Chapter 29
FINN
I’d kept my word. I was at Daniel and Sophie’s on Tuesday night when Daniel got back from Boston.
The three of us kissed and fucked and sucked and fell asleep in their bed, limbs tangled and sweaty.
Sophie was the first to knock out, and Daniel shortly thereafter.
I was the last, staring up at their ceiling for far too long before sleep finally took me under.
The next day at work, I showed up at Hunter’s office on my lunch break, barely even surprised to find Lincoln already there. He was in the lobby when I stepped off the elevator, and I tried to turn around and retreat before he saw me, but Lincoln Summers was an observant little shit and caught me.
“Finn.” He smiled like he was genuinely pleased to see me, which only made me feel worse than I had the whole drive to Hunter’s work.
“Do you and my brother have lunch plans?” I asked.
Lincoln ignored my lack of greeting and wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing his cheek against the front of my shoulder and holding me until I hugged him back. I hated to admit I felt better afterward, and I realized my brother had never had a shot against this overgrown puppy dog of a man.
“Not on the calendar. Did you?”
He finally let me go, and I missed the warmth of him. “Not on the calendar.”
“I can…” he trailed off and thumbed over his shoulder, gesturing toward the elevator. “If you need time with him.”
“Hey,” Hunter’s voice entered the fray, and Lincoln and I both looked up at him. “Did I double book?”
“We double booked you without telling you,” Lincoln said, giving Hunter the exact same hug he’d just given me. He tilted his head back for a kiss, which I didn’t get.
Hunter’s stare flickered from Lincoln to me. “Is everything okay?”
No.
“Can’t I just want to get lunch with my brother for no reason at all?”
“A year ago, sure.”
“I can go,” Lincoln said, stepping out of Hunter’s arms. “I’ll see you tonight anyway.”
“I can go,” I offered.
“No,” both of them snapped at the same time.
I sighed out the corner of my mouth, shoulders sinking in defeat. “The both of you can come. It’s not like Hunter won’t tell you all about it tonight anyway.”
“I wouldn’t,” my brother protested, but I knew better.
I understood the relationship he had with Lincoln, what Silas had with Marshall, Riggs with Smith. I saw the unspoken looks and the quiet promises that didn’t even need words. Daniel and Sophie had that, and what was worse, I probably had that with both of them now too.
“Let’s just go around the corner and grab some Thai?” Lincoln suggested.
“Sure.” I stabbed my finger into the elevator button, wishing I’d decided to spend my lunch break jerking off over how gorgeous Sophie looked impaled on my cock while wearing her wedding dress, but her wedding dress and the way it felt tangled in my fingers and bunched against her hips was the problem that had sent me in search of my brother in the first place.
The three of us rode down to the ground floor and walked in silence to the restaurant.
Hunter ordered for Lincoln, and Lincoln blushed so violently the cook could have prepared the soup on Lincoln’s cheeks.
We got drinks and found a relatively clean table near the kitchen and sat down.
Hunter cocked his head to the side and watched me, waiting.
“Don’t think your dom tricks with work on me,” I muttered.
Lincoln made a surprised noise and swallowed it away with some soda.
Hunter didn’t say anything, he just raised an eyebrow and continued to wait me out. I looked at Lincoln, lips pursed. “This is your doing.”
He shrugged at me, feigning helplessness.
The vibe became Hunter, and it was hard to begrudge Lincoln for bringing it out in him, even if I didn’t want to be subjected to it by more than one of my brothers. I could be grateful for Marshall and his ways without wanting my other siblings to duplicate him.
“To catch you both up, I’m involved with a couple,” I finally admitted, just so Hunter would stop looking at me like he could read my mind.
Lincoln’s nostrils flared and he licked his lips, pulling them together between his teeth.
Worry was the first look across Hunter’s face, but he was quick to school it.
This part of the conversation wasn’t a surprise to him, but paired with my mood, I understood why he was worried.
None of us wanted a repeat of Neil and Annette.
“Do you want to tell me their names?” Hunter asked.
I opened my mouth and closed it, not sure if I did want to tell him.
Something between us had shifted the first night Daniel was in Boston.
I didn’t know if Sophie felt it, but Daniel and I both certainly had.
I didn’t get the impression either of us had been pretending we were glad to be together again the night he got back home, but there was a different kind of weight to things now.
“Sophie and Daniel,” I finally said.
Hunter nodded.
“They’re getting married in the fall,” I said, trying not to choke on the words. “September.”
“Is that…like the expiration date?” Lincoln asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“But it’ll change things, you think?”
“Of course it will.”
“Why?” Lincoln pressed.
Hunter swirled ice in his water with his straw, gaze shifting lazily from Lincoln to me and back to Lincoln again.
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Do you think all change is bad?” he asked.
I thought about walking away from Neil and Annette for the last time, thought of painting over that horrible pink in my office, thought of how it felt every time a new brother emerged out of thin air. “Not always.”
“Why this, then?”
“Because if there’s one thing Finn loves, it’s a worst-case scenario,” Hunter said.
“If there’s one thing I love, it’s them,” I snapped.
There. I’d said it. It was finally out in the open.
Hunter sighed. “Like I said.”
“Hey now!” Lincoln reached across the table and smacked the outside of Hunter’s arm, and I watched my brother’s shoulder draw back, witnessed the power dynamic between the two of them flip in an instant.
Well. Wasn’t that interesting.
“Why is love a worst-case scenario?” Lincoln asked me, judging Hunter until he appropriately cowered.
“It’s unpredictable.” I held up one finger, ready to count off the reasons. “It’s volatile.”
“Same thing,” Hunter interrupted.
I dropped my first finger, angling the middle one toward him. He reached over the table and grabbed it before I could pull away, twisting until I cursed him and begged for mercy. He let go of me, smile smug as he fixed himself back into place, and the power had shifted back to him.
“It’s scary,” Lincoln added, and I nodded my agreement. “You think they won’t want you after they get married.”
“I don’t even know why they want me now.”
“You’re handsome, Finn,” Lincoln told me, rolling his eyes like it should have been obvious. “And you’re smart. You’re funny. You’re very kind.”
“I didn’t know we were so well acquainted.”
“All four of you… hell, the five of you are much more alike than you realize.”
I didn’t have an argument for that, but it was nice to think I had parts of my brothers in me. That somehow we’d gotten more than rot from our father.
“There might be six of us,” Hunter said.
Lincoln’s eyebrows raised toward his hairline.
“We’re not sure,” I explained. “Andrew found him on an app and he looks identical to Marshall, but we’re just guessing at this point. Nobody has reached out to him.”
“That’s…something, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.”
Thankfully, our number was called before we could get back into talking about what we were there to talk about, which was—unfortunately and of my own doing—me.
“So what’s the real issue?” Lincoln asked after we’d all gotten through a few bites of our food. “Falling in love is scary, but you’re an adult. That’s not what has you worried.”
I threw a sidelong glance at Hunter. “Is he always like this?”
“He’s very observant.”
I shot a quick finger gun toward Lincoln. “Next time, I’m leaving you home.”
“Answer the question.”
“I want to be with them. I want it to be serious.” I paused. “It already is serious, and I think they know it’s serious, but we’ve not…we haven’t had that conversation.”
“Are they…fully open?” Hunter asked.
“Not anymore.”
“That certainly sounds serious,” Lincoln said.
“I know. But they’re getting married, and I’m just…”
“Don’t diminish it,” Lincoln interrupted, shaking his head.
“Excuse me?”
“They’re getting married and you’re what?”
“I’m just there.”
“You’re there,” he corrected, and Hunter dropped his head back a little, swallowing hard. God, the way power moved between the two of them should have been studied and immortalized in a museum.
“When Silas and Marshall started dating each other, Silas had to talk to him about me. He told Marshall we were basically a package deal, he explained what our friendship was like, and what it meant,” Lincoln said.
“If they hadn’t had that conversation, it wasn’t my relationship with Silas that would have suffered, it was theirs. ”
“So you’re saying if I don’t address this with them, I’ll be the one who gets hurt in the end. Again.”
“Oh.” Hunter set his chopsticks down and shook his head at me, looking much more like Marshall than he had any right. “I see what you’re doing.”
I leveled a glare at him. “What am I doing?”
“You’re in love with them so you’re trying to find a flaw or a gap or a problem because you’d rather have that conversation than admit you have real feelings for them.”
My mouth went dry as a fucking desert, and Lincoln looked like he wanted to crawl over the table and fuck Hunter right there. The two of them were perfect for each other’s egos, that was for sure. I was happy they were happy, that they were so in tune with each other, so connected.
Scrubbing a hand down my face, I shoved my plate away. “I already told you I loved them. I admitted it.”
“You haven’t told them.”
“Of course not.”
“Why?”
“Because what if they don’t love me back?” My voice was too loud. The table next to us turned and stared, and I wanted to cry.
Love was a joke and I fucking hated it.
“What if I tell them how I feel and it’s too much?
What if it doesn’t fit into the plan they have for the rest of their lives?
” I pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, ignoring the incoming text messages that vibrated my phone against my thigh.
I knew who they were from without even looking.
“They’ve been together eight years…why now and why me? ”
“Why not you?” Lincoln asked quietly.
A soft chime drifted out of his phone, and he was quick to silence it before shoving three more bites of food into his mouth.
“I have to run,” he said, pressing a bruising kiss against Hunter’s lips.
When he broke away, he took another drink and came around the table, kissing me with the same intensity against the corner of my mouth.
His lips were mostly against my cheek, but the affection was there, the promise, the friendship of it.
Lincoln stayed until I relaxed and patted my hand against his hip.
“Thank you for your advice,” I murmured, brushing my fingertips against my lower lip.
“You deserve to be loved loudly,” he told me, straightening up to his full height, which wasn’t much. “And you deserve to love loudly too.”
And just like that, Lincoln was gone and it was me and Hunter alone at the table. I could feel my brother’s stare against the side of my face, and after my breathing returned to normal, I finally met his eyes.
“You never stood a chance with him, did you?”
Hunter smiled, shaking his head.
“You never stood a chance with them, did you?”
“No, I don’t think I did.”
“Then don’t waste it,” he said. “Don’t make it be something it’s not. Let it consume you if it wants to. All three of you. If it’s real, rings aren’t going to change it, alright?”
“I want to believe you.”
Hunter leaned over and snatched an uneaten piece of broccoli from Lincoln’s plate. “That’s a start, right? When do you see them again?”
“Whenever I want.”
Hunter hummed, chewing and swallowing the stolen vegetable. “That sounds very real and very serious already.”
“I hate you, I think.”
“I doubt that,” Hunter said, looking down at my plate and poking a carrot with one of his chopsticks. “Are you going to eat that?”
I slid my plate toward him. “Have at it.”