15. Nate

Another day in paradise, I thought idly as I strode into the back door to Forge just before the start of my shift. Like some goddamn sitcom character, I said hello to my coworkers as I passed them on the way to the back office, a casual spring in my step.

Even though I was a co-owner at Forge, it still felt like I was intruding as I pushed open the door to Logan"s office. Especially when I found him hunched over his desk, a pile of paperwork scattered in front of him. I blinked, wondering if I'd seen that right.

"Hey, big bro," I started casually. "Not that it's not great to see you, but… what brings you in on your day off?"

Logan glanced up, a flicker of surprise crossing his features. "Hey, Nate. Just needed to check on a few things. You know how it is."

I raised an eyebrow, leaning against the doorframe. "Uh-huh, sure." I did not know how it was, and the normal Logan wouldn't expect me to. We had very different views on work-life balance. Namely, I had one. "Everything okay?"

Logan let out a heavy sigh, running a hand through his hair. "Yeah, everything"s fine. I just… didn"t want to be at my apartment right now."

I could sense there was more to it than he was letting on, and if I were taking a page out of his book, or even Bennett's, I wouldn't have pushed. But I was always a nosy bastard. "Why not? You bury a body under the floorboards or something?"

Logan rolled his eyes at me. "I'm a little busy."

"Not too busy to tell me what's going on with you," I countered. I came further into the room and flopped hard into the chair across from him, leaning back casually to prop my feet up on the edge of his desk. I gave him a shit-eating grin, too, since I knew he hated when I used furniture in not the way that God intended. "Please, share with your much handsomer, more charming younger brother. Anything new?"

"Actually, yes," he finally huffed out, and I didn't expect the words that came out of his mouth next one bit. "I, uh, I slept with Carly."

My jaw practically hit the floor. For a second, I thought I'd heard wrong. Logan had slept with Carly? My uptight, always professional brother had crossed the ultimate line and slept with one of his employees, and she was our stepsister now to boot?

And hell, that wasn't even the most shocking part. There was also the fact that, if I heard him correctly, this was the same Carly that I"d been harboring feelings for longer than I cared to admit. It knocked the wind out of me for a second, the realization that my brother had beaten me to the punch.

"Seriously?" I managed to choke out, trying to mask the surge of jealousy that coursed through me.

Logan nodded, his expression a mix of confusion and uncertainty. "Yeah. It was… unexpected, to say the least."

I swallowed hard, trying to wrap my head around the idea of Carly and Logan together. Had I manifested this somehow with all of my gloom-and-doom thoughts of how Carly was too good for me, how she deserved someone who had their shit together more fully? Fuck, that would be so annoying if it were true. And just so typical of my luck, honestly.

"So, uh, does this mean you guys are… dating?" I asked cautiously, unsure whether I even wanted to hear the answer. Logan wasn't really the type to hook up outside of the confines of a commitment. Not that he'd had a lot of committed relationships in recent years, either.

Logan shrugged, his shoulders tense. "Fucking hell, I don"t know. Probably not, right? I mean, we barely even talked. We definitely didn"t talk about that."

"Kinda hard when you're too busy boning each other's brains out," I said, and Logan cringed at my crassness. I felt a surge of hope flicker within me at his words, but I quickly squashed it down. This wasn"t about me, it was about Logan. I loved the guy, wanted him to be happy almost more than I wanted it for myself. And if he wanted Carly, then who was I to stand in his way?

"Well, hey, as long as you"re happy, man," I said, forcing a smile. It turned real, though, when my joking instinct kicked in. "And if you"re not, well, you let her know I'm still available. She knows where to find me if she wants her world rocked for real."

Logan reached over to knock my feet off his desk, which had me laughing in a half-assed way, more subdued than I would have been if I weren't struggling to choke down my envy. But then we met each other's eyes, and some flicker of feeling passed from me to him and back again, and goddamn it, I was not looking to have a brotherly heart-to-heart right now. Logan called the shots, though, as usual, and he knew me too well. "Wait. Shit. Are you… are you into Carly?"

My sigh blew out from between my lips in that horsey way that made Bennett laugh when he was younger. My own hand came up to drag through my hair, and wouldn't you know it? It didn't help one bit. I had no clue why Logan did that shit so often. He'd go bald for sure.

"I mean, yeah," I finally admitted. "Of course, dude. But I'm not the commitment type she probably wants, and you are. Plus, if I have to share her with anyone, you'd be my number-one pick. Couldn't happen to a better dude, you lucky bastard."

"Are you sure? I can?—"

"Completely, my dude." I stood from the chair and strode back toward the door, calling back a casual, "Back to the old grind!"

With that grade-A avoidance, I left Logan to his paperwork and headed out onto the floor to start my shift. Tying my apron around my waist made me feel a little more normal. But as I moved through the kitchen, slinging orders to my talented crew and cracking jokes with any servers who popped in while I cooked, my mind kept drifting back to Carly.

She was working today too. Of course she was. This place could hardly function without her. Every time I caught sight of her through the kitchen window, my heart skipped a beat. She was stunning as always, her smile lighting up the entire restaurant even when she was faking it in the face of a rude customer, a swingy black dress showing off her ample curves to their absolute best. But there was something different about her today, a tension that lingered beneath the surface. We hardly even talked, and she always made an effort to talk to me, just like I always made the effort to talk to her.

I couldn"t help but wonder if it had anything to do with Logan. After all, things were bound to be a little awkward between them at work now. But as much as I wanted to ask her about it, this was a case where I knew better than to pry. For now, all I could do was focus on my job and hope that things would work themselves out in the end. Take a page out of Logan's book, maybe.

At the end of my shift, Carly and I almost ran into each other in the hallway again, sharing a brief, tense laugh. We gathered our things from the break room and walked together to the parking lot, and I could hear the anxious wheels turning in her head even from a few feet away. So, before she could duck into her car and drive away, I stopped her in her tracks. I couldn't help myself.

"You alright, Carl?" I asked her gently. "You're… not your usual bright-eyed, bushy-tailed self."

"Bushy-tailed?" She cocked one eyebrow, and I felt my cock twitch as if on cue. God, her sass was delicious. "Is that a joke about my ass being huge?"

How could anyone not be obsessed with this woman? I grinned wickedly. "You'll hear no complaints from me about that. But way to dodge the question."

Carly sighed. "Alright, you caught me. I'm… dealing with some heavy stuff at the moment."

"You can share if you want," I said. "You don't have to, but I'm here for you."

"You always are," she agreed softly, her tone full of wonder. "We're… close, right? Like, we're good friends?"

"I like to think so," I answered. That didn't mean I didn't want more. But either way, I liked being someone she could confide in, someone she could count on. Even if I was a little worried she was about to tell me she'd fucked my brother and liked it.

"Well… in that case, I have something kind of big to tell you. I'm not sure this is the time or the place, though."

"Where's Miss Ella this evening?" I asked, having an idea. "If you're free from Mom duty, maybe you and me could go get a drink."

"Ella's at a sleepover," Carly answered, and the softening of her expression told me she appreciated my asking about her daughter. I couldn't say it wasn't a little bit to please her, but I thought that kid was awesome, too, and I knew the two of them were a package deal. If anything, the idea of Carly becoming a more permanent fixture in my life was all the more appealing knowing that she came with a rad bonus mini I goof around with.

"So?" I asked, nudging her with my elbow as an excuse to touch her. "Drinks with ol' Nate? What do you say?"

She mulled it over for only a second before her face broke into a grin. "I say hell yes. That sounds amazing."

Amazing. It was good to hear that was what she thought about spending time with me. And after realizing with a zing of anticipation that this was our first ever one-on-one plans outside of work, I couldn't help but agree.