28. Ford

CHAPTER 28

FORD

I hated sneaking around.

At first, it was fun because I was being seduced by my best friend's straight brother, but I should have known that fantasy wasn't going to last. The worst part was, I wasn't even mad about it. Whatever my relationship with Boston had turned into was so much better than what it had started as, what either of us had intended for it to be. I wanted to tell him I was in love with him. I wanted the whole world to know—his brother included—that I'd finally met my match.

But that wasn't allowed, and I spent an extra hour at work killing time because Kale had showed up unexpectedly and neither of us was ready for that conversation yet. So I sent strongly worded emails, set meetings, reviewed contracts, and did all of the things that I used to love the most about my job while I waited for Boston to text me and tell me it was okay to come over. I finished my to-do list and the text hadn't come through, so I shut down my computer and sent a text message of my own. After hailing a cab so I didn't have to walk across town, I found myself on Brooks' front stoop with a bottle of wine tucked under my arm and no common sense in my brain.

He opened the door and raised an eyebrow at me, but didn't stop me from pushing past him into the warmth of his house. He closed the door behind me, hand already extended to catch my coat. It was a joke to call him the mom of our friend group, but he probably paid more attention to the care of us than anyone else had before. At least until Kale met Christian and then I'd found myself involved with Boston…

Brooks followed me into his kitchen and took a seat at his kitchen island while I busied myself with opening the wine and pouring two glasses' worth. Then he waited quietly while I poured half the contents of my glass down my throat, trying to find the words.

"I know you don't want to hear about this," I finally said.

"It's fine, Ford."

I rested my ass against his kitchen sink and folded my arms in front of my chest, still not sure where to start. Thankfully, Brooks took pity on me.

"Why are you here and not with Kale's brother?"

"Because I'm mad that he didn't tell me he wasn't coming back."

"Are you really mad?" he asked.

I sucked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and stared up at the stark white coving of Brooks' ceiling.

"I'm hurt," I grumbled, not caring if he heard me or not. I took another drink of my wine, but a more reasonably sized one this time.

"This is new for you. The feelings, I mean. You don't know how to communicate them."

I opened my mouth to protest, but he wasn't wrong in the assertion. I'd been in over my head from the first time Boston put his hand on my thigh.

"You're not going out this weekend to pick up a stranger, I'll tell you that much," he said to me softly.

"Why not?" I asked, an unfamiliar heat pricking at the corners of my eyes. "Why shouldn't I?"

"You're not a cheater."

"I'm not a boyfriend either," I snapped. Boston and I had agreed we were in a relationship, but he'd never called me his boyfriend . That wasn't something I'd gotten to experience or to embrace. Even though we'd had a date, the foundation of our relationship was built behind closed doors. That wasn't any different from everything I'd had before him, which felt patently unfair because Boston was more than everyone who'd come before him put together. I was in love with him and he didn't even know.

"Semantics."

With a foul glare in Brooks' direction, I set the wine glass down on the counter with a little more force than was necessary. It was the wrong angle, the right frequency, and the glass shattered in my hand, Chablis spilling over my wrist and down to the floor.

"You're a fucking child," he said, not bothering to get up from his seat.

I grabbed a dish towel off the counter and dropped it at my feet, using my shoe to push it around and mop up the spilled wine. I dared a glance at my palm, finding my skin intact, and myself a little drunker than before.

Brooks wasn't finished insulting me. "If you come out to the club this weekend and even look at another man the wrong way, I'm telling Boston as soon as he gets back from California."

"If he even comes back," I grumbled, bending over to pick up the sopping wet towel. The wine was cleaned off the floor and I threw the towel into the sink.

"You owe me a hundred dollars for that glass," Brooks said, ignoring my protest.

I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and dug all the cash from my billfold, throwing no less than five hundred dollars across the island at him. He smirked, folding it all neatly and tucking it into the pocket of his joggers.

"Boston is coming back," Brooks said, sounding surer of it than Kale had when he brought it up before. "Which you would know if you talked to him about it, but I don't imagine the two of you do much talking."

"How do you know?"

"That he's coming back or that you're too much of a fool to have a real conversation?"

"We have conversations," I snapped, slapping my hands down on the edge of his white marble kitchen counter. "We talked about what it meant for him to be with me, to be with a fucking man. We talked about being together. We talked about…"

The heat in my eyes was unbearable and I stopped, squeezing them closed so I didn't do something ridiculous like cry in front of him.

"Did you talk about telling Kale?" Brooks asked.

"We talked about not telling him." I swallowed, rubbing the center of my chest. "It wasn't supposed to be anything. He just wanted me for sex."

Brooks chuckled. "How the tables have turned. "

I rolled my eyes, rubbing them furiously as if enough pressure from my fingers could push the unshed tears back into their respective ducts. It was futile, so I turned my back to Brooks and wiped them away with one lone sniffle.

"I'm out of my element," I admitted.

"I can tell."

"I don't want him to go."

"I can tell that too," he said again. "Have you told him that?"

I shook my head and frowned.

"Don't you think you should?"

"It's just a vacation," I mumbled.

"Well, which is it, Ford? You can't have it both ways." Brooks took a drink of his wine, smirking at me like the arrogant prick he was. "He's either leaving you forever or he'll be home before you realize he's gone."

"Fuck you."

"If you don't like what I have to say, you're more than welcome to leave." He climbed off the barstool and left me alone in his kitchen.

With a loud exhale that I hoped he heard, I squatted down and picked up all the broken glass, collecting the shards in the palm of my hand. Carefully, I dumped them into his trash can, using an old takeout container to house them, then headed upstairs toward Brooks' office.

I didn't know that was where he went, but Brooks was as predictable as the rest of us, and so I found him sitting on one of the matching wingbacks that flanked the bay window on the far wall of the room. There was a fireplace a few feet away, a brick mantelpiece that dated to the 1800s framing the small fire he'd just turned on.

"I don' t want to scare him," I said reluctantly, settling into the chair beside him.

"If your incessant and unwanted flirting didn't run him off, I can't imagine your sincerity will."

"He's the one driving this whole thing." Brooks arched a doubtful brow at me and I answered with a helpless shrug. "He propositioned me. He's been making all the calls."

"Are you trying to tell me you got on your knees for Kale's baby brother?" Brooks asked.

"No, but I definitely got on my back."

Brooks huffed out a surprised-sounding laugh, and I glared at the dancing flames in his fireplace instead of looking at him. I didn't want to see how he was looking at me, didn't want to read the judgement or the scorn on his face.

"Are you expecting me to be horrified that you bottomed or something, Ford?" He reached over and flicked my earlobe. "There's nothing wrong with how you like to fuck."

"I don't like to bottom," I countered, "or at least, I didn't."

"Knowing that I'm going to regret asking this…" Brooks paused and took a tentative drink. "Does he submit?"

"Do you want the answer?"

"I want to understand why you're failing to grasp every straw you reach for with him."

I wanted to have an answer for him, and I wished it was as easy as saying yes, he submits or no, he doesn't. My relationship with Boston was built on so much more than the hierarchy of who said what and who went where. That was the problem because I didn't have a playbook for how that sort of thing was meant to work. With one-night stands and people who knew their place, I was confident of what to expect. With Boston, everything was a crapshoot.

"He submits," I answered, "but in the way that works for us."

"And how is that?"

"Sometimes. Less than he'd like, I think. But also ver y fucking well."

Brooks heaved a sigh and pushed the wine glass toward me. I took a grateful sip before setting it back down on the table between our chairs.

"You're in love with him," Brooks said. "And you don't think he's on the same page."

"I don't want to scare him off," I said again, frowning. "This wasn't supposed to be anything that it is, Brooks. It was supposed to be some lessons in sex and then he was going to be on his way."

"So, it's more than he expected too?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think he's maybe feeling as overwhelmed as you are by the whole thing?" he asked.

"If he is, he hasn't said anything about it."

Brooks rolled his eyes so hard, I worried they were going to get stuck staring at the inside of his skull. "And have you said anything about it? To him?"

I scrubbed a hand down my face.

"I know you haven't had a relationship like this before, but you're both setting yourselves up to fail if you aren't talking about anything besides what brand of lube to use," he said.

"We never even talked about that," I muttered.

"Don't be obtuse." Brooks stole the wine glass back to his side of the table and took a decent drink of it. "I think this trip is going to be good for the two of you, as long as you can keep your dick in your pants when we're out this weekend. "

"How is him leaving me good for us?" I asked.

"He's leaving New York," Brooks corrected, shaking his head like he was scolding a five-year-old for not eating all their vegetables. "He is coming back to you."

"When?"

He pursed his lips, and I found myself feeling more and more like the petulant child he was treating me as, but it was impossible to react any other way. Boston had be beyond fucked up and out of my depth, and I couldn't have the conversation with him without scaring him off and ruining everything entirely.

I shoved up out of the chair and paced across Brooks' office, making it to the far wall before I turned back and repeated the journey four more times. Eventually, I stopped in front of his fireplace and bracketed my hands on my hips, staring down at the fire like all of my answers—and my problems—were burning away in the flames.

"I cannot have these conversations for you," Brooks said from his seat. "But if you don't have them for yourself…" He trailed off, the rest of his sentence not even needing to be spoken out loud.

If I didn't have them myself, Boston would be gone, one way or the other. Either because he didn't come home to New York or he didn't come home to me. Neither of those were acceptable choices, but the fear in my bones was too embedded, too thick. I would have rather taken scraps from Boston than nothing at all, and I wasn't ready to lose him when I was barely learning what it meant to love him.