Chapter 29

Daniel

I understood where Chase was coming from. If anyone had seen the way I’d fallen apart before moving to Seattle, it was him. His friendship meant everything to me, even if we hadn’t always been super close. We’d learned to lean on one another when it mattered the most.

The tiny meow from under the bed had Chase staring at me.

“What the hell was that?”

I cleared my throat, sliding off the edge of the bed and retrieving the kitten from under the bed frame. My hands shook a little, handling the small bundle of fur. While Nacho didn’t scare me as badly since we’d gotten used to each other over the last couple of days, years of trauma were hard to get over.

“Uh, we sort of rescued a cat?”

Chase stared at me as I pressed the little ball of orange fuzz into my chest, rubbing between his ears while he purred contentedly.

“Fucking wild, man. You’ve been around my cat tons of times and you get twitchy whenever she’s in the same room. Here you are, even holding one.”

I laughed and sat back down next to him on the bed. “I get it. And I was pretty freaked out by this little guy at first as well. I don’t know. He was pretty scared, too. Could you imagine being all cold and alone outside like that when you’re this small?”

Chase snorted, shoving my shoulder. “Damn. You’re going all soft on me now. Leave you alone to get dicked down for a couple of days and you turn into mush.”

My eyes rolled. “Jesus. We haven’t been fucking this whole time.”

When I glanced at my friend, his eyebrows shot up to his hairline in disbelief. “You sure about that? You seem all loose and...”

The knock at the door stopped our conversation. Nathan stood there, arms crossed over his chest. “You two going to gossip in here all afternoon? Meanwhile, I’m convinced Joe did something to Aiden.”

There was a thud from the front of the cabin. “Would you knock it off? Joe didn’t do anything!” Within the next few seconds, Aiden was next to his brother, waving a beer bottle around. “For the last time, we’re just friends. We’re here to party. He’s been helping me loosen up, sure, but that’s it.”

Chase nudged me with his shoulder. It was obvious our conversation was over. I set Nacho on the mattress since he’d fallen asleep in my lap. No one else seemed to notice him and I shut the door to the room so no one would bother him when things got out of hand. And things would get out of hand. They always did.

“ W e can’t order, like, a pizza or something?” Aiden whined as he cradled his fifth beer against his chest. Nathan was on the verge of taking away his ability to have any more. The kid hung out with us often enough, but this was the first time I’d ever seen him get anywhere close to drunk.

“No pizza. It’s sort of a miracle that you all were able to drive out here as it was.” Shawn walked into the kitchen and opened the pantry. “But we might be able to figure something out. We’ve got stuff to make something from scratch.”

“Is that a good idea?” I asked. We’d all been drinking for a couple of hours now. I was pretty good at holding my booze, but I was feeling a little toasty at that point.

Shawn shrugged. “Probably not, but it could be entertaining.”

And that was how we all ended up in the kitchen, flour everywhere, while Andrew and Brandon cut vegetables. The rest of us had been trying to make the dough, and we’d ended up wearing the ingredients more than anything. It didn’t help when Joe thought it would be funny to dump a handful of the white powder over Aiden’s head. They’d tossed a good amount of it around before Shawn made them stop or we wouldn’t have enough to make the crust.

The end product of eight lumpy and questionable pizzas waiting to go into the oven had been worth it. Would they have looked better had we not been a bit tipsy? Maybe, but it also made it a lot more fun.

Shawn slung an arm over my shoulder, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingertips. In the past, I would have locked up and shoved him away. Told him to leave me the hell alone. Not now, though. Now, I wanted to melt into his warmth. Take in the smell of the pizza dough and hops from his beer.

It took a few minutes, but a prickle of awareness crept in. Chase was watching us. He was sitting on Nathan’s lap on one of the bar stools around the kitchen island. His knuckles were white around his drink glass. It would take a while for him to understand that I was okay with this, and I appreciated that he cared so much.

No one else seemed to pay much attention. It was nice because, as much as Shawn and I would fight, I didn’t want to make such a big deal out of the change in our dynamic. We were all just a regular group of dudes who went through the highs and lows. There were no guarantees that we wouldn’t start fighting again.

My hand tightened around my chilly glass, the ice clanging against the sides as I brought it to my lips to take a sip. The burn of the whiskey hit my throat, and I tried not to cough or think about the way my best friend was staring at me still. This was so fucking awkward. It wasn’t like anything that happened between Shawn and me was without my consent.

I was able to tune Chase out, enjoying talking to everyone else until the pizzas were all done. The entire cabin smelled like cheese and garlic. My mouth watered as we all placed our creations in front of us. The topping choices were limited, but I’d put cheese, tomatoes, olives, and onion on my pizza. When I lifted a small slice and took a bite, Shawn made a face at me.

“What?”

“You put tomatoes on your pizza.”

“What’s so weird about that? They’re in the fucking sauce?”

He snorted, picking up a piece of his own pie. He’d put cheese, canned mushrooms, and peppers on his. “Isn’t it enough that it’s in the sauce? Why do you need to add more?”

I rolled my eyes, taking another bite. It wasn’t like this was a usual favorite of mine. We’d all made some weird choices, but I hardly thought that tomatoes were odd.

“What did tomatoes ever do to you?” I asked after swallowing my bite.

Shawn laughed, and it was then that we noticed how quiet the room had gone.

“They’re... fighting over tomatoes... and if this is what foreplay looks like for them...”

Aiden shoved Joe’s shoulder, which made the other man fall into a fit of laughter. Everyone started laughing. The whole situation was ridiculous. We hadn’t even really been fighting, but it was so expected of us…

Now that I knew everyone was paying attention, I scooted away from Shawn. He looked at me in confusion as I shrugged my shoulder, and picked up another slice of my pizza.

Our friends all talked around us, and I suddenly felt like shit. We’d been having a good time, and I had let a little teasing get in my head. It wasn’t like we didn’t tease Nathan and Chase or Andrew and Brandon. They now had another target, and I needed not to take it so damn personally. Maybe it was the fact that I was still a little sore from having Art do it in a not-so-nice way for so long? Who the hell knew?

It didn’t help anything when I got up after finishing my food and stashed my plate in the sink. I grabbed a fresh bottle of beer from the fridge, popped the cap, and went into the living room to sink into the couch. If I thought that I’d be alone, I was wrong. Shawn was hot on my heels. He took the bottle from my hand and took a drink before handing it back to me.

“What’s up? You got moody suddenly.”

I sighed, fidgeting with the label on the bottle. I didn’t want to come across like an ass. But he also needed to understand that I wasn’t used to this whole being in a relationship in the open thing.

Well, fuck. Were we in a relationship?

My chest tightened, and I wanted to curl in on myself. These were things we needed to talk about and maybe we would have if the passes hadn’t opened up and we’d been surrounded by our friends so suddenly.

“I’m fine.”

Shawn frowned, taking the bottle from me again, this time setting it on the coffee table. “Don’t lie to me. If there’s something you’ve been really good at since we’ve been here... it’s honesty.”

God, he wasn’t wrong. The added pressure of everyone being here had me feeling all cagey. That fucking sucked. It was one thing for me to be open with him in private, but it didn’t change the fact that only he, Chase, and Nathan knew the whole story about what happened.