Chapter 2
WHO THE HELL IS this guy?
Riley reread the email from one of his and Josh’s clients, trying to figure out why it made him so paranoid.
“Are you dealing with that author again?” Josh asked from his spot on the other side of the couch. “You always get huffy when you read his emails.”
Josh wasn’t wrong. He was never wrong about Riley. No one in the world knew him better.
“There’s something about him. He talks to us like he knows all our secrets or something. I don’t know, it’s just this weird feeling I get.”
He hummed and continued his clicking, drawing Riley’s attention away from his screen. Josh slumped on the couch, long legs extended and lying on the coffee table, with his lap desk and laptop spread over his thighs.
They both liked working in front of the television for background noise, so they never bothered making an “office space” at their place. They figured desks would have hogged too much room, and they wanted that space for activities.
Instead, they had a coffee table big enough for board game nights and a sectional comfortable enough to crash on, plus a space big enough for impromptu wrestling matches, which happened more often than he’d like to admit.
But, speaking of those wrestling matches…
“Dude, listen to this part," Riley said. "He says, and I quote, You two like to wrestle over every idea, but I know you’ll work it out. If this one sells well, I’ll send you guys a bonus you can spend on extra glow sticks. Did we ever tell him how often we use glow sticks? And how does he know we wrestle?”
When Riley turned away from his screen to see Josh’s reaction, he was surprised to see an affectionate smile on his face.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“I don’t know, it’s sweet how worried you are. I probably mentioned glow sticks at some point. And he probably didn’t mean physically wrestle.”
“Okay, sure, maybe,” he conceded. But he wasn’t done. “Then explain why at the end he signs it, I know you guys better than you think, love CJ. What the hell is that?”
Josh put his lap desk aside and slid down the couch so he was planted against Riley, throwing an arm around his shoulders and peering at Riley’s screen so he could read the email.
His racing thoughts settled thanks to Josh’s smell and touch.
It was like a superpower they had with each other.
His embrace had always calmed him, ever since they were kids.
They both leaned on each other for everything.
No one else had ever come close to being that person for Riley.
It was probably why he had so much trouble getting women to stick around.
But the right woman would accept his and Josh’s relationship and wouldn’t get weirded out by how close they were.
He came close with the last woman he dated.
They made it to the third date before he brought her home to meet Josh, and he thought they’d hit it off.
When Josh had stepped away to go to the bathroom, she asked Riley if he had any interest in a threesome.
Apparently, Riley alone wasn’t enough for her.
That wasn’t the worst part, though. Thinking about her touching Josh, his Josh, and watching Josh touch her had him seeing red.
They’d had a threesome before, but it wasn’t something he was interested in repeating.
He told her he didn’t think things would work out after all and asked her to leave.
But not before she hit on Josh after he returned from the bathroom.
The poor guy was so confused and didn’t understand why she’d want to bother with him when she had Riley. After that, she left pretty quickly. Good riddance. If only there was a woman out there who understood him like Josh did, but he doubted it.
“Okay, I guess that does sound a little creepy and threatening. Are you gonna hacktivize him?”
Riley chuckled at Josh’s attempt to make a verb out of the word "hacktivist." He'd adopted the hobby as he watched the world continue to crumble around them, using his computer skills to help others as much as he could. Hacking into an organization’s website to draw attention to the holes in their cybersecurity so they could fix them and taking down scammers who had wreaked havoc on people who didn’t deserve it was the least he could do.
Ever since he could remember, he had felt these competing rushes of adrenaline and contentment whenever he helped someone.
It all started with Josh, as Riley would race to his aid on the playground when other kids teased him for looking nothing like his parents.
If Riley remembered correctly, the first time he hit a kid was when they were six and some jerk had kicked Josh off the swings, telling him to go back to Japan.
Riley stormed right up to him and shouted He’s from China, numbnuts, and shoved him so he fell backward off the swing and landed in the mulch underneath. Josh thanked him with a hug and it lit Riley up inside.
From then on, he made a vow to himself to protect Josh from all the bullies of the world. At the age of thirty, he was well aware that he had a savior complex, but he figured if he was doing good, then it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Anyone who didn’t deserve it, anyway.
Riley wasn’t sure which category CJ Rollins fell into. But, he was going to keep a close eye on him.
“Nah, he isn’t doing anything wrong, but I think I might go into detective mode on this one. It feels like a mystery. If it turns into something else, I could always fall back on those skills.”
Josh gave him a squeeze, still settled against him, and the spicy aroma of his deodorant invaded his senses.
“You got this, man,” he said, then deepened his voice. “Become the Batman!”
Riley may have, on occasion, pretended to be Batman when he went on his hacking crusades. He was one of the best detectives of all time, after all.
“Yeah, I’ll definitely be looking at his emails more closely from now on.”
Josh made no move to get back to work and instead focused on the television.
The screen blared an advertisement for a fitness center that had recently undergone a change in management, boasting about their two floors of workout equipment and classes.
A guy who looked like a fitness model in tight workout gear appeared on the screen touting the changes coming to the gym, including a salt water pool.
The place was a couple towns over, about thirty minutes’ drive from Cherrywood, but Riley wondered if Tobias had to worry about losing members to them.
“I don’t think I would trust that guy with my fitness,” Josh muttered. “There’s something off about him. And he’s way too pretty.”
A niggling discomfort hit Riley’s gut at Josh’s comment. He blamed it on the way Josh showed… discomfort watching the rest of the commercial.
“Are your empath powers tingling?” he asked. Josh had an uncanny ability to read people. He may not have book smarts, but he understood people and could see through a false persona so easily.
“Yeah, but I don’t know why. Anyway, what time is your sister coming tonight?”
“She’ll be here at six.” He paused, checking the time on his laptop screen. “Only an hour. We better get started on making dinner.”
“What are we attempting tonight?”
Riley clicked over to a different tab on his screen, revealing a list of wild recipes they wanted to try. They were slowly making their way through it as an excuse to broaden both their cooking skills and their variety in food. It led to some delicious and disastrous experiments.
“I got things to make the chipotle barbecue chicken tacos. Should be a fun one.”
“To the kitchen, chefs!” Josh shouted as he pulled them both off the couch. Riley barely had enough time to put his laptop aside as they stumbled into their kitchen to tackle their next culinary quest.
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Sophie Hanson was a frenzied ball of chaos when she breezed through their door an hour later. When they were growing up, Riley called her Taz, like the Tasmanian Devil, because she walked through a room the exact same way.
Riley and Josh had just finished setting the table when she entered.
“Insane day at work,” she said by way of greeting, throwing her coat toward the couch and dropping her purse and work bag in a pile by the front door.
“I had to fire my assistant because, get this, I caught her texting and harassing the players after she stole the team contact list from my computer. Then I find out the hall-of-fame goalie who has been playing in our alumni game for years had to drop out of our home game because his daughter decided to schedule her wedding the same day as the game, and I have to replace him, and, on top of all of that, my monthly came early and may have ruined my favorite underwear.”
There was a concerned expression on Josh’s face as he listened to Sophie’s tirade, but all Riley felt was amusement at his sister’s dramatics. Josh moved forward to offer her a hug hello, Riley following with his own.
“I’m really sorry about your underwear, Taz, and I guess about the harassment of your players, and your goalie dropping out, too,” Riley said sarcastically, teasing her for lumping those three problems together.
“Is there anything we can do to save your clothes? I think we have a stain remover if you want to try that,” Josh said seriously, and Riley smirked at his inability to ignore a person’s struggle no matter how insignificant it may have been.
“Thanks, Josh,” she said, grabbing the glass of wine they’d placed on the table for her and taking a sip. “If only you would have been my brother instead of this meanie.”
“Hey, was it mean of me to cook you dinner tonight? Because I could put all of this away,” Riley said as he picked up a platter, acting as if he was going to throw it in the fridge.
“Nooooo! You’re the best brother ever and I love you. Please, let me eat!”
They all chuckled as they took their seats around the big coffee table and Sophie tried to catch them up on everything.
Despite her frenzied personality, her appearance was spotless.
She had honey brown hair, like Riley’s, but they had nothing else in common.
She had a button nose while his was slightly pointy, and her dark brown eyes matched their mom’s, while Riley got his dad’s hazel ones.
“I still can’t believe my assistant. She sent sexts to multiple players on our roster.
Even some married players. She used an internet voice number to try to hide her identity, but she forgot to hide her easily recognizable tattoo in a bunch of the pics.
We were able to figure out who she was pretty easily once players came forward.
The bitch threatened their careers, saying she worked for management and could get them in trouble if they didn’t send her some dick pics. ”
Sophie worked in the public relations department for the Philadelphia Inferno, the city’s pro hockey team.
“Those must have been fun conversations for your players to have with management,” Riley said.
“Yeah, it was such a mess. I got reamed out a bit about securing the info better and we increased the password protection on our computers because of it. Probably for the best, anyway.”
Maybe Riley would see if he could hack into the system to make sure it was at least safe from outsiders. He’d hate for something worse to happen and for it to fall on his sister. He’d do that as soon as he was back in front of his laptop.
“That’s taken care of at least, but I still need to replace this player,” Sophie huffed.
“Wait, did you say it was the goalie who backed out of the alumni game?” Josh asked.
“Yeah, why?”
Josh’s gaze darted to Riley before snapping to Sophie. “Why not ask Tobias Moyer? He runs the gym we go to and we see him all the time.”
Oh shit.
Tobias would hate that.
Once he’d retired after his injury, he'd worked hard to be out of the public eye, and he also had a disdain for talking to people. It didn’t make him popular with the media, but the fans respected him because he’d been a hell of a goalie for Philly.
“Tobias Moyer? Do you think he’d play? He hasn’t had a public appearance since he retired three years ago.
That would make me look so good with the team and might get me that promotion to PR director,” Sophie said, her voice growing in volume and excitement as she spoke. “Could you guys talk to him for me?”
“Josh, did you forget how hard Tobias is to talk to? How much he hates people? Or things? Or activities?”
“Maybe he needs something to look forward to! I bet he misses playing.”
“I dunno, man, he’s not usually up for… anything.”
“We can ask him, right, Riley?” Josh said, throwing his puppy dog eyes at him.
Ugh. He could never say no to that look.
“Uh, yeah, sure, we can ask him,” he said, prompting delighted clapping from Sophie and Josh.
He would likely have to find a new gym after Tobias canceled his membership for even suggesting he play.
Either that, or he’d make them do burpees until they died.
But he would ask anyway. For Sophie. And for Josh.