Chapter 28
Finn
Icouldn’t stop belting out the chorus to “Don’t Stop Believin’” at full volume—using my steering wheel as a drum set, complete with enthusiastic air cymbal crashes against my poor dashboard—when I pulled up to the red light at Hillsborough and Armenia.
I did a dramatic drum fill, head bobbing, completely lost in the moment.
I also hadn’t noticed the woman in the SUV next to me.
She was staring.
And laughing.
Laughing so hard she had tears streaming down her face.
She pointed at me, said something to whoever was in the passenger seat, and they both started cracking up.
I froze mid-drumroll.
Oh God.
My windows were down.
They’d heard everything.
The woman gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up and mouthed, “GET IT!” The passenger applauded and yelled, “I love Journey!”
My face went nuclear as I rolled up my window so fast I nearly broke the button and then slumped down in my seat like that would somehow make me invisible. The light turned green, and I drove away with the damaged dignity of a student caught by college campus police mid-streak.
Which was zero dignity.
Zero dignity at all.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I muttered, turning down the radio. “Get it together.”
But I couldn’t stop grinning.
That was the problem.
I’d been grinning like an idiot since I’d left Chase’s house.
Grinning while I drove.
Grinning while I stopped for gas.
Grinning while I performed an entire stadium rock show at a red light.
And every time I thought about last night—about Chase’s hands on my hips, his mouth on mine, the way he’d looked at me that morning with sleep-mussed hair and that dorky wave—the grin grew.
And there was a definite tingle in my pants.
“Stop it.” I looked down and scolded Little Finn. “We have work to do. There’s no time for you to stand at attention and—”
Chase’s voice echoed in my ears, “You’re going to stay right here and let me—”
My shorts tented, and the tingle became more insistent.
Tax forms. Think about a 1040 or the Florida State Sales Tax application sitting on the desk in the office. Fuck, think about the health inspection we’d have to deal with eventually or the grease trap in the kitchen that Rod kept complaining about.
It helped. Marginally. Not really.
My cock pulsed, and my shorts twitched.
“Please, little guy, not now,” I pleaded, regretting my word choice. “You’re not little. You’re manly and huge and . . . fuck . . . still throbbing.”
All I could see when I squeezed my eyes shut were erections and stubble-burned lips.
And dirty blond hair.
“Listen, Mr. Thing, if you’ll go back down, just for a little while, I promise to never call you small or anything disrespectful again. You don’t have anything to prove. Work with me here, okay?”
My cock pulsed, grinding against the inside of my shorts. I wasn’t wearing underwear or even those silky shorts that always felt like I was naked when I was actually clothed, so my head scraped against rough fabric.
Normal cocks might find that painful or annoying. For some reason, my not-so-little guy found it thrilling or erotic. It twitched again.
My own bloody dick was taunting me.
I stopped at another red light and let my head bang on the steering wheel.
But the grin was still there.
Then a sickening thought struck: Mark is going to notice immediately.
Mark noticed everything. It was his superpower and my curse.
He’d take one look at me and know exactly what had happened.
Of course, he’d know who I’d been with. There was no secret in how hard I was crushing on the blond bombshell of an attorney who kept showing up for Rod’s cooking.
Hell, Mark would probably sense what positions we’d used just by looking at my face.
Bloody fucking buggering hell.
I pulled into the parking lot behind Barbacks and sat there for a moment, staring at the back door, bracing myself.
“Okay,” I said to my empty car. “You’re an adult. You had a nice time with a guy you like. Mark’s going to tease you about it. That’s fine. That’s normal. You can handle this.”
I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror, then I looked down at shorts that were, thankfully, returning to a respectable level of bulge-ness.
“And you, behave,” I said, wagging a finger at my rebellious lower digit.
I looked like someone who’d spent the night receiving a mind-blowing blow job but had the acting skills of an aardvark that would never be able to hide his shell.
Aardvarks had shells, didn’t they?
Never mind.
There was no hiding from this.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, then got out of the car and pushed through the back door at two-thirty, which gave us an hour and a half before we opened for the Lightning game.
The door was already unlocked. I could hear Mark’s voice from inside saying something about TV placement.
Jacks responded with his usual golden retriever enthusiasm about everything.
I sucked in a breath, straightened my shoulders, and walked into the bar like I had nothing to hide.
Mark looked up from behind the bar where he was organizing bottles. Jacks was somewhere in the back, probably hauling cases of beer like they weighed nothing.
“There he is!” Mark called. “Our fearless leader. Only thirty minutes late.”
“I’m not late. We don’t open until four.”
“You’re always here by two on watch party days. It’s one of your neurotic habits.”
I watched Mark’s expression shift in real time.
From casual.
To curious.
To laser-focused predatory interest.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked.
Here we go.
“Like what? I get to smile. I can be in a good mood. It’s pretty outside, and we have a big day ahead.
Life is good. Why shouldn’t I smile? Smiling is good.
No, smiling is great. I like smiling. Everybody likes smiling.
Why? What are you hinting at? Are you hiding something?
Because I’m not. I’m definitely not. I’m just smiling because . . . because smiling is good.”
He set down the bottle he was holding.
His eyes narrowed as he crossed his burly, hairy arms. “Out with it.”
“Out with what? Nothing happened.”
“You’re lying. You’re terrible at lying. Your face does this thing.” He gestured at my head. “Jacks! Out here. Now! Come look at his face!”
Jacks appeared from the back room carrying a case of beer like it weighed nothing, the curls falling across his forehead bobbing with each step. “What’s wrong with his face?”
“It’s too happy.” Mark was grinning now, that insufferable grin that meant the puzzle pieces had just fallen into place, and he was about to make it everyone’s problem. “He got laid.”
My face betrayed me by turning eight shades of red.
“OH MY GOD.” Mark clapped. “You did! You banged the lawyer!”
“Nobody banged—”
“Oh, yes, you did!” Mark vaulted over the bar with too much energy for a man his age.
“Tell me everything, every single detail. Where did you go? What did you do? Did he take you to his place? Is he as big as he looks? Was he thick? Veiny? Oooh, is he cut? I love foreskin. Please tell me you got to play with his snake’s sweater. ”
“I’m not telling you—”
“He’s blushing!” Jacks announced, setting down the case with a thud. “Dude, you’re blushing so hard right now. That’s amazing. Boss got some dick!”
“Jacks—”
“Or did you get ass? Maybe eat a little? Either works. God knows, we needed you to get laid.” Jacks was grinning like a proud older brother. “You’ve been all stressed and tense for like two weeks. Good for you, man. Seriously. That lawyer dude seems cool.”
“I hate both of you. You’re dead to me now.”
“You love us.” Mark was circling me now, examining me like I was evidence in a trial.
“Okay, let’s see. You’re wearing the same clothes from yesterday, so you stayed over.
You’re smiling like an idiot, which means it went well.
I mean, you are an idiot, but set that aside.
And—” He leaned in closer. “Is that a hickey?”
“What? No!” I slapped a hand over my neck even though I was pretty sure there was no hickey. Chase had been very careful about that. I couldn’t even remember him kissing my neck.
“Made you look, though.” Mark was laughing now. “Oh, this is better than I thought. You’re gone.”
“I am not—”
“You are absolutely gone for him. Look at you! You showed up half an hour late, which you never do, and you’re standing here smiling at nothing while we interrogate you. That’s gone behavior.”
“I’m not gone. We had breakfast one time. It was nice. That’s all.”
“Just breakfast?” Jacks asked, and there was something knowing in his grin, the kind of knowing that came from vast locker room experience teasing men a hell of a lot tougher than me. “Come on, boss. We’re all adults here. You can tell us. Did he rock your world or what?”
“I am not discussing—”
“He diddled your Blarney Stone!” Mark teased. “Or would that be stones? I don’t want to be disrespectful to the land of leprechauns.”
“Mark, seriously—”
Jacks piled on. “He totally diddled. That’s a post-diddle grin if I’ve ever seen one. I bet he diddled with his fingers and tongue and—”
“There was no diddling!”
“Diddling liar.” Mark stepped back and leaned against the bar. “You may as well just tell us. We’re never going to stop until you do. I might even call Priya in for backup. She’ll know if you came home last night and—”
“Fine! We had breakfast after spending the night together. Happy?” I huffed, my shoulders slumping. “There’s no need to blackmail me with my housemate.”
Jacks nodded sagely, as though he’d just solved a crime and the credits were about to roll on his film. “That’s cool, man. Happy for you. Lawyer dude’s hot. Good catch.”
“Can we please focus on work—”
Mark ignored my miserable plea and grabbed my shoulders. “Finn O’Brien spent the night with a boy, a hot lawyer boy. This is a red-letter day. We should commemorate this. Put up a plaque. Maybe Benji can make a special drink.”
“Ooh.” Jacks’s grin widened. “He could call it ‘Finnigan’s Wake.’”