Elijah #5
“But mostly Milo.”
I laughed. “Alright, maybe he’s got a special spot, but it’s not like all of you aren’t important to me.”
“Shit, are you dying?” she asked, and I laughed again at the concern that was probably meant to be a joke but leaked genuineness.
“I’m allowed to be sentimental without a death sentence hanging over my head,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Now, if it were Arlo or Mason talking like this? Yeah, be worried.”
“God, tell me about it,” she grumbled. “I know Arlo loves us, but I don’t blame people sometimes for thinking he doesn’t like them. You remember Mom getting him tested for mutism?”
“He didn’t talk for like...half a year,” I pointed out, and she hummed in hesitant agreement.
I was sure she was thinking the same thing; Arlo had been Mom’s best friend’s son, and apparently had been a pretty happy, outgoing kid, until both his parents had died on vacation, leaving him with no one.
That was, except for Marty, who had taken him in and gone through the process of adopting him without hesitation.
He hadn’t been there when his parents had died, but everyone agreed, expert and armchair professional, that the shock and grief of losing both parents so suddenly had caused a lockdown of sorts that he had only somewhat recovered from. “Which makes sense, now Mason?—”
She gave a puff of air that held more annoyance than the average person could manage in a full paragraph. “He was just born a jackass, and he’s always going to be a jackass.
If a stranger were to listen to her, they’d suspect Moira hated her twin brother, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
For as long as I’d known him, Mason had been difficult, wily, smart-mouthed, and treated getting on another person’s nerves as a competitive sport.
Of course, he was also funny as hell, driven, adventurous, and despite getting on everyone’s nerves, no one could deny his loyalty to the family.
The man could have taken his wit and ambition and gone anywhere in the world, but he hadn’t gone far.
He had done a bit of traveling, but he’d gone to Seattle to start a business rather than anywhere else, which kept him close to the family he visited often.
“He’s getting on your nerves again?” I asked with a shake of my head.
“Better to ask when he’s not getting on my nerves.”
“I take it that love hasn’t calmed him down?”
“God, sometimes I can’t even say that what they have is love.”
I blinked. “Really? Something wrong?”
True, Mason’s relationship with Jace had been.
..rocky in the beginning. Honestly, the two had despised each other from the moment they’d laid eyes on each other back in middle school, and it had only grown worse with the years.
Their reunion in their thirties had been just as rocky, although the details were a little foggy.
All I knew for sure was that it turned out Jace was my nephew’s father after he’d been with Moira years before, and he found out after trying to bust Mason for reckless driving.
Somewhere along the line, apparently, Jace discovered he wasn’t quite as straight as he’d thought and didn’t hate Mason as much as he thought.
Well, there was still plenty of hate, and despite Milo theorizing as to how the hell the sex worked between them, I tried not to think about it.
I was still a little confused about how their relationship worked.
Sure, they weren’t antagonizing each other.
..as much, but sometimes you could feel the tension even when they were getting along.
Milo said it was foreplay for them, which, again, I would not think about too hard.
“Nothing more than the usual,” she said. “Idiots got into a bickering match yesterday, and the next thing I know, I’m getting a phone call from our head of housekeeping that they were found...occupying a store room.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Gross.”
I had zero problem with the gay thing. There was no way to be close to someone like Milo and have an issue with gay sex; the two things could not exist at the same time without going insane.
What I didn’t want was to imagine Mason having sex with someone else.
..especially when that someone was the father of my nephew.
Of course, I was sometimes forced against my will to dance close to imagining my brother having sex with someone else because of Milo, but that was different.
Maybe it was the close bond, or the byproduct of living with someone who had little in the way of shame or propriety when it came to sex.
“And how do you think I felt?” she huffed.
“There’s no way you haven’t heard worse. It’s not like you got details.”
“About that.”
“Ew, why?”
“I think she forgot she was talking about my brother. I can forgive her for not knowing Jace was my ex, but...I’ll tell you, it’s really difficult not to get a mental image going. Jace got bulkier since we were dating, but I doubt a whole lot else has changed about him.”
“Mmm, I’m going to try not to think too hard on that,” I told her, wrinkling my nose.
Her tone was suggestive enough as it was without needing details.
I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Jace since most of the time Mason was around, and their relationship was just weird to wrap my head around.
I didn’t want to think about the logistics of the physical aspects of their relationship if it could be helped.
“It’s too late for me,” she said dryly. “Save yourself.”
“Mmm, I’ll do that.”
“But you won’t, you’ll do the dumb thing, like you always do.”
“Huh?”
“No point in telling you, it won’t make a difference. One day you’ll learn...maybe.”
“Uh...huh.”
“Anyway, as lovely as it has been to learn that our brother still doesn’t know how to behave like a functioning adult?—”
“Uhhh, you’re welcome?”
“I didn’t thank you. Try to keep him alive for the rest of the night if you can. I’m not sure I’m ready to plan a funeral for him.”
“I’ll be sure to pass along your love.”
“You do that.”
There was a moment of hesitation before the line closed, and I shook my head. Locking my phone, I tucked it away and returned to the exam room. I stopped when I saw Milo still sitting on the exam table, legs still kicking, but a few things were missing since I’d last been in the room.
“Please tell me he told you to strip down,” I said, eyeing his green underwear, so bright it would have made my eyes water in direct sunlight. “And you didn’t offer to do this.”
Milo smirked, reaching up to flick a thick strand of hair out of his face. “I was told. I’m not going to strip for a stranger just because.”
“Mmm, your birthday.”
“That was different!”
“How?”
“I was drunk and single.”
The second thing was more important in convincing me than the first. Milo was free with his attention and affection when he wasn’t tied down to one person, but that stopped the moment he started dating.
He could easily be called a slut, but he was a loyal one.
So yes, I believed he wouldn’t have stripped down for a piece of clunky seduction because he did, in fact, have a boyfriend.
Now, whether or not I believed his boyfriend afforded him the same loyalty was an entirely different discussion, one I was careful to avoid.
Many people took one look at Milo and assumed he was a goofy, golden retriever sort of guy.
Not that I blamed them in the slightest, he was generally the goofy, playful sort.
What people didn’t understand was that there was an irritable, no-nonsense, feistiness that gave off more of a cat energy feel at times.
Our often quiet brother, Arlo, had deemed him an orange cat, and the term had stuck.
“That poor, pickled single brain cell of yours,” I said with a sigh, taking a seat again as the doctor returned, which was convenient since it was a little weird to stare at Milo sitting in his underwear.
Not that I hadn’t seen him in his underwear many, many times before, but it was just weird seeing him sitting in that vulnerable state.
Anyone left in their undies waiting on a doctor understood completely.
“The leg is just sprained from the looks of it. We’ll get you dressed and down the hall to see if it’s the same for the arm too,” Rimes said, glancing at me before returning his attention to Milo.
“I figured,” Milo said, twisting on the exam table and hopping down, making sure to land on his good leg.
Against my will, I couldn’t help but notice that his gym workouts had been working as his ass bounced dramatically.
It was a weird thing for my straight ass to notice about my stepbrother, but when it came to Milo, weird things happened all the time, even if it was just in my head. “I know the place.”
“From what I’ve gathered, that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest,” Rimes chuckled, and I shook my head at his comfort.
However uncomfortable and weird people found Milo, he had a charm that was impossible to resist. Sure, for some, it was probably the good looks, but he also made people feel comfortable, so long as someone didn’t get on his nerves, which could happen easily.
“Called Moira, didn’t you?” Milo asked as he yanked his jeans up, leaning against the exam table. He unconsciously continued to be careful around his injured leg.
“I did.”
“Call me an idiot?”
“She did.”
“Call you an idiot for letting me do it?”
“Basically.”
“You think she does it just so she can say she told us so, not because she thinks it’ll make us stop?”
“Most definitely.”
“How’s the rest?”
“The same, Mason and Jace are driving her nuts.”
“They crack me up. They obviously like the hell out of each other, but they’re bad at showing it for some reason.”
“That’s because Jace is too angry and stubborn to find the right way to admit it, and Mason is too much of a jackass and too stubborn to do it the right way. They’re just sorting it out in the only way they know...badly, but hell, they’re managing.”
Milo thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “That makes sense. I forget how good you are at that.”
“At what?”
“Stuff.”
“Thank you, Milo, that really cleared it up.”
“It’s a gift.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ll love this. A housekeeper found Jace and Mason in a storage closet...working on things.”
Milo snorted as he yanked on his socks and grabbed his shoes. “Well, that’s about right. I guess they’ve figured out a way to sort out their issues without beating the shit out of each other.”
“Yeah, but poor Moira ended up getting more details than she wanted. I don’t know what details she heard, but she said just hearing them was enough considering she dated Jace back in the day, and that was enough for her imagination,” I said with a shrug.
Milo laughed. “Which probably means Jace is hung like a horse, and she doesn’t want to think about Mason dealing with that.”
I blinked and cringed. “Alright, touché, Moira.”
“What?” Milo asked. “God, do you think Mason bottoms?”
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “She said I would regret mentioning it to you, and now I know why.”
Milo’s face scrunched up in confusion for a moment before grinning. “What’s a matter, don’t wanna think too hard about Jace being big all over? And that Mason might like that.”
My mouth curled sourly. “You know, that’s my stepbrother, but your half-brother you’re talking about getting dicked down. Shouldn’t it disturb you more?”
“Probably, but I have something in my head that keeps me from being disturbed too easily,” he said with a lazy shrug.
“You mean a lack of properly functioning brain cells?”
“That’s the prevalent theory, but none has been proven correct. So I guess it’ll stay a mystery.”
“The only mystery is how you’ve survived this long.”
He laughed softly, wrapping a long arm around my shoulders and pulling me to follow him. “Well, that’s because I’ve got you.”
I wanted to protest, or at least give him shit, but his arm was warm and the weight of it was comforting. So instead, I gave him a little smile and let myself be pulled along. “Yeah, I guess you do.”