3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Mac
“Toby,” I call after the disappearing back of the man I consider my brother.
“Just let him—” my band’s guitarist, Fin, cuts himself off when Leo takes off after the runaway bassist. I growl at the heavy hand that lands on my shoulder, keeping me in place. “Seriously?”
“Fuck off, Fin,” I snap, shrugging off his grip and spinning away from the world’s greatest guitarist. Or whatever the fuck his award was for .
I hear disappointment in his responding sigh that’s aimed at my back, but it doesn’t stop me from walking my ass straight out of the coming home party without a second glance.
Not even my twin brother’s searing gaze can stop me.
There’s a smoke perched between my lips as I blow past the band manager that’s hanging in the hallway like he’s lost. A lighter to the end of the rolled paper before the elevator’s doors can even close me in and a tremble to my hands that I shove in my pockets.
I had a drink before coming here.
Okay, two .
So what?
Toby’s not the only one with problems and the man sure as shit reminded me during every single one of our conversations that the rest of us were not supposed to change. To not hide it from him. To keep on like normal.
So maybe he smelled it on my breath when I tackled him at the door when he got here. Maybe he caught a whiff of the massive hangover I woke up with this morning that’s clung to me all damn day.
Or, and this is most likely the issue, being back in the same place he finished his last bender was a terrible idea. Having his coming home party in the same fucking penthouse that held the man’s intervention before he went and got all fixed up was a lapse in judgement.
Fuck that immersion therapy bullshit. Leo was way off base for that one.
Either way, I’ll call Toby later and confess that I feel like shit for needing the one vice my bestie was abstaining from. I know he’ll understand, or just tell me I’m being stupid because I probably am.
He said it was okay.
Sighing, I drag in a lungful and squint against the smoke that pokes at my eye as the number on the elevator ticks down to the floor my apartment shares with our resident security staff’s living quarters.
“Seriously?”
I huff when the roach is plucked from my lips before I can even make it to my door and my bodyguard is snuffing out the lit cherry on the heel of his boot.
“Jesus fuck,” I snap and throw my arms out. “Why are you being a fucking killjoy?”
Jordan’s brow quirks when he straightens, and it disappears behind his backwards hat.
“Why are you being a little shit?” he shoots right back as he tucks the rest of my snuffed smoke into his pocket.
A frustrated groan rumbles out of my throat, and I roll my eyes as I brush right past the man into my apartment without an answer.
I don’t bother locking the door. Hell, I’m not even sure it closes fully as I walk across the marbled floors, tugging my shirt off as I go. Pockets are emptied onto the counter. Shoes toed off and abandoned as I step out of them.
I’m down to my boxers when I hit the couch in my foul mood, remote in hand and a Mark Wahlberg movie primed on the screen.
Marky Mark always makes me feel better.
“You just watched this one.”
I scoff and hit play anyway, ignoring the way the other end of the couch fills out with man .
“ Four Brothers is top notch, and I will die on that hill, Tyro.”
“You think anything with Wahlberg in it is top notch.” It’s like I can hear Jordan’s eye roll, but I do nothing but huff in agreement. Because it is.
“He’s hot and talented.” I nod for no reason, my eyes glued to the screen. “Hard to find both.”
Jordan makes some kind of hum that’s neither an agreement or a denial, and by the time I tear my gaze from the screen, my bodyguard is stretched out with ankles and arms crossed, his hat pulled low to cover his eyes.
I roll mine.
“You know you can go home, right?”
He grumbles something incoherent, but doesn’t move.
I let loose a sigh, shoot a text to Toby to check in before I forget, then use the remote to turn off the lights.
The room is bathed in a grey light from the gritty vibe of the movie, but even as the scenes move along and the story progresses, I find my attention slipping back to Jordan passed out on my couch more than I’ll ever admit out loud.
He’s all hard lines and sharp edges with a shadow of dark stubble coating his jaw, harsh and dark tattoos lining his right arm—a geometrical sleeve tat I sat with him through, though he wouldn’t tell me what the soundwave around his wrist is—and rocking the shit out of his plain clothes . Which are really just jeans that hug him in all the right ways and a plain black tee that’s ridden up juuuust enough to give me a tease of the tanned skin covering the defined V that disappears beneath the denim.
The very same denim that bunches and bulges between his pressed-together thighs.
My mouth waters and I force my sight back to the TV, only to see a shirtless Marky Mark fill the screen.
Groaning, I sink farther into the couch.
This is like being in a room full of hot guys while wearing a cock cage.
It’s torture.
But then my mind does this wonderful thing where I imagine Jordan being the one shirtless, and now I’m trying to figure out a way to make that happen without getting up from the couch.
“Go to sleep.”
My eyes roll at the gravel in my bodyguard’s voice and ignore the way it makes my dick jump.
“Not tired.”
“You’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours.” He says this like I didn’t already feel that in my bones.
“I took a catnap when you snuck off to the gym,” I answer, because I did pass out for thirty seconds when I heard him leave this morning at the ass crack of dawn but then I rolled over in the empty bed and my mind would not shut back off.
It was too empty without him .
Something in my chest pinches uncomfortably.
“Fine,” Jordan huffs and pushes to his feet, his hat back on his head, and gestures to the TV. “Pick another one and I’ll be right back.”
I blink at his back as he leaves and then swing my lifted brow to the screen where the credits roll.
Did I seriously stare at him that long?