Chapter 4
HUNTER
HUNTER
Every Friday night, I got dinner with my brothers.
Well, I got dinner with three of them. Andrew was in San Diego and lord knew how many other half-Covingtons were buried in the woodwork.
I hoped they stayed there. Andrew had been hard enough on Smith, and even though Finn had put on his usual, sarcastic front, he wasn’t pleased about it either.
I made it to Cunningham’s the same time as Smith, catching up to him in the parking lot. He was leaning against the closed door of his car, brow furrowed at whatever he was looking at on his phone.
“Hey, baby brother,” I greeted. “You good?”
He pursed his lips and shoved his phone into his pocket.
“My friend’s new fish died,” he said.
I grimaced, thinking about how much Finn had wanted a fish when we were kids and how emphatically his requests had been denied. Eventually, Finn had just stopped asking for what he wanted, and so had I.
“That sucks.”
Smith shrugged, glancing up at me from the corner of his eye. “Have you talked to Andrew lately?”
Sometimes I forgot Smith was twenty-five.
It was so easy to see him as the same long-limbed, angry, preteen he’d been when he came to live with us.
It had been well over ten years, and sometimes it felt like it, but more often than not…
it didn’t. It was hard for me to believe he was in his twenties now, and Marshall nearly forty, while Finn and I were on the wrong side of mid-thirties.
How had my life gone by without me even noticing?
“Yeah, I talk to him a bit,” I said, not wanting to be completely honest because I’d always put Smith’s feelings above all else.
“Has he asked about us at all?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said, frown deepening.
Puffing out a breath, I looped my arm around his shoulder and pulled him away from his car. I had no idea what was going on in his brain, but I knew he wasn’t going to tell me about it. Marshall was his confidant.
“Let’s eat, alright?” I suggested, pulling him toward the restaurant.
“Yeah.”
We walked into the restaurant and found Finn and Marshall already there, thankfully back in our normal booth and not at the five-person table we’d used for the last two weeks.
Smith sank into the booth to Marshall’s left, and I took my place at Finn’s right.
The two of them had drinks already, but the waiter was quick to arrive with a Manhattan for Finn and a vodka and soda for me.
“So glad you could join us,” Finn drawled, clinking the edge of his glass against mine. “I was just talking to Marshall about his recent domestication.”
“I’m not a raccoon.”
“What’s it like?” Finn asked next, scrunching up one side of his mouth. “Having someone to come home to at night?”
Something flashed across Marshall’s face, and the look he answered Finn back with was scathing. But as soon as it was there, it was gone, and he said, “I enjoy Silas’ company.”
“Of course you do.”
“You should try settling down, Finn,” Marshall said. “Might do wonders for your personality.”
Finn cocked his head at Marshall, another curious look passing between them. “I like myself just fine, thank you, Marsh. I sleep well at night.”
Marshall hummed, and I could tell there was something happening between the two of them, though what was anyone’s guess.
The line of questioning brought me back to my earlier thoughts from the parking lot, though, and the absolute last thing I wanted to do was lose myself in a spiral in front of my brothers.
The way things had been going for me lately…it was all wrong.
I’d been on that app Finn set me up on for almost a year, and sex was fine.
A lot of the time it was better than fine, but I wanted more.
I’d watched Marshall fall in love with Silas.
I’d seen firsthand the subtle ways my oldest brother had been changed, and I was man enough to admit I was jealous about it.
I wanted that connection, that intimacy.
The only way I’d find it was to delete that app or at least take the stupid dollar sign out of my bio.
But I’d taken all the money and dumped it into a high-yield savings account and the resulting balance wasn’t a small one.
I could make a good donation to a charity or something, and that felt like it balanced out the dubious way I’d earned it.
“Where are you at?” Finn asked, slamming his elbow into my ribs.
“Right here,” I said, automatically.
“Physically,” Marshall said, brow raised.
“We were literally just talking about you and Silas. I’ve been listening the whole time.”
Smith made an amused sound in the back of his throat and, to my left, Finn groaned.
“Since then we’ve talked about Smith still debating taking his mom’s maiden name and quitting his job.”
“You want to what?” I said, eyes going wide.
Smith shrugged. “We talked about it in passing but nothing seriously.”
“Are you thinking about it seriously now?” I asked.
Another shrug.
“The point is,” Finn interrupted, finishing his drink, “we weren’t talking about Marshall.”
“I’m right here,” I repeated.
“Thinking about?” Marshall prompted.
I slid my glass around the table, shifting the ice so it clinked and settled. “Nothing important,” I lied, clearing my throat. “But I did want to see if the three of you were up for a little road trip soon.”
“To San Diego?” Marshall asked.
I nodded.
Finn sank back against the corner of the booth, mouth tipped down into frown that made the family resemblance achingly clear. I steepled my fingers together and covered half my face, exhaling into my hands and staring at the leather gap between Marshall and Smith’s shoulders.
“Excuse me,” I muttered, climbing out of the booth and heading for the restroom.
I’d never wished for private bathrooms more than when Finn’s shoulder stopped me from latching the stall door. He flung his body weight against it, and we both tumbled backward, and I narrowly avoided my entire forearm landing in the bowl.
“What the fuck?” I shoved him off of me, and then we both fell out of the stall and into the bathroom. Finn’s hip landed against the sink, and he cursed under his breath, rubbing his hip with his eyes screwed shut.
“What is going on with you?” Finn asked, shaking off the pain long enough to point an accusatory finger at the middle of my chest.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not yourself.”
I sighed. “Nothing is wrong that won’t shake out.”
I needed that to be the truth. I had to believe that, eventually, everything was going to settle, and I would feel normal again.
“Do you have an STI or something?” Finn asked next, cocking his head to the side.
“Why would I…what?”
“You told me you met some dude in a hotel room for sex,” he said.
My mouth was immediately as dry as the Sahara Desert. I’d told him that, but I didn’t think there was any way he’d believed it. He had to have thought I was lying the day I told him that, because if he for any second believed that to be true, he would have called me out on it immediately.
“Did you really believe that?” I asked.
“No, of course not.” Finn shook his head at me like it was obvious. “But I don’t know, Hunt. Maybe you picked something up, and you tried to plant the seed as a coverup or an excuse about why you’re on a seven-day antibiotic track.”
The corner of my mouth quirked up. “How do you know it’s seven days?”
“Fuck you. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“I can’t believe you’re lying to me. Of all people.”
Finn folded his arms in front of his chest and had the decency to look offended. When I rolled my eyes at him, he stuck out his lower lip and pouted.
“I’m not lying,” I said. “At least, not in the way you think I am. I’ve just had a lot going on in my head lately, and I’m trying to sort it out.”
“Talk through it with me.”
“It’s not a talking kind of thing,” I said.
Finn frowned and let his arms fall to his sides. He propped himself up against the sink, and I leaned against the paper towel dispenser, head resting on the wall.
“Marshall and Silas have just made me a little lonely,” I admitted.
“They are a little sickening, aren’t they?”
I nodded. “But it’s nice. I mean, it’s nice for him.”
“You want it to be nice for you?” he asked.
“It’s been so long since I’ve been with anyone seriously, I don’t even remember what it feels like,” I said. “But I don’t think I want to be alone forever.”
“You should seriously use that app I set you up on. I’m sure you can find people there.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, waving the black screen at me. “I find people all the time. Well. I…”
He trailed off, and I narrowed my eyes.
“You what?”
“There’s lots of single people on it, Hunter,” he said. “But I bet you didn’t even open it up after I set it up for you.”
“I’ve never gotten an alert since the first day,” I told him, which was the truth, because the sound the app made was so glaringly obvious, I’d turned notifications off entirely.
I only opened the app when I was bored and wanted to fuck.
I didn’t need it pinging off in my pocket at all hours of the day.
But none of that even mattered because I was going to delete the app. Dollar sign in the bio or not, I’d already seen what sort of people were there, and if that worked for Finn, more power to him, but I wanted more than a one-night stand. I wanted more for my brother too.
“You should give it a chance.” Finn held out his hand, clapping his fingers against his palm like he wanted me to give him my phone.
Instead, I shoved him in the middle of his chest.
“I’m not giving you my phone.” I exhaled a long breath, giving him the smile he was after. “I promise I’m fine. Just been working a lot and thinking about the future, and I’m a little too tired to be drinking vodka is all.”
“Alright,” he conceded after giving me a disapproving onceover. “I’ll believe you for now.”
“How magnanimous,” I muttered, stepping into one of the bathroom stalls and slamming the door closed in his face. “Now if you don’t mind.”
Finn laughed, the joyous sound of it echoing off the walls before dying off with his exit.
Only after he was gone did I take a second to balance myself and breathe.
I waited until my hands weren’t shaking to pull my phone out of my pocket, ready to clear all evidence of my use on the app into the trash in case Finn ever did get ahold of my phone.
There weren’t any alerts. No messages.
“I’ll delete the whole thing later,” I told myself, deleting the old messages and shoving the phone back into my pocket. It was plausible deniability, but Finn hadn’t tried to physically wrestle me since high school, so I was relatively confident I’d be safe for the rest of dinner.
I pissed—for good measure—washed my hands, then rejoined my brothers at our booth.
Someone had ordered fresh drinks for everyone except me, and I didn’t know if it was Finn trying to punish me for lying or him being thoughtful and not putting another drink in front of me when I told him I was too tired for it.
“So,” Marshall said after I’d taken my seat, giving me one of his trademark calm smiles. “When did you want to go to San Diego?”