Chapter 16 #2
Malcolm laid a hand on his forearm, giving it a squeeze. That got Bull to look up, his smile small and a lot embarrassed. Across from Malcolm, Marv wiped his mouth with his napkin and pushed away his plate.
“I would have been okay on my own if there hadn’t been four of them,” Marv said, leaning back in his chair, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers.
“Yes, dear, we know,” Bo said, smiling at her eldest as she delicately buttered a roll.
Marv grabbed the back of her chair. Leaning over, he mock-whispered, “I don’t think you believe me.”
“Well, you were rather… small for your age,” Bo whispered back, closing the distance between them and planting a kiss on his clean-shaven jaw.
“I was perfectly average. I just looked small next to this guy,” he retorted, sitting upright and jerking a thumb at Bull.
“You fought four eight-year-olds when you were five?” Malcolm asked, eyes widening.
Bull shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t like bullies.”
His heart melted at the soft words as Bull played with the little bit of food left on his plate.
“ Fight is a strong word. He basically just pushed one down, and then I caught up and put a stop to everything,” Sally said, laughing and shaking her head. “It was so cute, and that’s when I knew he’d excel at football.”
Malcolm chuckled, imagining a mini-Bull running around in pads and a helmet.
“Of course, he burst into tears right after he pushed the other kid, so we were also pretty sure he wasn’t going to go pro,” Sally added, winking at Bull as he groaned and covered his face.
“He and Marv have always been very protective of each other. Even with the few years between them, they were always inseparable. From the moment we brought Bull home, Marv called him his baby and wanted to do everything for him,” Bo said, smiling widely at her boys, and they both groaned that time.
Malcolm couldn’t imagine there had ever been a time Evan had been protective of him.
For as long as he could remember, his brother had begrudged his very existence for some reason that had never been clear to him.
Maybe his parents had foisted him off onto ten-year-old Evan, and he’d grown to resent Malcolm instead of doting on him like Marv had with Bull.
“You’re lucky to have each other,” he said, giving Bull’s arm another reassuring squeeze, then smiling at Marv, who tipped his head back and forth.
“Despite how these two remember it,” Marv said, gesturing between his moms. “Things weren’t always sunshine and roses between us growing up. Right, brat?”
He leaned over, reaching for Bull’s head like he planned on rubbing his short hair, but Bull ducked away and frowned at him. “I was never a brat.”
“Sure, you were.”
“No, I?—”
“Boys,” Sally said, voice firm, and they both sighed but didn’t resume the argument.
Malcolm glanced between each of the Eaton family members, lips pressed together to stop from laughing.
When he met Bo’s dark eyes, they both couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Bull huffed at them, but he also turned his hand over on the table and slotted their fingers together, so Malcolm wasn’t too worried about him being annoyed.
“Do you have any siblings, Malcolm?” Bo asked, delicately wiping her fingers and then the corners of her mouth.
“Yeah,” he admitted, holding back his grimace. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin the mood by sharing about his family. “He’s almost ten years older than me though, so we’re not close.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said sympathetically. Turning to Marv, she said quietly, “Dear, would you go and grab the pie? I stuck it in the fridge to stay cool.”
He nodded and rose, taking his and Bo’s empty plates with him into the kitchen. Bull’s small dining room was barely more than a breakfast nook with a wide archway the only thing separating the spaces, so they could all see him as he deposited the dishes next to the sink, then opened the fridge.
Malcolm was a little embarrassed that Bo and Marv—and probably Sally at some point—had seen the bare insides.
He wasn’t sure why since it wasn’t his house, but a part of him still worried they’d judge him and Bull for not having much food around.
Unlike at his apartment, it wasn’t because Bull couldn’t afford to go grocery shopping.
He just really didn’t like to, complaining quietly the whole time about how rude the other people were.
“What about your parents?” Bo asked, turning back to Malcolm and surprising him. “Are you close with them?”
“Sweetheart, I thought we agreed not to bombard him with questions?” Sally said, smiling at her wife.
Bo rolled her eyes. “How is two questions a bombardment? Am I not allowed to ask the man dating our son anything ?”
“I’d prefer that,” Bull said, squeezing Malcolm’s fingers twice in rapid succession. He wasn’t sure exactly what that was code for, but he took it to mean, I’ve got this .
But that didn’t seem fair.
“It’s okay,” he said to Bull, giving him three quick squeezes and a soft smile. Turning to his moms, he said, “I don’t have a great relationship with them either. My family… doesn’t really like me.”
Welp. The cat was out of the bag.
His face burned as silence followed his statement for a long moment, and then Marv appeared at the table and set the pie down harder than was necessary.
“What the fuck do you mean they don’t like you?” he asked, voice low and a little scary.
Malcolm stared at him with wide eyes. This was a side of Marv he’d never seen before.
“Did you all have a falling-out?” Bo asked more delicately.
“No, they’re just assholes,” Bull said.
Shrugging, Malcolm had to agree. “What Bull said. They’ve just always preferred my brother and the choices he’s made with his life over me and mine.”
“What choices?” Sally asked harshly. “I don’t know that there’s a single thing either of these boys could choose to do that would make me not like them .”
Bo looked between him and Bull. “Because of your relationship?”
Malcolm was shaking his head before she finished. “No, nothing like that. I doubt they’d care enough about me to get upset over me being bi.”
“They don’t know?” Marv asked, glancing at Bull. “I thought you said you were going with him to his brother’s engagement party?”
“He offered, but?—”
“I am,” Bull said firmly, then turned to give Malcolm a look he usually only got right before Bull took his pants off. “Or we both stay home, baby.”
God, he really didn’t want his dick getting hard over Bull’s bossy, possessive behavior while his moms were sitting right there .
Clearing his throat, Malcolm turned to the others and pasted on a bright smile. “I’ll tell them before we go, but like I said, I doubt they’ll care enough to have a reaction.”
Bo shook her head and started cutting the lemon meringue pie. “Foolish people. I was going to say we should invite them to dinner next time, but I’ve changed my mind.”
Malcolm chuckled, some of the tension easing out of him as the conversation turned away from him and his family. Bull’s thumb brushed against the back of his hand soothingly as they accepted their pie and started eating it, everyone making noises of appreciation over the sweet and tangy goodness.
“So, Marv,” Sally said after finishing her piece and complimenting her wife several times. “What’s this I hear about you stalking a kids’ camp director?”
Marv’s head whipped around, his scowl fierce. “You dick.”
Malcolm’s giant of a boyfriend covered his mouth and snickered . “Whoops?”
Shaking his head, Marv turned to his grinning moms. “I’m not stalking anyone. I’m doing my job and checking in on the camp.”
“Does ‘checking in’ usually involve lurking in bushes?” Bull asked, barely able to keep a straight face.
“I wasn’t lurking in— You know what? I’m not going to entertain this anymore,” Marv said indignantly and started clearing the table.
Bo looked to her wife. “Should we be concerned? What are the chances we’re going to be getting a phone call from the police someday soon?”
“Maybe we should start a bail fund,” Sally played along, her voice serious.
Eyes twinkling and the corners of her mouth twitching, Bo nodded. “We always knew this day would come after he insisted on joining the motorcycle club.”
Marv stormed back into the room. “You mean the one your father helped start?”
“I didn’t know that,” Malcolm said, glancing between Bo and Marv.
Bo grinned. “Yeah, he always loved motorcycles and spent a lot of Saturdays working on his old Harley in the garage. When he met Tomas, the club’s president, the two of them just hit it off. It didn’t matter that he was old enough to be Tomas’s dad.”
The mood shifted as Marv sat back down, brows furrowed. “He taught me everything I know about motorcycles. It still doesn’t feel the same, riding without him.”
Malcolm ached for their loss. He knew from Bull that Bo’s father had passed five years ago from a sudden heart attack none of them had seen coming. His loss was obviously still potent for each member of his family, Bo surreptitiously wiping under her eyes.
“Do you think you’ll ever join the MC?” Malcolm asked Bull softly, a question he’d wondered about for a while but hadn’t thought to bring up.
The rest of the Eatons erupted with laughter.
“Yeah, Bull, why haven’t you gotten around to joining? You’re a legacy,” Marv said, a shit-eating grin on his face.
Malcolm realized he’d inadvertently stepped into a potential sore subject for his boyfriend. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”
Bull shook his head, squeezing his hand three times. “Ignore them. No, I don’t plan on ever joining the MC. Motorcycles aren’t for me.”
“That’s partially my fault,” Bo said with a sigh. “I let him go for a ride with my dad when he was too young. Poor thing came back with wet jeans from being so scar?—”
“Ma!”