’s.

The sky outside the windows was gray and pink, but I had no idea of telling whether it was sunset or sunrise. I strongly hoped it was the former because sunrise meant I would have slept through Dylan’s phone call to pick him up from the hospital. Kicking down the sheets, I forced myself to get out of bed and find clothes. My cell phone wasn’t plugged in, but I found it on the counter in the bathroom, most likely where Brooks had left it before he showered me off the night before.

It was dead.

Of course.

I plugged it in and left it on the nightstand to charge, then headed downstairs, stumbling over my feet on the last step when a third voice mixed in with the two I’d already recognized. Dylan was here. Picking up my pace, I hurried through the living room and found the three of them in the kitchen. Dylan had on basketball shorts and a wrinkled black t-shirt, his left arm secured tight against his chest in the same black nylon sling he’d had on at the hospital.

When he saw me, he smiled weakly, climbing off the barstool and closing the space between us. I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed, letting up when he winced.

“Are you okay?” I asked, pulling back to look at him. “I’m sorry. I was asleep and my phone died.”

“I’m fine,” he said, voice scratchy. He cleared his throat, brows furrowed. “I’m fine. Alex was there.”

I shifted my stare over Dylan’s shoulder to Alex in the kitchen, with his arms folded over his chest and eyeing Dylan like he was a landmine. Like we both were.

“How long have I been asleep?” I asked Brooks, who bobbled his head side to side. He was dressed in his usual running clothes, tight shorts and a tank top, but his feet were bare.

“It’s just dinner time,” he said. “Not long.”

“Do you want some water?” Alex asked. “Coffee?”

“Water, I think,” I answered, making my way into the kitchen before either he or Brooks could get a glass filled for me.

I wasn’t the one who needed tending and care, at least not in this moment. Dylan was the one who’d just been released from the hospital, his shoulder in enough pain they’d had him on a morphine drip earlier in the morning. He should have been the one asleep in bed being doted on by a man with more means than sense .

“Thank you for picking him up,” I said to Alex, who gave me a curt nod in reply, his eyes still focused on Dylan.

In the living room, the sky had more colors, and my best friend wandered to the window, staring out at the skyscrapers across the city with a tight frown. Sipping my water, I joined him, leaning gently against his good side until he knocked his head into mine.

“Drink,” I said, passing him the glass.

He took the smallest swallow possible, then handed it back. “The pain meds are making me nauseous.”

“Right.” Of course they were. “I’m sorry I missed your call.”

“I’m not.” He inhaled. “It’s not your responsibility to take care of me. It’s my bad choices that got me here.”

“It’s not my responsibility, but you’re my best friend. I want to help you.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “Alex was the right person to call.”

I bristled. “How do you figure?”

“More money.” Alex chuckled. “More time.”

“He doesn’t know you.”

“Maybe not.” Dylan glanced over his shoulder and I followed his gaze. Alex still watched him, even as Brooks leaned close and said something that looked relatively serious.

We both turned back toward the window.

“Dylan,” Alex called from the other side of the kitchen, “it’s time for your meds.”

From the corner of my eye, I watched Dylan’s jaw tic, then without a word, he went into the kitchen. Holding out his hand, Dylan waited while Alex twisted open an orange bottle with a white lid. He dropped a pill into Dylan's hand and slid a bottle of water toward him. Dylan took the pill, then made a show of opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue.

“I’m not going to kill myself, asshole,” Dylan grumbled, leaving Brooks and Alex in the kitchen to rejoin me at the window.

Even with the space between them, I could almost feel the cord tying the two of them together, and somehow they both wanted to set it on fire.

“You know,” I said carefully, lowering my voice and tilting my head closer to Dylan’s ear. “If you don’t want his help, you can just tell him no and?—”

“It’s fine.”

“Dylan, it’s…” I didn’t know how far into the conversation I wanted to tread. How far would be too far. “If you don’t want it.”

“I know about safe words, Tate. You can stop.”

I licked my lips, swallowing back any other protest that had assembled itself in my throat. I’d been wrong for months, thinking I understood Dylan or who he was, and I needed to stop making the same mistakes. When it came to my relationship with Brooks, the things we did in the bedroom, I always imagined if I was mad or if I didn’t like something, I would say red and things would end. That was the point of a safe word, wasn’t it? Even though Brooks had never even gotten close enough to warrant me needing to use it, the option was there.

Dylan seemed to acquiesce to Alex—again—but he was beyond mad about it, and I didn’t understand why he didn’t just use his safe word and put an end to it. If he was so angry about being told to take his medicine, being watched, monitored …

“You’re an adult,” I reminded him.

“It’s complicated,” he finally said, “but I know how to make it end.”

“Okay,” I said, because there wasn’t anything else to say.

If Dylan hadn’t called my sanity into question after all the dubious choices I’d made before reconnecting with Brooks, it wasn’t my place to poke and prod about whatever was going on with him and Alex. I also needed to trust that Alex was Brooks’ friend, and Brooks would step in if there was anything that wasn’t aboveboard.

“I wanted to be here when you woke up from your nap,” Dylan said. “I didn’t want you to worry. But I’m tired and I want to lie down.”

“Right.” I cleared my head, upset that I’d spent our first minutes back together worrying too much about myself and not Dylan, who was injured beyond the marks on his body. “I wasn’t thinking. Let me grab my phone and we can head home.”

I hadn’t finished speaking before Dylan shook his head, pivoting on his heels to face me more head on.

“You stay here,” he said.

“At least let me get you back to the apartment.”

He shook his head again. “I’m going to stay with Alex for a while.”

“What?” I blinked slowly, even more confused at whatever was going on between the two of them.

“Just for a little,” he said. “I know Alex is paying my rent, so you don’t have to worry about losing the lease, but I imagine you’ll want to move in here sooner rather than later.”

With his good arm, Dylan gestured at the vastness of Brooks’ penthouse. I followed his stare around the first floor, so much of it not even visible. There was so much space, so many rooms, all of the windows.

“We haven’t talked about that yet.”

Dylan rolled his eyes at me, a glimpse of the friend I’d nearly lost, the man I’d shared beers with while he wrote songs on his guitar about the man of my dreams. How had both of our lives changed so quickly?

“I’m sorry that I scared you,” Dylan said, pressing his good hand against his bad shoulder. He blinked slowly and sucked in a breath. “You’re my closest friend, Tate. I was just so embarrassed about all of it.”

“Remember that guy I hooked up with before Brooks?” I asked. “The one who fucked me so hard that he passed out?”

Dylan chuckled and I smiled, wrapping my arms around him while making sure to not put pressure on his injured shoulder.

“That was embarrassing,” I said, “not this.”

Dylan nodded and sniffed. “No more secrets from here on out,” he promised.

“So you’ll tell me what the fuck is going on with you and Alex?”

He threw a quick look across the kitchen. Alex still watched him, even as he spoke to Brooks.

“That’s not a secret,” he murmured. “It’s just too messy to make sense of.”

“Promise me you’ll tell him no if you have to.”

“It’s not like that,” Dylan assured me. “We aren’t sleeping together.”

“Will you explain it to me another day?”

“I promise,” he said. “I’m going to go back to Alex’s and lie down awhile. ”

“Are you ready?” Alex asked, interrupting whatever Brooks had been saying to him, which gave me the impression he’d been listening to our conversation the whole time.

“Yes,” he answered, snapping his mouth closed before calling Alex an overbearing prick under his breath.

He couldn’t have meant it though, or he wouldn’t have gone along with it, I reminded myself as Alex herded Dylan’s things together and out the door. Even with my best friend on his way across town, I wasn’t able to shake the discomfort over whatever he was doing with Alex. It was bad decision-making that had gotten him into the hospital in the first place.

“Alex is just giving him a place to stay,” Brooks assured me. “He’s playing nurse.”

“Why?”

“Guilt, I think.”

“Why doesn’t he just hire a nurse then?” I asked. “If he feels so beholden to Dylan about the whole thing?”

“Alex has never been a good delegator.”

“This feels wrong,” I muttered.

“I think most people would say the same about the things you and I do in the bedroom,” he said gently.

“Dylan said they’re not sleeping together.”

“Does it matter?” Brooks arched a brow like he was ready to challenge me, but in a flash his expression turned soft and he pulled me against his chest. “Do not be like Kale about this.”

I screwed my eyes closed, feeling a glaring flash of sympathy for Brooks’ formerly ostracized friend.

“I’m trying,” I said, rubbing at my eyes.

“I know.” Brooks kissed the top of my head. “Do you want dinner? Do you want to go back to bed? Do you want to go back to the farm?”

I snorted, shoving him away and walking back into the kitchen to get some more water.

“We can’t go back to the farm.”

“Why not?” he asked, mouth pulled taut in confusion.

“You’re so serious right now, aren’t you?”

Brooks blinked.

“Never mind,” I said, falling in love with him a little more. “I’m not that hungry, but I think I should eat.”

“Do you want to go out or do you want me to order in?”

I climbed onto one of the barstools, spinning it sideways so I could admire both of the views. “I’m tired and I want you to decide.”

The corner of Brooks’ mouth quirked into a smile, and he dropped his cell phone onto the counter.

“That’s essentially where Dylan is at, for what it’s worth.”

Before I could formulate any sort of reply, Brooks was already on the phone with a Thai restaurant down the street, ordering enough food to feed an army.

And I let him.