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Chapter 98

Halloween morning meant meeting my brothers at The Treehouse for our annual costume fuck-around game. There was no other fucking way to put it. We didn’t take this shit seriously. We always tried to one-up each other every fucking year. Usually, we just fucking judged ourselves and had a fucking riot, but not this year. This year, we had Roan in town—thanks to me. In light of me stepping down from my duties in the middle of a fucking pack crisis, Brady sent Roan up to offer insight in my place. Considering how Mom and Brady were constantly supporting each other during their leadership periods, no one batted a fucking eye when an Ironwood showed up to help a Byrne. Our packs were damn near fluid with one another.

Bright and early on Halloween, I walked right into Nolan’s shop dressed as Lucas—although, in my interpretation, Lucas was a fucking firefighter stripper. I wore a pair of turnout pants that I’d shamelessly stolen with the intention of giving them back, bright as fuck suspenders complete with flames, boots, and a shiny fucking sticker that said ask me about my hose because why the fuck not.

Only it wasn’t Nolan at the counter, it was Roan dressed in a baseball tee shoved up to his elbows and a backwards baseball cap. The fucker even had eye grease on his cheeks. Happy fucking Halloween, right? He grabbed the counter for support as he broke down laughing when he saw me.

“You look like a fucking tool,” he wheezed.

“That’s the fucking point,” I said. “And shut the fuck up. I make this look good.”

“Fuck, I should’ve put your ass to work on a fucking pole instead of making you a fucking bouncer for the occasional shitheads,” he replied. I would’ve owned that fucking pole, thank you very much.

“Roan, you made me your bouncer.”

“I did not!”

“How many times,” I began dramatically as I grabbed his arm, “did I have to come home to find some woman in bed with you? Our home? You’d do that to me? After all these years, you ungrateful—fuck, I can’t even take me seriously.”

“No, no, please,” Roan said. “Keep going, boo, tell me how I wronged you.”

“What are you two going on about?” Nolan demanded, coming through the back door. “I can hear Killian’s theatrics all the way upstairs.”

“Fake boyfriends,” we answered in unison. No joke there. Roan liked them crazy. He also liked to bring crazy to his house—a dumb idea really—instead of going to theirs, where leaving was then his job. And Roan, for all his dickhead nature, had a big fucking heart. He hated kicking them out. Me? I didn’t fucking mind one bit.

More than once, he had me coming over to help him kick out some woman who tried to make herself a permanent fixture. Except more than once was one too many fucking times. So much so, I got bored and became a dramatic little shit. Sometimes I came in acting like a boyfriend finding out Roan was cheating and making a whole fucking scene. Others, I arrested his ass for stupid shit because I could. One time I showed up pissed off and told the girl he’d been drafted for a space war and probably wouldn’t survive. Bad idea. She fucking believed me and spent the next two hours giving him a proper send-off, but not before trying to get me to join. The fucking women he attracted were wild.

“Maybe pick better sexual partners and you won’t have that problem, Roan,” he replied. Roan slapped a hand to his chest as he gasped while I laughed my ass off. The kid really fucking called him out.

In true Nolan fashion, he was dressed to fucking perfection as a mechanic. I was fairly certain he’d stolen a pair of overalls from Sam. He was covered in grease, had black smears on his cheek, and had a fucking toolbelt around his waist. Put the kid in a garage and he would’ve looked like he belonged there. Hell, the way he searched shit on the internet, he probably knew more about cars than most of us just for the sake of curiosity.

“You look good, kid,” I commented.

“He doesn’t look like a stripper,” Roan countered.

“Please,” I scoffed. “The day Nolan Byrne becomes a stripper, the rest of us Byrnes are fucked. He’s the best looking of us.”

Nolan turned red.

He was, but in reality, Nolan had the biggest dick out of the rest of us—how we knew that was a story no one needed to know. The growing and showing aspect kept that shit a secret, but we fucking knew. Nolan had had enough issues fending off attempted girlfriends over the years while keeping his sexuality a secret. If word of his dick size got out… shit, small-town girls needed something to focus on and it’d be Nolan.

“It’s a curse,” Nolan said so softly that I almost missed it.

“I know, kid,” I told him. “Let Lucas and Finn take all the attention. Those shitheads love it.”

They really fucking did.

When Declan walked through the front door, I lost my fucking shit, laughing so hard I barely made a fucking sound as I slid down to the floor. Declan’s pick was Nolan, and the man went all in. He still wore the red flannel and white t-shirt, but the fucking man had sewn cat stuffed animals all over the front and back. There had to be at least a dozen dangling, a few sitting on his shoulders, and he even had one stuffed in his back pocket. And that one in his pocket? It had a fucking mustache just like the bookstore cat Nolan kept.

“Jesus fucking Christ, you look like a goddamn beanie baby,” Roan said. Any hope I had of gaining self-control went out the window with that comment.

“I’ll have you know, I sewed these fuckers on myself,” Declan retorted with an immense amount of pride.

“Are those my spare glasses?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah, I popped the lenses out,” he replied.

“They don’t just pop back in!”

“I didn’t know that!”

“Ask next time!” Nolan exclaimed. “You owe me new glasses.”

“Fucking worth it.” Declan grinned. He stopped in front of me, hands falling to his hips. “You good down there.”

“Fuck, you should see yourself,” I said, blowing out a quick breath. I took the hand he offered and climbed to my feet. “I think you win on fucking principle. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“And you look like you’re trying out for a new job,” he stated.

“Don’t even fucking pretend like you don’t know that Lucas fucks around on the poles at the firehouse when he has spare time.”

“Oh, I have videos he doesn’t know about,” Declan told us. “I’m saving them for the perfect occasion.”

“You devious little fuck.”

“I do my best. Are you going like that today?”

“Fuck no,” I scoffed. “I’d freeze my fucking nipples off like this. I’m staying like this long enough for the family picture and then I’m fucking leaving to change.”

Declan, Raven, Genevieve, and I were getting the hell out of Cedar Harbor for the rest of Halloween. There was an annual Halloween carnival a few towns over. It was the highlight of the area. Genevieve and I had never missed a single one—except the last three years. I couldn’t resist the idea of a double date with my brother and his wife. Food, music, rides, a haunted house, a haunted corn maze, carnival games, and more.

And a pumpkin decorating contest. Maybe it was cheating to bring Raven fucking Woods to a pumpkin decorating contest, but we didn’t give a fuck.

“Those are my fucking boxers!” Declan’s sudden exclamation made us all turn.

Holy fucking shit. I should’ve stayed on the fucking ground. Finn strode in looking mighty fucking proud of himself dressed as the most obscene version of Declan any of us dared in flannel print boxer briefs—apparently Declan’s boxer briefs—an open flannel shirt with nothing underneath, work boots, and a belt with a hand ax around his waist. He even grew out a small beard for the part.

“Oh my fucking God!” Roan keeled over the countertop, laughing as he grabbed my arm for support. “What the fuck is he wearing?”

“My fucking boxers!” Declan repeated. “Where the fuck did you get my boxers?”

“I’m a lumberjack cover model.” Finn beamed.

“I don’t fucking care! You don’t steal a man’s boxers, Finn.”

“You haven’t even seen the best part,” he said.

Oh, Jesus Christ. Finn whirled on his heel to show off the back of his shirt. Roan and I lost our shit all over again. Embroidered in the shirt was the phrase, Professional Wood Handler.

“Finn!” Declan practically yelled.

“I helped him find someone to do that,” Nolan chimed in.

“Okay, look!” Sam began, announcing his presence loudly as he threw open the fucking door. “How the fuck do you wear these goddamn pants? My balls hurt, Killian. They’re all squished in there. I’m going to lose a fucking nut thanks to you.”

What a fucking entrance.

“He’s you!” Roan exclaimed, laughing hard.

“He looks like a douchebag! I don’t look like that!” I protested as I gestured to my brother. He looked like a fucking moron in pants so tight I wasn’t sure he’d get them off, a damn near see-through with a v-neck, and biker boots. A fake tattoo perfectly matched mine on his arm—definitely Raven’s work—and he had sunglasses on his head. “My shirts are never that see-through!”

“They’re that see-through,” Sam and Roan said simultaneously.

“Fuck you and fuck you,” I snapped as I pointed to each one individually.

“I’m here to win, you motherfuckers!” Lucas shouted before he ever walked through the door. We all shut the fuck up and waited, staring expectantly.

And holy fuck we weren’t prepared. At all. Lucas looked so goddamn… there wasn’t a fucking word for how he looked. He left us all speechless.

“Mom’s going to kill you,” Nolan whispered, the shock in his face breaking as he grinned like a fucking idiot.

Shit. He wasn’t wrong.Lucas took dressing up as Finn to a whole new extreme. The kid wore a white fucking apron. That was it—maybe he had on boxers under it but not that I could see. And the kicker? The apron said lick my whisk right over the kid’s goddamn dick.

“Mom’s going to fucking end you,” I agreed, but I still fucking laughed because shit, if that didn’t scream Finn, nothing did.

“But look at the back.” Lucas beamed as he turned around, wiggling his ass—which was thankfully covered in white boxer briefs. But it was the fucking phrase on his ass that had me losing it. Knead my buns. Fuck, this kid was begging for Mom to kill him.

“Kid, Mom’s going to kill you and make us bury you in the woods.” Declan chuckled. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Fucking worth it for the looks on your faces,” he said, making me laugh. This shit? This shit I needed. It helped calm the wild unease raging inside me as I navigated everything.

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