3. Boston

CHAPTER 3

BOSTON

I woke up the next morning with dirt on my pillow. Kale's zucchini had really done a number on me, but whereas I knew my brother would have been horrified at the prospect of getting his sheets dirty, it only made me miss the farm more. I made a mental note to call my parents at some point in the day, but since it was barely seven for me in New York, it wouldn't have even been four for them in California. While they were, of course, early risers, there were chores to be done first thing and I counted through that list—which I'd never forgotten—and settled on calling them sometime after lunch.

I flung my legs out of bed and grabbed my glasses off the nightstand, sliding them onto my face so I could blink my room into focus. My grandparents had bought an apartment for me after college, and I'd been living here ever since. It was nowhere near as large as the brownstone Kale had bought, but it was more than enough room for me.

A one-bedroom in a doorman building, just under twelve-hundred square feet, was plenty of space. The living room had an old fireplace and a bay window that overlooked the street below and the city beyond. It was lots of wood and white with exposed brick walls and dark brown leather. My apartment was as cozy as it could be, with blankets that my mom had woven from homespun yarn thrown over the back of the couch and half-drunk mugs of coffee on the low wood table in the middle of the small room. I had plants and a record player and a bookshelf of stories I'd fallen in love with in college and never been able to part with. My apartment was as much me as a place like New York City would allow, but Kale had been right. Walking away from the high-stress job I'd been in since college and stepping into a role as his assistant had done wonders for my outlook and my mental health.

Grabbing my phone off the charger on the bedside table, I scrolled through the alerts that had come through overnight while I padded barefoot into the cramped kitchen. Even a million dollars couldn't get me anything more than a short galley kitchen on the Upper East Side, but I didn't cook a lot, so the complaint didn't count for much. I normally got food at work or on the way home, or I went out with friends or my brother. My fridge didn't have much in it beyond a dozen eggs, courtesy of my parents, a gallon of milk, and a bag of mandarin oranges. The coffee was on the counter, next to the Keurig, and I brewed myself a strong mug of coffee.

I had a text from my brother about the zucchini, which I answered, assuring him the vegetables had been appropriately dispatched. I'd kept one for myself and dropped the others at the food pantry where my friend Shawn worked. It was between the office and my apartment, and Shawn was more than happy to take the farm-grown produce off my hands to help out. I had no idea what I was going to make with the giant squash I'd kept, but getting rid of the entire bounty seemed wrong. Even though we'd both begged our parents to stop sending so much, they'd never been good at taking no for an answer. I imagined that was how they found themselves on a farm in California in the first place, miles away from the parquet wood floors and massive oil paintings that decorated my grandparents' house.

I owed them a visit as well, I realized, but like the call to my parents, it could wait. My grandparents were great at some things, like showing love with money, but not others…like showing love with words. They wouldn't be sad that I hadn't come around in months, and even less sad if I delayed longer.

My coffee finished brewing and I carried the mug into the living room, taking a careful seat on the couch as to not spill on my lap. The sounds of horns and squealing brakes had already started to filter up from the street, and I sipped at my coffee, trying to pick the noises apart and identify them one by one. There were at least three yapping dogs, one angry cabbie, and two loud-talking pedestrians. I set my coffee on the table, next to the half-finished mug from yesterday morning, then went to the window to peer down onto the street and check my work.

There were four dogs, one cab, and a group of people talking so loudly over themselves it would have been impossible to separate the voices. Dressed in nearly matching suits, I wondered what the five men had to talk about so loudly considering the extremely early hour, but it was just another piece of the hustle and bustle in the city that had never appealed to me.

The men made me think of my brother and his friends…ma de me think of Ford and the afterhours encounter we'd shared the night before, the way his breath had burned against the back of my neck while we waited for the elevator. The memory caused heat to stir low in my belly, and I jumped back from the window like the recollection of the event had burned me the same way.

Ford Carlisle was an enigma of a man.

I sometimes imagined that my brother idolized him, though not in a way that he'd ever confess to. But Kale and I were twins, and I knew him as well as he knew himself. So I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he admired Ford more than he'd ever admit. My brother hadn't always been so bold and brash, but Ford…Ford had come out of the womb like that. From the first time Kale introduced me to his friends, I'd reckoned Ford to be the ringleader, the troublemaker, and also the problem solver. He was also the playboy, and it was because of him I'd been able to convince Kale to give me a job.

Whereas Kale's favorite hobby was reading the newspaper and mine was people watching from the window, Ford's was sleeping with strangers. Sleeping with anybody, if I wanted to be honest. He favored men, which put me right in his crosshairs, but I was straight, so…

I was straight .

I'd never been with a man before, never even thought about it. But for a straight man, I'd spent a lot of time overnight thinking about how good Ford smelled and how his breath felt against my skin. Swallowing thickly, I stood up from the couch, not looking down so I wouldn't have to acknowledge the half hard cock tenting at the fly of my navy blue pajama pants.

It was fine.

It didn't mean I was into men.

Even though I hadn't been with a woman in years, I was still attracted to them. It wasn't like I had faked things with Colette when it came to the bedroom. I wasn't attracted to men, but I'd also never looked at a man long enough to see if I could be.

Ford wanted me to look at him.

Even if I did find myself suddenly attracted to more than one gender, which I found to be an unbelievable prospect, Ford would not be where I wanted to start. In the years that Kale and I had been in the city, I'd never seen Ford with the same person more than twice, and on top of that, he was my brother's best friend. One of them, at least. If I wanted to see if my attraction to men was a real thing, there were better places to test it than in Ford Carlisle's bed.

Unfortunately, thinking about Ford's bed took my semi right into full-on erection territory, the head of my cock poking through the loose button on the front of my pajamas.

"You've got to be kidding me," I complained to no one besides myself, shoving my pants down to my ankles and kicking them off. Ignoring my dick, I went into the bathroom and turned the water as hot as I could stand, and then stepped into the small shower. With the bathroom door closed, the small space was quick to transform into my own personal sauna, but even the heat and the humidity weren't enough to do away with the ache between my legs.

Be rational , I thought, pressing my back against the wall of the shower with a sigh. I closed my eyes and tried to think about other men who might be marginally attractive, but those thoughts only made me frustrated, my erection waning. I was mad because my subconscious didn't want to think about other men. It wanted to think about Ford.

That was fine.

It was normal.

Just because there was some weird hormonal thing going on where my body was responding to Ford in new and frankly terrifying ways didn't mean I had to sleep with him. Ford had always made his little flirting jokes at me, but that didn't mean I had to act on any of them. It didn't mean anything , because Ford acted that way with everyone . My dick hadn't gotten that memo, obviously, feeling more than special with the increase in attention. I washed my hair, washed my body, washed my face, but my cock refused to settle down.

"Think about Charlize Theron," I told myself, making a fist around my shaft and squeezing a little harder than entirely necessary. My brain was in an uproar, scrambled by the fresh memories of Ford's breath and his scent as soon as I forced the visual of a woman into my mind.

I didn't want to think about Charlize. Didn't want to think about Colette. As soon as I gave my mind permission to wander to Ford and his mouth, I was coming. I barely had time to recall the heat of his breath against that sensitive spot on my neck, just behind my ear, the way he smelled like expensive things and expensive sex. How I couldn't even breathe properly around him when he flirted at me like he had the night before. Didn't even have a chance to wonder what he would look like naked or how he would take my clothes off given the chance.

It was over .

The orgasm ripped through me with so much force it left me gasping for air, fingers scrabbling madly against the tile while my other hand raced up and down the length of my cock. With one hand against the wall, slipping and sweaty, cum shot out of my dick and painted the grout and the dark green tile in front of me. My toes curled, heat rising from the base of my spine and radiating out in shockwaves that didn't feel like they were ever going to die down in their intensity. I couldn't see, couldn't think, and again couldn't breathe.

Throwing my head back, I let out a noise I'd never heard myself make before. It was something feral, like a man possessed and pleasured, and then my knees gave out and I slid down to the floor. Cum still leaked from the slit of my dick, and I watched in awe as my balls found more and more to empty onto my trembling hand and my shaft. I'd never even had time to pretend it was Ford's fingers wrapped around my cock. It was still just me. My hand. My fingers. My fantasies.

"What the fuck? What the fuck ?" I muttered the question to myself over and over again, cock still throbbing hot and hard in my hand as cum spilled over my knuckles. Water from the shower beat down against the top of my head, raining into my eyes and making it hard to see, but I didn't miss the wet swirl as my cum circled the drain before disappearing.

I'd gotten off thinking about a man.

With a shaking hand, I reached up above my head and tried to swipe the cum off the wall and let it chase the rest down the drain, but I'd shot so hard and so far, I couldn't reach it all. I was going to have to stand up and actually clean it off…face what I'd done.

I wasn't gay .

Kale was gay.

But none of that answered why I'd just come thinking about a man's mouth and hands on me. None of that mattered when my cock was still hard and my mind was still on the one man I knew I should never want. None of it mattered at all, but at the same time…everything had just changed.