4. Hotaru
“He’s on a call.” Mio, Arlo’s executive assistant, sits behind her desk with her fingers flying across the keys of her computer and a phone propped to her ear.
“Wonderful.” He won’t be able to run away.
“He asked not to be disturbed.” Her petite fingertips abandon the keys, and she begs the person on the line to hold. She scrambles from her seat and throws herself in front of the door.
I stop a few feet away and smile down at her. “It seems you’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with.”
Her cheeks go as red as the soles of her shoes, but she stiffens her spine. “I have not.”
“If memory serves, it doesn’t take much to make you run away, Mio.”
“That was personal,” she whisper-screams. “This is business.”
Arlo hired Mio for me. He was under some misguided notion that because she was Japanese, smart as hell, and as beautiful as her given name implies, we’d walk down the aisle in no time.
That was six years ago, and it only took six minutes of sexy time for her to figure out that I was too much for her to handle. I’d known it from the moment I laid eyes on her, but it was still fun to prove a point.
Fun and disappointing.
I nod toward the door. “This is my best friend. There’s nothing I haven’t heard or seen out of him, including projectile vomit, an incident with a cantaloupe, and him crying.”
“He does not cry.” Of course, she bypasses the most interesting of the three.
I have to force my eyes not to roll.
“Not in front of you.” I hitch my thumb toward her desk. “Move before I toss you over my shoulder and show you what I do to bad girls.”
Mio scrambles out of the way. “Pig.”
“Oink, oink, Mio.” I give her a wink, which earns me a one-finger salute, which makes little Miss Goody-goody’s eyes scan the office, terrified that someone saw.
“Now, who’s being inappropriate.” I shove into Arlo’s office.
“I don’t care how you go about it. Track them down,” Arlo barks into the receiver.
With all he’s been through, not much gets him riled. His tone has my ears perked.
He grabs his hair as though he’s liable to strangle the person on the other end, but they’re too far away. The move makes my dick jump, but that’s nothing new.
“I need every last?—”
“Mr. Judge,” Mio shouts through the door, disrupting my stealth mission.
Arlo’s chair turns from the wall of windows overlooking the soulless landscape of New York’s financial district. His gaze narrows on me but softens as he looks past me to Mio.
“I’m sorry, sir. He insisted,” Mio explains.
My friend nods, dismissing her without rebuff. He knows all about the history there. He knows everything now.
Arlo has been building his empire for more than a decade. I’ve been by his side since graduation. I could have told him a thousand different times about my father, my college experience, my reason for leaving him behind. He assumed I went for wrestling. At least, that was what he’d told others. Agreeing with a quick nod was easier than admitting the truth.
I had no idea he thought I went to Oklahoma State to follow Nate. I mean, how could he not know everything I do is for him? A niggling voice that sounds an awful lot like Hailey’s whispers the answer in my mind.
He didn’t know because you didn’t tell him.
I didn’t tell him because I didn’t think he was in any position to hear it, and I didn’t want it to destroy our relationship.
Mio pulls the door closed as she leaves, and I take my usual seat across the desk from him. I recline back and toss an ankle over my knee.
“Yes, I know it won’t be easy. I know it won’t be cheap.” Arlo speaks more calmly now, almost somberly. As though I’m an old ghost come to haunt him.
Maybe I am a ghost from his past.
Maybe I do haunt him.
Maybe that’s why he’s been MIA for the past two days.
That thought churns dread in my belly. And it’s not the first time. It’s been happening quite often lately.
“Keep working and update me as soon as you know something.” Arlo ends the call, pulls off his super dorky headset, and places it on his desk. “It’s practical, not dorky.”
“It’s defensive, not explanatory.” Watching him talk into the dorky getup is one of my favorite things about coming to the office.
“You were staring,” he grouses.
“I was.” I steeple my fingers in front of my lips. “Why are you working?”
“Probably the same reason you’re working.” He sits behind his massive desk and shuffles a few papers around.
“I’m working because I don’t have anything better to do. You have Hailey. So I know that’s not the case.” I tug on my lower lip to keep from being vulgar. “It’s only three days until your first Christmas together. You should be making memories.”
“She’s seeing Nat back to France.”
“Ah.” I offer a nod as though I understand. “Then I’m not the only one you’re avoiding.”
“I’m not avoiding you or her.” Arlo shakes a stack of papers into a tidy pile.
“After eighteen years of knowing someone, you know when they’re avoiding you.” My hands drop onto my lap. “You canceled boxing, rescheduled a meeting with the international team, and haven’t answered my texts for two days.”
Arlo opens a drawer on his desk and slides the papers inside but says nothing.
I squeeze the hand he can’t see into a fist. “If you want me to leave so you and Hailey can be happy together, just say so. Don’t avoid me.”
He slams the drawer. Its thud reverberates around the room. “Leave?”
“Japan. London.” I shrug like I’m not carving my heart out of my chest. “I can work remotely from either location.”
I prefer my home in Kyoto. Its views are breathtaking. Mountains. Temples. Lakes. Blossoms.
It would make the prettiest hell.
“You’re not leaving,” Arlo decrees with a strength that pushes me back in the chair.
Still, it has to be said. “If that’s what you need from me, then I am.”
“I don’t need you to leave, Hota. I need you to fuck Hailey,” he snaps.
My dick goes hard, not that it’s a stretch. I’m in a constant state of semi-erect around Arlo. Which isn’t great for my balls or my chafed palms. Images of Hailey laid out between us, both feasting on and fucking her holes, make my toes tingle and my head feel a little floaty.
I fill my lungs with a breath, and then another, waiting for him to crack a joke. Not that he’s that kind of guy. He doesn’t make another sound. His eyes are honed and too calm for my liking.
“Excuse me?” He didn’t stutter, and I didn’t have difficulty hearing him. Apparently, my comprehension has gone to shit.
“I need you?—”
“I heard you.” I hold up two fingers close together. “Hear me when I say I’m not about to screw the only woman you’ve touched in decades.”
“The only person,” he corrects, like I don’t fucking know it.
“Fine. Doesn’t change what I said.” I rub my suddenly sweating palms on my pant legs, drop my casual leg because this is no longer parading as a casual conversation, and straighten in the seat.
“She wants you to,” Arlo says as though that’s an adequate explanation for the situation.
“What?” My head shakes. Sure, we’ve played with people for years. But this, this is not that. “Hailey isn’t like that.”
I stand and lean over his desk. My fingers press against the wooden top. “She’s head over heels in love with you. She doesn’t want or need anyone but you.” I point an angry finger at his chest. “She’s not a plaything. She’s the real thing.”
“You think I don’t know all that?” he says calmly. Too calmly.
My head tilts. “Then why would you toy with that relationship? You already proved your point to her.”
He presses his lips together. The sinew of his jaws flex. I recognize the stubborn silence, though I haven’t experienced it since boarding school. It’s a kick in the gut. The air flees my lungs. Hell, it’s like he grabbed his letter opener and slit my wrists.
The blood drains from my extremities. It makes tiny stars dance in my eyes, and the room goes dim around the edges. Around everything but him.
I push off the desk, grip my hips, and walk to the wall. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was a plain old wall. I know better, and I’ve never been more grateful. I push in on the magic latch and pop open the minibar, which is bigger than most full bars.
“Want one?” I pour myself a finger of bourbon and toss it back before he answers, and then pour myself another.
“No.”
Once the burn of the first subsides, I toss back the second and pour another.
“Did you drive in today?”
“Fuck off,” I add another finger on top of the one already in the glass and close up the wall. “I’m not reckless enough to drink and drive.”
Apparently, he’s reckless enough to fall in love for the first time in his fucked-up life and chance it on… What? Foreign dick?
“Will you do it?”
I wheel on him. “So you can fucking hate me when things go sideways?”
“What could go wrong?” He breathes the words as if the quieter he says them, the less they could hit the fan.
“Oh, let’s see.” I tap my lips, pretending to think for one second about the multitudes of things that could explode in our faces. “She could resent you for sharing her. She could get embarrassed that we fucked and never want to lay eyes on me again.” I slap the air between us, flailing my hand around. “Or a hundred other things.”
“She’s asked for this, so she won’t resent it. Besides, you’ve already tongue-fucked her.” He stands. “She’s not the vindictive or embarrassed type. It would kill her to never see you again.”
Why would she care if she never saw me again? He’s the one she loves. He’s the one we both love.
Him. Him. Him .
Since the broken boy walked into my life, he carved an Arlo-shaped hole in me, where only he fits. He refused to step into it fully, leaving it a raw, gaping wound, even after all these years.
I slosh my drink so forcefully into the air that it spills over the side onto my hand. Explicitly, I lick it from my skin. I pin him with my gaze while I pull the liquid into my mouth.
He adjusts himself in the chair.
“She could prefer the way I eat her and fuck her pussy.”
Arlo licks his lips as though thinking about Hailey’s smooth, hot cunt. “Possibly, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“I could get her pregnant,” I counter.
“Hailey is on birth control.”
“Accidents happen.” My voice is caustic to my ears. I can hardly fathom that we’re having this conversation, and it’s riling me more than it should because I know my answer.
I love it and hate it in equal measure.
Arlo’s chest puffs with a heavy breath. He rubs a tender spot over his heart and exhales for a ten count.
As much as I’m thrilled he’s beginning to comprehend rational thoughts, I’m also bereft of the opportunity slipping through my fingers.
The chance to be close to them.
The chance to feel their eyes on me.
The chance to bring them pleasure and a little bit of pain.
“If that happened, it wouldn’t be an accident. The child would be a gift, and we would raise it as such.” Arlo speaks as clearly as he’s ever spoken. His voice seems to have miraculously healed for one moment in time.
Still, nothing is clear.
“We?” I choke.
“Hailey and me…and you.”
Something feral and completely foreign sinks its claws into my heart. The need to possess rips me wide open, pouring desire into my veins. I thought I wanted it before, but I’ve never experienced this level of primal necessity.
The desire for a family of my own making pins me to the floor while simultaneously launching me among the stars. It tears me in two.
I want what he’s laying before me, and that scares me more than the locked bathroom door between us so long ago. Because it can’t happen. It would never work.
I pull the trigger.
“She could fall in love with me.”
Arlo nods. Like that wouldn’t be a fatal blow to his fragile heart. He studies me closely. “Could you fall in love with her?”
I blink at him, totally ambushed by the reaction. It’s not the one I expected. Not by a long shot.
Love does not come easily to me. This should be an easy answer.
It’s not.
Hailey loves Arlo, and he loves her.
I love Arlo.
It’s safe to say he attracts a certain type. A fractured yet strong person. It’s safe to say I’m attracted to the same type. It’s safe to say Hailey is also attracted to the same type.
Which makes all of this as far from safe as we can get.
Hailey has high walls. I’m very athletic. And if my devotion to Arlo is any show of it, I’m fucking determined too.
She’s not easy to get close to, but loving her would be frighteningly easy.
I finish my drink, set it on a piece of furniture so exquisite it should be in a museum, and head for the door.
“Hota?” The rasped word is a three-act play in itself.
A tragedy for sure.
“Yes.” I shove the door with much more force than necessary.
“Yes, to what?” he yells.
“All of it.” I bellow and then put as much distance between us as quickly as possible.