Chapter 21
SMITH
There was no hiding the hickey and no hiding the tattoo so I didn’t even try.
I took my shirt off in the parking lot and went into Cunningham’s in my work slacks and white undershirt.
I was late, three of my brothers already there when I sank down into the booth to Marshall’s left.
He turned to say hello to me, and even from the corner of my eye I could see his stare drop to my neck, to my forearm. He went rigid, sucking in a breath.
“Rip the Band-Aid off, Smith,” Hunter grumbled. “Jesus.”
“What. On. Earth.”
I twisted my face up into a grimace and turned toward my oldest brother, the man I idolized over all others.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know where to start,” Marshall said.
“The tattoo?” I prompted.
Across from Marshall, Finn choked on his drink and Hunter slapped him on the back, glaring.
“Let’s start with the hickey.”
“I didn’t think that one needed explaining.”
Finn breathed out a laugh, covering his mouth to stop the sound.
“It doesn’t, but I’d like to know why you have one.”
“He’s not a teenager anymore, Marsh,” Finn said, his mouth unable to stop from smiling.
“Don’t,” our oldest brother warned.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’ve met someone and I don’t think you want any more details than that.”
I shifted my weight, hoping I didn’t grimace again.
The backs of my thighs were still dark and striped with bruises and handprints.
Riggs had slathered me with that gel of his on Wednesday night, and while it had eased the pain somewhat, it hadn’t accelerated the healing.
I didn’t mind. On Thursday, I’d taken a picture of them in the mirror because I wanted to remember what they looked like after they were gone.
Even if things didn’t work out with me and Riggs, which I hoped they would, I didn’t want to forget how good he made me feel.
It was terrifying to hold Marshall’s stare, but I did it anyway.
“Marshall,” Hunter said tentatively. “He’s the same age as Silas, right?”
That had somehow been the right and the wrong thing to say.
Marshall’s face burned a violent shade of pink, and he dropped his stare to the almost healed tattoo on my arm.
Whatever wrap Riggs had put on it had been great, really horrible to get off, but it had healed up quickly, and a healed tattoo meant…
It meant lots of things.
“The tattoo, then?”
“A little rebellion,” I said.
Marshall arched a brow, stare flickering toward Finn. “Thought he wasn’t a teenager.”
“He isn’t,” I snapped. “And he is right there. I got a tattoo because I wanted one. I don’t need another reason.”
Hurt flashed across Marshall’s face, almost lost in the red of his cheeks and the dark stare of his eyes, but I idolized that man and knew his reactions almost as well as I knew my own.
“You didn’t ask—” He stopped himself before he finished the thought. “You didn’t talk to me about it.”
“That was the point,” I murmured, brushing my fingertips over the shaded buildings on my forearm. “I wanted to do something for me.”
Marshall exhaled and scrubbed a hand down his face.
“Let me see it,” Finn said, reaching across the table.
Of the four of us, he was the brother I knew the least, on account mostly of how close he was with Hunter, but the pride that radiated off of him as he took my wrist into his grip and examined my tattoo was impossible to miss.
“The two of you and your buildings,” he said, giving me back my arm.
Marshall clenched his jaw.
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t know details but I know Lincoln approves of him,” Hunter offered, shrugging one shoulder.
I worried, briefly, that Lincoln had shared all my secrets with Hunter, but I also knew he never would. He wouldn’t keep secrets from my brother, and I should be happy about that.
“Has Lincoln met him?” Marshall asked.
“No, but we talked.”
“You can’t love Lincoln the way you do and not trust him about this,” Hunter said gently. “You know I’m right.”
Marshall swallowed, stare flickering between the three of us. He was outnumbered, and he knew it. I’d never meant for him to feel small, but it was nice, for once, to feel big.
“What’s his name?”
“Riggs.”
“Riggs what?”
I shrugged.
“You let him suck a…” Marshall snapped his mouth closed, pulling his lips between his teeth and forcing a stuttered nod.
“I’m sure when he finds out, you’ll be the first to know,” Finn said, another barely restrained laugh pressing against the words.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose and leveled a look at Finn, one I’d learned years before from Marshall. “Please don’t antagonize him.”
“God.” Finn shuddered. “The resemblance is uncanny.”
“Yeah,” Hunter said, a little awkward. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, swiping away at the screen before setting it down in the center of the table. Finn, Marshall, and I all leaned in to see what was on the device. “About that.”
“Why are you scrolling a hook-up app?” I asked, a more important and heavier question pressing at the back of my mind. I scratched my chin and looked at Marshall from the corner of my eye then back at the phone.
“Why is someone using old pictures of Marshall on a hook-up app?” Finn asked next, swiping from one picture to another to another before the three of us realized it wasn’t old pictures of Marshall at all, but new pictures of someone who looked more like him than the rest of us.
“Where did you find this?” Marshall picked up the phone and scrolled through the rest of the pictures himself, brow furrowed as he read.
Hunter sighed and leaned back, arms folded in front of his chest. “Andrew sent it to me.”
“You don’t have a son, do you?” Finn asked.
Marshall dropped the phone back on the table and mirrored Hunter’s tense pose. “I don’t have a son. And even if I did, he wouldn’t be Smith’s age.”
I was next to pick up the phone, examining the photos closer. The man on the app was a year older than me, almost twenty-seven. He had dark hair like Marshall, styled in a similar, swooping cut. They had the same eyes, same face, though this man’s was slightly rounder in the cheeks.
He must have gotten the softness from his mother.
“What’s his name?” Finn asked.
“Donovan,” I said, handing him the phone. “Donovan Coleman.”
Finn frowned down at the phone for less time than I had before handing it back to Hunter.
“Andrew found him on accident.” He chuckled. “They matched.”
“Is he? I mean…he has to be.”
“Andrew wasn’t sure how to bring it up once he realized. It’s suspicion at this point—”
“It’s obvious.” Marshall finished the rest of his wine in one swallow. “Whether he knows or not.”
“Lucky number six then?” Finn teased.
“Will it ever end?” Hunter asked, returning the phone to his pocket.
“You’re the one who handles all of this,” I said. “You tell me.”
Hunter opened his mouth to speak, but the words were lost. Donovan’s face burned hot against my eyes. A man my age with my brother’s face seemed unfair. When my whole life all I’d wanted was to be like Marshall, and this stranger who…
No.
I couldn’t think like that.
I had wanted to be like Marshall. I admired him beyond words, modeled myself after him in so many ways, but this tattoo had been a rebellion.
I didn’t want to live in the shadow of the man who, I’d been certain for years, hung the moon.
It should cost me nothing to know there was another Covington out in the wild.
Whether he looked like Marshall should be of no importance.
There could just as easily be a man out there who looked like me, like Hunter, like Finn.
“What next?” Marshall asked, raising his empty glass when the waiter went by.
“Not much to do,” Hunter explained. “If his mother hasn’t said anything to him about it, then it’s not for any of us to tell him the truth.”
“Don’t you think he’d want to know his father? Know he had brothers?” I asked.
“Nobody wants to know Willem,” Finn said with a shrug. He swirled his ice around and took a sip of his drink. “Bet you wish Hunter had opened with this instead of letting you take the heat for being a tattooed and sexually active delinquent.”
“Oh, my God!” I flung my napkin across the table, but Finn was quick and he batted it out of the way.
“What does your boyfriend do for work?” Finn asked, finishing his drink in preparation for the next round. “Please tell me he’s not an architect too.”
“He’s a tattooer,” I said.
“Of course he is,” Marshall groaned.
The waiter appeared with perfect timing, leaving fresh drinks and taking our appetizer order.
“He owns his own shop,” I said. “The whole building actually. It’s a gorgeous restoration in Silverlake.”
“I knew it had to do with architecture.”
That earned a quiet laugh out of Marshall, and for the first time since sitting down beside him, I relaxed.
“We should all get matching tattoos,” Finn suggested next, eyes alight.
“Or not,” Marshall said at the same time Hunter shrugged. “I’d be down.”
“You’re joking.”
“I love Lincoln’s tattoos,” he said. “I think it would be fun.”
“The two of you remain insufferable,” Marshall grumbled, but Hunter and Finn ignored him, already caught up in their own conversation about what sort of matching tattoos they wanted to get.
I would have to warn Riggs. They knew his first name and the location of his shop, and that was enough for the two of them to figure out anything.
“Please don’t be mad with me,” I said under my breath, the pseudo-apology meant only for Marshall’s ears anyway.
“I could never be.” He paused, sliding his wine toward mine and clinking the glasses together. “You’ve been struggling lately, and I’ve mostly ignored it.”
“It’s not anything for you to fix.”
We both lifted our glasses and drank the same varietal of wine, then set the glasses back down on the table. I spread my fingers around the base of the stem and gave it a little twirl. Marshall had started to do the same, but stopped himself, itching his nose instead.
“But still.”
“You deserve to be happy,” I told him. “You’ve done so much for all of us, me especially…it’s okay to do things for yourself.”
He rolled his eyes, exhaling. “I’m certain I’ve said the same thing to Silas at some point. Maybe I should have also said it to you.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I muttered.
I’d come into the Covington home and name late, already a teenager by the time I met Marshall, Finn, and Hunter.
The twins had been attached at the hip and unimpressed with my boring teenage outbursts, but they’d entertained them just the same.
Marshall had been older by then, and he’d done all the things our father would have never dared.
All I’d done was bitch and groan and let him.
“You gave me a purpose, Smith. When I didn’t have one,” he said softly. “That’s something I can’t ever repay and something I should have thanked you for sooner.”
“You still haven’t thanked him,” Finn chirped before returning to his hushed conversation with Hunter. Their ability to eavesdrop and not lose focus on each other was admirable, if not annoying.
“Thank you,” Marshall said to me, annoyance flickering across his face before sincerity settled there. “For being the best brother our father could have made.”
“Hey!” Finn chucked my napkin back across the table, but Marshall anticipated it, snatching it out of the air and passing it back to me with an unbothered expression.
“What?” he countered, brow raised. “He is.”
“You’re just saying that because he’s the baby.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
I smoothed my napkin back over my lap, staring hard down at my hands, how they were shorter and more square than my brothers. Knowing we resembled each other in so many ways, but not all of them. And that was okay.
That was good.
“Anyway.” Finn knocked the edge of his glass against mine. “When do we get to meet this tattooer of yours? Hunter said he would get my name tattooed on his ass, and I want to do it before he changes his mind.”