“Hey! I’m only concerned because of the Extravaganza coming. Dad put you and me in charge of the concert, and—”
“Yes, yes, because he’s a sadist. Spare me the reminder.” Rafe waved a hand and reached for more sugar packets. “Well, go on. You know you wanna look.”
Gage didn’t need to be told twice—he picked up his phone eagerly. Meanwhile, I debated pulling out my own phone to see if Toby wanted me to bring him home anything, like a coffee or maybe a late lunch. I wondered if he’d appreciate it. I wondered if we had time for him to show me his appreciation appropriately before people started showing up for the party.
It was a whole new way of thinking about life, having someone by my side and… fuck it, I really wanted to keep that, keep him. Maybe I hadn’t made it clear enough to Toby that I wanted him to stay here permanently, even after his mess in New York was cleaned up. Maybe I could be more convincing.
I could find him high-speed internet, if working with the hot spot was too much of a drag. Hell, I could buy a house and outfit it with the highest-speed internet—a field of satellite dishes in the backyard, if necessary.
“You’re grinning again,” Rafe pointed out unhelpfully, stirring his coffee with his straw.
I shot him a look. “If you put any more sugar in there, that coffee is going to stand up on its own and walk out.”
Rafe scowled. “It’s not crunchy enough yet.”
“Yuck. I don’t even drink coffee and I shudder on behalf of all people who do,” I informed him.
Gage gasped. “Jayd’s publicity company is canceling his remaining tour dates, and he’s gone into hiding.” He looked up at Rafe. “We need to contact him to make sure he’s still coming for the Extravaganza.”
Rafe snorted. “No, we don’t. Let him cancel. Too bad, so sad. Answer to a prayer, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you. We’ve already sold tickets to the concert, Rafael. Jesus. Dad’s gonna explode. And besides all of that, Jay’s in hiding someplace in Colorado, which sounds like the opposite of healthy behavior. Don’t you care about him at all?”
Rafe swallowed hard and looked away. “He’s a shithead, Gage. Whether he’s a straight shithead, a gay shithead, or any other color of the shithead rainbow doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.”
“That’s just lovely. Your support is noted.” Gage shook his head and put his phone to his ear. “I’m calling Dad. No one should have to hide out in the middle of nowhere because a photographer caught him messing around with a guy at a gay club in New York.”
The New York thing caught my attention, even when I’d been trying to tune out Gage and Rafe’s squabbling. I wondered how many clubs like that Toby had been to and whether he missed them.
“Jayd is hardly innocent here, Gagie-poo. Remember, he was the one who got a blow job in a public place.” Rafe finally achieved the proper level of sugar sludge and sipped his drink happily.
A blow job. In a club? I tried to picture that—Toby on his knees for me where anyone could see—and just the thought made heat climb up my chest. God, an intimate act like that, with an audience? A primal part of me thought I might enjoy claiming Toby like that, but the rest of me—
“You’re blushing.”
I blinked out of my daydream and scowled at Rafe.
“Hey, what’s with the play-by-play?” I demanded. “Don’t you have anything better to do? Other unfortunate former friends to cackle over? Other brothers to micromanage?”
“Nope.” Rafe popped the p obnoxiously. “Gage is immune to my micromanagement, and I only have one former friend stupid enough to hook up with a guy who’d get an X-rated Where’s Waldo tattoo on his shoulder.” Rafe snorted, inviting me in on the joke.
I smiled back instinctively in the second it took my brain to process what he’d said. Then I blinked. And blinked some more.
“P-pardon?” I finally managed to say, pushing out the words with lungs that no longer remembered how to work right. “Say again?”
“Oh, shit, that’s right! You haven’t seen it.” Rafe shook his head, still chuckling to himself. He called something up on his phone and spun it on the sticky Formica table to face me. “Take a gander.”
I didn’t want to look, I really didn’t. I somehow instinctively knew what I would see, and my mind resisted. But gravity dragged my gaze down to the tabletop, to the grainy picture on Rafe’s phone screen.
It was unmistakably Toby.
His head was turned almost fully away from the camera, but I’d kissed the hinge of that jaw, I’d traced the shell of that ear with my tongue, I’d bitten that shoulder tendon with its one-two-three freckles in a line, like Orion’s Belt pointing down to that one-of-a-kind tattoo.
Still, I couldn’t totally believe it.
I picked up the phone and tried to enlarge the image with fingers that were suddenly weirdly numb and cold. My stomach roiled and burned as I took in the look on Jayd’s face, noted how his eyes were squeezed shut but his mouth open like he was feeling incredible pain… or pleasure.
My blow jobs change lives.
Blood pulsed in my ears like the roar of the ocean.
It wasn’t like Toby had ever hidden the fact that he’d had sex with everything that moved, but knowing it and seeing it were vastly different. And maybe that made me a jealous asshole—okay, no, definitely that made me a jealous asshole—but it was still true.
And seeing him like this with someone else when I’d just two minutes before been thinking of it with him and me? It took me out at the knees.
I’m meant for city life…
My throat went thick as I realized just how deluded I’d been. Just how foolish.
Scene after scene crashed through my mind. Toby in the sunlight, Toby laughing, Toby clinging to me.
Circumstances involving a man and… another man… The details are unimportant here.
It’s a… a relatively minor personal problem that has nothing whatsoever to do with you, okay?
I trust you, Beale.
I trust you, Beale.
I trust you, Beale.
Except he didn’t. He hadn’t.
Not with this.
And what’s more, he’d lied.
He knew—knew—that Jayd had been part of my family. He knew Jayd was someone I cared about, and he’d kept the whole thing from me.
He’d let me fall for him… and he’d played me.
You’re smart, Beale. No one has the right to make you feel less than.
The irony was bitter. No offhanded comment from anyone in this town had ever made me
feel as foolish as Toby had.
“Beale?” Gage frowned up at me, phone still pressed to his ear, which was when I noticed that I’d stood up. “You okay?”
“Yeah, good. Never better. I’m gonna let you two deal with this. I need to go—”
I nodded toward the door, and then I headed in that direction without waiting for a reply.
“Wait.” Rafe hurried after me and caught my wrist. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, and you’re not leaving until you talk to me. If you’re pissed at Jayd, nobody gets that better than I do, okay? Tell me—”