Chapter 18
HUNTER
As soon as I sat down across from Smith at lunch, he knew something was up. It was written clear as day in the lines around his mouth that he had no business having on account of how young he was. He eyed me warily, and I adjusted the knot on my tie to give me some breathing room.
“Is there another one?” he asked, mouth pulling down into a frown.
“What?”
“Another brother.”
I scoffed, leaning back in my seat and hoping it portrayed an air of casualness.
I didn’t want to set off any alarm bells with the conversation, and I definitely didn’t want him to think whatever I had to talk to him about was serious.
Telling him about Lincoln should be an easy thing.
If they were really just friends, then it shouldn’t matter at all that I was involved with him.
At least, that’s what I’d been telling myself all morning.
“Statistically, I’m sure we have another brother,” I admitted to him, “but I don’t know about him yet.”
He barely looked relieved. “Is someone dying?”
“What? No.” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “Why would you ask that?”
“Why did you invite me to lunch?” he countered.
I shot a scathing look at him across the table. “Because I’m your brother.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You’re the quiet brother. Marshall is the controlling one, and Finn is the talker. So why are you the one talking?”
I paused, reflecting on his observation about the group of us. He was clearly right on the mark about Marshall, though there was a much better word to use than controlling, even if I surely wasn’t going to be the one to introduce my baby brother to…
No.
Wait.
Lincoln had told me Smith knew about him, which meant Smith…
I shuddered, not wanting to know about any of my brothers’ sex lives, least of all the youngest one. He was barely of age in the first place.
“You’re not wrong that I keep to myself more than the rest of us,” I conceded. “But if that’s the truth of all of us, which brother are you?”
Smith scrunched his nose and shrugged. “What did you want to talk about, Hunter? If it’s not a new brother or someone dying.”
“We have a mutual friend,” I said, not sure how else to start.
Smith arched a brow at me, and he looked so much like Marshall, even though they shared hardly any facial features between them. “Okay.”
Sitting across from my brother in a loud Thai restaurant in the middle of a Tuesday, on the brink of telling him about Lincoln, suddenly felt silly.
Smith wouldn’t care at all. Marshall had spent so many years trying to coddle him and shelter him from the realities of the world, and that was the last thing Smith needed…
or wanted, probably. I didn’t think any of us had ever bothered to ask.
“In hindsight, I thought this would be more of a problem,” I muttered, which at least earned me a smirk. “I’m seeing Lincoln.”
Smith exhaled, tilting his head to the side. “Seeing him like…seeing him, seeing him?”
“Yeah.”
My brother licked his lips, pulling them together between his teeth and working them back and forth until they were both a darker shade of pink than usual. “How’d that happen?” he asked.
“It’s a very long story.”
“And you know…” Smith groaned, staring down at the napkin in his lap.
“I know.”
“You don’t care?” he asked next, the unspoken part clear between us.
You don’t care that I fucked him first?
“Do you care?” I countered. “That I am now, I mean?”
“Lincoln and I are friends,” he said simply.
“And Lincoln and I are more than friends.” I paused, clearing my throat. “I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
Smith regarded me cautiously, and it was then that I really saw him for the first time.
A man on the cusp of the rest of his life, constantly being throttled by three older brothers who loved him beyond measure but didn’t always know how to show it.
Growing up after being abandoned by all of our mothers and shoved into a house owned by a man who could have cared less about being our father had fostered a fucked-up sense of camaraderie between us.
Mostly, it was for the better, but sometimes…
I wanted to ask Smith again how he saw himself in the mix of us.
What brother was he?
“He deserves someone like you,” Smith finally said, snapping me back to the crowded noise of the restaurant.
“I…I’m rather fond of him,” I confessed.
“He needs someone to be gentle with him, even if he won’t admit that out loud.”
It was such a thoughtful—and true—assessment. I wondered if Lincoln knew Smith had pinned him so fast, seen straight through to the heart of him.
“I know,” I agreed.
“Don’t hurt him,” Smith said.
I huffed out a laugh, rolling my eyes and asking him the same thing I asked of Marshall. “Are you going to tell him the same about me?”
He stared at me, hard and unmoving. “Of course.”
“Of course you will,” I agreed, and then everything between us felt normal again. We ordered drinks, ordered food, and made small talk.
Smith asked if Silas knew about Lincoln and me, and I shared that he did, in no certain terms. Marshall knew, so of course Silas knew, but I didn’t think Lincoln and Silas had talked about the whole thing.
Smith agreed with me, changing the topic of conversation next to our newly found brother, Andrew.
“Do you talk to him often?” Smith asked.
“Not often. A couple weeks ago was the last time.”
“Does he…does he want to talk to any of us or just you?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “He’s still very private when it comes to us, like he doesn’t want to let us in all the way. I think he’s adjusting to the idea of having brothers.”
“What even does that mean?” Smith shook his head, picking at the noodles he’d been working through for the past ten minutes before dropping his fork unceremoniously on the edge of the plate.
“The four of us grew up together.”
“I didn’t grow up with you.”
“Over a decade, Smith,” I reminded him. “It’s nearly half your life.”
“I had friends,” he said quietly. “Before Mom…”
“Smith.”
“I can’t believe I ever thought of taking her name over Covington,” he muttered, rubbing his fingertips across his cheeks.
He looked so young and so old at the same time, and I had to admit I was out of my depth.
This was Marshall’s territory for sure. I had no clue how to talk Smith through this in a productive way.
“I’m sure she took care of you as best she could.”
“She sold me out,” he snapped.
It might have been the first time my brother had ever raised his voice at me, and I reeled back accordingly. My back hit the seat, and Smith sucked in a sharp breath, shaking his head and holding up his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean…”
“You don’t have to apologize for having feelings.”
It was then, I realized, I didn’t know my brother at all.
I knew him in the ways that he mirrored Marshall and me and Finn, and I understood him in the way I understood the others.
In a way that resonated down to my marrow because we shared the same blood, and we would always be who we were, but each of us had half of someone else.
In my case, someone I’d never really known, but Smith…
He had lived a whole life before coming into ours.
“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” I finally said.
He made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat but nodded his agreement just the same.
“I didn’t mean to open up this can of worms,” I told him, which earned me a laugh and a watery smile.
“This is more Marshall’s speed, isn’t it?”
Even though I didn’t have the right words, I was ready to force myself to answer anyway.
Saved, or not, by the ping of a meeting reminder chirping out of my cell phone that sat face down on the table.
I flipped it over, frowning at the last-minute calendar invite from Caleb Winters, one of the equity partners at the firm.
There was also a message from Lincoln, but I definitely wasn’t about to open that in front of my brother.
I huffed out an exhale and shoved my plate into the middle of the table. “I know this is horrible timing, Smith, but—”
“You’ve got to get back to work.”
“Yeah.” I pulled my wallet out of my pocket to pay. “I hate to…but are you…”
“I’m good, Hunter,” he said. “I promise.”
“We can talk more on Friday?”
“You talk less when Finn is around,” he said. “I’m good, though. I promise. And you know, Hunter…not like any of you have asked, but I do have friends.”
Smith gave me a smile that felt a lot like scorn, then he stood up and fussed with his shirt.
“Thanks for lunch,” he said, jerking his chin toward the wallet I still held in my hand.
“Anytime, Smith.”
I watched him walk away, waiting until he was out of the restaurant to drop cash onto the table.
I had fifteen minutes to get back to the office, and my heart was lodged in my throat for all of them.
Last minute meetings were never good, but I was relatively certain I wasn’t about to get fired.
We’d just talked about me being made partner.
Had I messed up a case or done something wrong that would jeopardize that?
Lunch meetings weren’t uncommon, but last-minute ones certainly were less usual.
By the time I made it back to the office, I didn’t feel any better about the situation, but time was short. I made it to my desk with seconds to spare, barely enough time to throw a mint into my mouth before heading for the other side of the floor where Caleb’s office took up the whole corner.
I knocked on the metal frame of his door, sticking my head around the corner to find him behind his desk with two of the other partners—Walsh and Shaw—sitting opposite him. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth like I’d used Velcro on it.
“Covington,” he greeted, gesturing toward the other open seat across from his desk. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
The comment was asinine. Like I had any choice.
“Of course,” I said, sinking into the expensive leather.
“This will be quick,” Caleb said. “We just wanted to congratulate you.”
My teeth chattered together once, and then I clamped my jaw together hard so they didn’t do it again. “Congratulate me?” I echoed.
“We’ve talked it over,” Walsh said simply. “You’ve been here for your whole career, Covington, and you’ve done good work by us.”
“You’ve been on an upward trajectory since day one,” Winters said, nodding agreement with Walsh. “And you’ve taken the rest of us with you.”
“We’re thinking non-equity, Covington.”
I nodded, grateful for the offer and even more so that I wasn’t being asked to come up with a six figure buy-in for the honor.
“I’m…I don’t know what to say.”
“Hopefully yes,” Winters said with a low laugh.
“Yes,” I said quickly, nodding along in case the word didn’t make it out of my mouth loudly enough. “Obviously, yes.”
“We’ll finish drafting up the papers then and get them to you before the end of the day.” Caleb stood up and shook my hand, then Walsh shook my hand, and that was that.
The thing I’d waited my whole career for was finally mine, and it had been fifteen-some-odd years of work for a two-minute conversation.
The reality didn’t feel real, and I made it back to my desk with sweaty palms and trembling fingers.
I had known this was coming. Caleb had told me as much, but hearing the actual words, knowing the new contract was on its way to my inbox…
Lincoln was the first person I wanted to tell.
Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I opened my messaging app to text him, finding the one he’d sent me over lunch still unread.
It was a video, and the freeze frame thumbnail looked like he’d taken it in my shower.
Groaning, I jumped up from my desk, closed my office door, and locked it before sitting back down and digging out my headphones.
I pressed play and Lincoln’s face filled my screen, his hair wet and slicked back, his chest dripping.
“You just left for work and I’m so fucking hard for you, Daddy,” he said, voice not much more than a long and drawn-out moan. “Fuck. Fuck. I can still feel you inside of me.”
Arousal churned low and hot in my belly, my cock immediately jerking to full mast at not just the sight of him, but the sound of him. I watched rapt as Lincoln stroked himself off in my shower, twisting and tweaking the barbells in his nipples while he dirty-talked me the whole time.
I want to tie you to your bed and tease your asshole until you come, and then tease you until you can’t come anymore. Until you’re just gasping and begging.
And then I want you to wake me up in the middle of the night…I need it. Need you to just take me. Want you to…
Tell me where to come. Tell me where I can come. I’ll come on your face, Daddy. Sir, oh fuuuuuuck…
Lincoln was a vision, flushed and coming apart against the back wall of my shower, and I was seconds away from coming in my fucking pants at my desk, dick untouched.
I wanted to do all of the things he’d asked for.
I wanted to give him everything. Even as I watched him pull himself together long enough to get back to his phone, my mind raced with fantasies of flip fucking him until we were both a sticky and sated mess.
I needed a detour to the bathroom, but right as I pulled the headphones out of my ears, I heard Lincoln’s voice.
The video cut off abruptly, and I sat back down in my chair, restarting it from the beginning and dragging the cursor back through to the very end.
The camera was focused on his chest, water droplets racing down over his nipples as he picked his phone up from wherever he’d propped it up to film.
“I think I’m in love you,” Lincoln whispered, and then the video cut to black.
The words were so quiet I almost missed them. They were clearly an accident, not meant for me, but I’d heard them just the same. At the sound of his voice, my balls churned and heat exploded at the base of my spine, shooting hard and fast like a gunshot.
I think I’m in love with you, he’d said.
And in reply?
I’d shot my load into my pants.