26. Ford

CHAPTER 26

FORD

The next week, at work, I found myself face to face with Kale.

It wasn't so much that I'd been trying to avoid him, but I actually had avoided him, so of course he made his way upstairs to my office with a hickey behind his ear and an amused expression on his face.

"Come get lunch with me," he said, tugging at the cuffs of his dress shirt. He wore a pair of crown-shaped cufflinks, which I imagined were a gift from his prince of a boyfriend.

I have plans with Boston was what I wanted to say. I have plans with your brother and I'm in love with him. I took him to The Black Door and he kissed my feet and let me make him come four times before we went home. Your brother is everything I never even realized I wanted and we're together now.

That was what I wanted to say.

"I'm busy," I said instead, not able to look him in the eye.

"You're always busy. You never come out and play, always holed up in your house with your cat."

"I'm terribly sorry that I'm not interested in watching you making Christian come in his pants every night," I countered, rolling my eyes. "And I've gotten exceedingly good at Sudoku."

"I find that hard to believe. Come eat. Brooks is meeting us."

"What about Alex?" I asked, resigned that if the gang was together, there was no way I was getting out of it.

"He's still brooding a bit, but he'll come around soon. Brooks said he bought a motorcycle."

I had known Kale for years and knew there was no way I was wiggling out of lunch. Boston would have to wait, which was one of the greatest tragedies of my life. I stood up and checked my clothes to make sure everything was as in order as it could be, then grabbed my phone and fired off a quick apology text to Boston, promising to make it up to him later.

As it was, his trip back to California was less than a week away and to say I wasn't looking forward to the separation would have been an understatement. It hadn't been more than a few weeks we'd been together, but I'd already grown extremely accustomed to his presence in my house and his fingers on my skin.

Things had only gotten worse—or better—after I took him to The Black Door for the first time. Seeing him on his hands and knees, tongue dragging lazily across the top of my shoe to thank me had caused something inside of me to snap. I took him after that like a man possessed, and Boston had loved every second of it. I wondered if I'd unleashed a monster when I'd agreed to his teach me how to fuck ruse, but he'd awakened something just as dangerous inside of me. Something just as hopeful…

The eager and exploratory ways Boston touched me had led to some of the most exhilarating sex I'd ever had. And that was completely aside from the penetration. We'd still only been together like that once, with me bottoming for him, but all the other times—the blow jobs, the hand jobs, the making out…Around him, I found myself feeling like a teenager again, all spiked hormones and bad decisions.

Speaking of…

"A motorcycle sounds like a death wish." I slid my phone into my pocket and kicked the back of Kale's knee, trying to pretend I wasn't already half hard thinking about fucking his brother. Kale's leg buckled, and he cursed at me on his way to the door of my office.

"I didn't know he had it so hard for Beamer," Kale said.

Our friend Carter Royce IV, affectionately nicknamed Beamer, had recently absconded to California with his husband, leaving all of us more than caught off-guard over the whole thing. First, watching Beamer submit to a man none of us knew. Second, to watch the way his very new relationship with Alex unraveled in front of our eyes. I knew the thing between them wasn't serious. The group of us had been friends for years, but Alex had found something in Beamer and then Beamer found Dalton, and all of our lives changed.

It was beyond weird to have our group of five cut down to four, and Alex had practically turned into a recluse since the shift. Hearing that he'd bought a motorcycle was beyond concerning, but Alex wasn't the kind of man who could get pushed into submission with words.

I'd spoken to Beamer most recently when I'd needed advice about Boston. I'd tried to catch up and see how life in California was for him, but when I tried to see if he had any suggestions as to how we could get through to Alex, he clammed up immediately. "I think there's more to it, but Beamer's a vault."

"Obviously."

We rode the elevator down to the lobby, and as soon as we were through the revolving door onto the sidewalk, Kale made a sharp left turn and started off. I jogged to catch up, falling in stride beside him as we turned a corner and found Brooks waiting for us against the fa?ade of the building, one leg bent at the knee and his arms folded in front of his chest. He was bundled up, a black beanie on his head and a pink scarf wound tight around his throat.

"I'm so glad you guys are here," he said, yanking the scarf up over his mouth. "I have a story to tell you, but it's freezing cold."

"Maybe Boston has the right idea," Kale said, shoving his hands into the pocket of his coat. "Wintering in California."

"He's not going to be gone that long," I said without thinking. Even though we hadn't really talked about his trip beyond his departure date. It was a bit of a sore subject because I was a greedy man and didn't want him to leave, but I also wasn't about to flex my muscles and demand that he stay. I'd already made him that promise a hundred times over.

Kale's head whipped toward me, one brow raised. "What are you talking about? He hasn't even booked a return flight."

A knot wrapped itself tight around my throat, and I swallowed, thankful for the cold wind and the bundled clothes, hoping I could excuse my burning cheeks on the brisk city air. What was Kale talking about? Boston hadn't booked a return flight? That was absurd. We were together now. We were in a relationship and he'd booked a one-way flight across the country and not even bothered to tell me about it? After everything we'd used our bodies to say to each other…

"I just assumed," I said weakly, covering my mouth with my scarf and folding my arms in front of my chest as we continued our walk down the street.

I should have known better.

I was a fool.

Falling for a man who didn't know better, who'd only wanted me for sex in the first place. I'd gotten stupid ideas in my head and talked us both into more when all he'd wanted was to learn what it felt like to suck a cock. This was why I never let myself get tied down with people or with feelings. This was why I did hookups and nothing more. Because I knew myself well enough to know how easy it was for me to get interested, to get obsessed. I tried to shake it off, ignoring the way Brooks eyed me speculatively from Kale's other side.

"He's always favored farm life over city life," Kale went on, completely unfazed by the way his words sounded to my ears.

He might as well have been saying you're the biggest idiot in the world to think you had a future with a man like my brother, Ford. He's too good for you, too good for this life.

"I knew it was coming, but I'd hoped giving him the job would keep him here a little longer."

"Has he said he's not coming back?" Brooks asked.

We reached some restaurant that looked like every other restaurant in the city, and I followed the two of them inside, beginning the tedious work of stripping out of my scarf and coat. The host walked us toward a white tablecloth-covered table, and for some reason, I pictured Boston sitting there with dirt under his nails from another box of vegetables he didn't know what to do with .

"No, but he was talking that way before I hired him," Kale said.

"Has nothing else changed for him?" Brooks asked, stare focused on me and my stare focused on the crisp iron lines in the tablecloth. "Since you gave him the job?"

"Maybe Ford's incessant flirting was the last straw." Kale laughed, and I was painfully aware of the weight of my phone against my leg and the way it hadn't buzzed with a return message since I apologized for missing our lunch plans.

"Could be," Brooks agreed.

I swallowed back the knot and forced myself to play the whole conversation off like it meant nothing. Leaning back in my seat, I slung one arm over the back of Brooks' chair, giving Kale what I hoped was a flirtatious and casual grin that would have lived on my face the month before.

"I think I should be insulted that you're implying your brother is moving across the country to get away from me," I said, every word tasting like razor blades.

It was impossible.

Kale must have misunderstood. There was no way I'd been the one who misread all of Boston's signals.

"I told you not to flirt with him."

"You told me not to fuck him," I corrected, knowing that even though we'd done plenty, the one thing we hadn't done was that .

Brooks cleared his throat like he was ready to call me a liar. I bumped the side of my shoe into his beneath the table and pasted a fake smile on my face.

"Tell me the story you wanted to start on the street," I said.

Brooks studied my face carefully before a mask slipped in place over his features and he shifted away from me so he was more fully facing Kale.

"I met this bartender named?—"

Kale cut him off, "Axel?"

"Of course you know him." Brooks laughed.

I swallowed, still finding it hard to breathe.

I loved Boston, and he was seriously making plans to leave for California with no return date in sight. It had to have been a misunderstanding with his brother because Boston would have told me if he wasn't planning on coming home. I replayed the conversations we'd had about his trip, which had been admittedly few and far between, and I was horrified to realize at no point had we ever talked about a return date. It was all about when he was leaving and what he would do when he was there, all about the things he loved and missed about the farm.

The quiet hours in the morning with coffee on the porch and the way the sun looked like cotton candy when it crested the horizon. I could hear his voice in my ears, clear as day, and I cursed myself for letting my guard down and not even bothering to read between the lines. I'd been so hung up on the idea of him, my best friend's very off-limits little brother, and the way he touched me with so much fucking intent.

I thought things could have been different with him.

I thought they already were.

Beside me, Kale and Brooks rattled on about some bartender named Axel, and I tried my hardest to focus on them, but I was too busy going back through every conversation I'd ever had with Boston to really hear them. And not just the conversations about his trip home, but every conversation ever .

Was Kale right about me?

Had I—in some way—coerced Boston into bed, into doing things he didn't want to do? I didn't think so. Honestly, in almost all of our encounters, Boston had been the aggressor. Sure, I'd taken over in the middle and gotten us to the end, but Boston was the one who was always loud and clear about what he wanted with me. He wanted to learn what it was like to be with a man, and I'd taken the bait—hook, line, and sinker. Boston saw me for who and what I was…a player of a man with enough experience to show him the ropes and send him on his way. The submission wasn't an exception; it was an addition.

"What do you think, Ford?" Kale asked, and I blinked at him.

"Sorry." I cleared my throat and gave him a grin. "Didn't catch that. I was busy thinking about your brother."

Kale lobbed his napkin at me across the table, and I deflected it with a quick flip of my wrist.

"Christian is making a trip home this weekend, and I was telling Brooks I think it would be a great opportunity for the four of us to get together and coax Alex out of hiding."

"A night at The Black Door," Brooks said beside me, choosing his next words carefully, "just like old times."

Just like old times meant a decent amount of liquor and even more skin. There'd been plenty of nights we'd found ourselves at the club with mouths around our cocks and our handprints bruised onto strangers' asses. It felt like a lifetime ago, when in reality it hadn't been more than a handful of months since the last time I'd picked out a play date for myself from the unsuspecting herd of guests who managed to find their way onto the elusive guest list of my favorite club.

"Not exactly like old times," Kale said with a shrug. "Christian and I are monogamous, so…"

"The three of us then." Brooks glanced at me from the corner of his eye. "You, me, and Alex."

Both of them watched me, and I was desperate to get my head out of my ass. The four of us all had our roles to play in the friend group, the five of us if I counted Beamer. Kale was the ringleader, the one who'd always been up to get the lot of us into the most amount of trouble. Beamer had been the most reserved and level-headed of us, the anchor. Alex had always been a brooder, long before whatever transpired with him and Beamer, and Brooks was the mother hen of us all, the secret keeper and the protector, a sharp counterbalance to Kale's troublemaking.

And me?

I was the fuck boy.

The player.

The fool.

I raised my glass in a mock toast to no one. "Perfect. Let's make it a date."