Chapter Five Brothers in Arms #2
“Then what is the point? You think turning up in your leathers with that sad-eyed, broken-boy routine’s going to change anything? Sitting here, reading old stories like it’s some grand sacrifice. As if it’s going to make up for what’s already gone? You can’t fix this. You can’t fix her .”
Reece’s head snapped up, eyes burning. “I read to you , Ethan. Didn’t I?”
The words hung there, bruised and bleeding, before he could pull them back.
“Every time we sat on that fucking doorstep waiting for Mum to come home. Every time she didn’t show.
When Dad—” His throat closed, but he swallowed it down to hammer it home.
“When Dad laid into you and you thought if you stayed quiet, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.
I read to you then, didn’t I? Christ, I read to you, so you’d forget for a few minutes.
So you’d believe in something better than the shit we were living through.
” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “And look at you now. Pretending as if that didn’t matter.
As if that safety net I wrapped around you didn’t give you the chance to become this…
this perfect, bulletproof version of yourself.
And somehow, none of it’s enough. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
He swallowed hard, fighting the burn behind his eyes, hating himself for how small that admission made him feel.
“You don’t have to come here.” He turned away before Ethan could see the emotion threatening to crack him wide open. “But don’t you dare sit there and tell me this doesn’t matter.”
Because it had to. If this didn’t mean something…if this last, quiet thing he could still give wasn’t enough, then wh at the hell had it all been for? What use was he? How could he ever repay his Nana for giving him a life.
Reece stood. “And you sure as hell don’t have to darken the door here if it’s such a bloody inconvenience to that perfect life you’ve built in Brentwood where you’re too busy playing the devoted husband while dragging your affairs to Worthbridge hotel rooms so your wife stays none the wiser.”
Ethan’s mouth pulled into a tight line. “Some of us moved on because we had to. Because someone needed to drag this family out of the gutter.”
Reece barked a bitter laugh. “And you’re so proud of yourself for doing it by defending the same bastards who drag everyone else back down.”
Ethan’s eyes darkened. “You think it’s that simple?
You think I don’t hate the people I represent?
That I don’t walk into that courtroom every day knowing the system’s rigged and still try to work it from the inside?
But hey, keep throwing yourself into burning buildings if that makes you feel better.
At least I don’t spend my life trying to die a hero to make up for the fact I survived a bully. Again and again.”
That one hit too close.
Reece swallowed hard, his throat burning hotter than any fire he’d charged through. For a beat, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the soft wheeze of their grandmother’s breathing, and the clock ticking in the corner as it counted down to an inevitability neither of them could stop.
Reece raked a hand through his hair, the fight draining from him like a gradual leak. His shoulders sagged under the weight of too many years carrying things no one had asked him to, least of all Ethan .
“You ever wonder how we ended up like this?” Reece gestured loosely between them. “Same face. Same blood. Same hell we crawled out of. But here I am, diving headfirst into fire, and you…you keep the hell alive on the streets in a fucking suit and tie.”
Ethan’s expression shifted. “I wonder that all the damn time.”
For a fleeting second, the years between them disappeared. They weren’t two men on opposite sides of a fault line anymore. They were two boys again, sitting on the back step of Nana’s house, cold and hungry, waiting for a mother who never came home and a father who only ever showed up angry.
Then Ethan’s phone rang, slicing through the stillness. He glanced at the screen, and Reece saw the slight tug at the corner of his brother’s mouth. That familiar pull they both did when they had to answer a call they didn’t want to explain.
Ethan held up a finger. “I need to take this.”
Reece gestured towards their Nana, who sat still and unblinking in the chair. “Knock yourself out. She won’t even notice, right?”
Ethan gave him a look but said nothing. Into the phone, he said, “One second,” then turned back. “Stay safe out there, brother.”
Reece raised an eyebrow. “Always do. I’m trained to fight the flames. You’re the idiot playing with fire.”
Ethan left the room, his shoes fading into silence.
Reece slumped back into the chair and picked up the book again, though the words blurred. He read anyway, softly, until the carers came in with Nana’s dinner. So he kissed her cheek, whispered goodbye, and made his way back out to the Bonneville .
The engine rumbled beneath him, a familiar comforting growl as he rode out to Northbridge.
A quieter town down the coast where the sea felt wider, and the rumours didn’t press so heavy on his chest. It hadn’t been gentrified the way Worthbridge had.
No chain cafés, no boutique brunch spots.
It was retirees, second homes with peeling paint, and an emptiness that felt earned.
He parked up outside Seagulls , the little bakery with the takeaway window built into a chipped brick wall. The smell of cinnamon and coffee cut through the salt air as he leant down to order.
“Large Americano. And one of those cinnamon whirls, the messy one.” He nodded to the tray behind the glass.
“Best kind.” The cute blonde behind the counter boxed it up with a smile that said she was interested.
He could.
He wouldn’t.
Instead, he rode a short way up to the secluded edge of the pebble beach, the part the tourists didn’t bother with.
The wind was sharper there, the rocks jagged and salt-slicked.
He sat down on a flattish slab, the paper bag warm in his hands, and ate while watching the tide crash and retreat.
The cinnamon whirl was still warm, soft in the middle, sugar melting on his tongue and he held the steaming coffee between his hands, letting it scald through his palms, but none of it dulled the knot in his gut.
He stared out at the water, phone heavy in his pocket.
He wasn’t looking for anything serious. Never had been.
Not really. Sure, he’d tried once or twice.
He and Freddie had almost made something of it, until that spark fizzled out long before Freddie’s childhood sweetheart turned up and rewrote the ending.
And yeah, there’d been others. Flings stretching long enough to blur the line between sex and something else.
And the two long terms who’d meant something more once.
But Reece had always been better on his own.
Safer. Simpler. Because, fuck, if one half of his shared DNA didn’t stick around for him, how could he expect anyone else to?
But what he wanted… what he needed … right now was to feel something other than the ache that had settled in his chest since last night behind the club.
Since Trent.
The man who wouldn’t let him in.
Reece pulled out his phone. Hesitated. Then opened Grindr with more instinct than intent.
He was familiar with the routine. Location on, pic checked, distance scanned.
No shame in it. No names, no strings. A clean, physical exchange that didn’t ask him to explain why he couldn’t sleep. Why he felt hollow.
Ping. Ping.
The app came alive. As it usually did.
You around?
Looking?
Pic?
The usual mix. Shirtless torsos, blank profiles, some with faces, most without. He scrolled automatically, brain half-connected to the feed. He tapped a message back to one, a quick thumbs-up emoji followed by “Where you at?”
But even as he stared at the screen, the buzz in his blood wasn’t the usual heat.
It was quieter. Duller. His mind drifted.
Traitorous and unwanted. To narrowed blue eyes that didn’t match the sharpness in that bitter mouth.
To the way Trent had allowed Reece to grip him hard enough to bruise but refused to let him kiss .
To the tension strung so tight between them it had snapped with every thrust.
Was that what had him hooked? The refusal to kiss? Was it that?
No. It wasn’t that simple .
Reece had been with men who didn’t kiss.
Would let him fuck them any way he wanted, tongues and fingers and filth, but wouldn’t let him near their mouths.
Too intimate. Too exposed. He got it. He respected boundaries.
Never pushed if the other man made it clear.
And it never got under his skin. Never stuck .
But Trent?
Trent’s refusal wasn’t disinterest. It was restraint. Control . Reece had felt the truth of it in every tremble, every snap of his hips, every second that tight, desperate body clung to him as if he hated how much he wanted it.
And fuck, just thinking about it made something hot and hungry stir inside him all over again.
He leant back against the cold stone, the wind catching in his hair, the phone screen dimming in his hand. He didn’t close the app. He let it sit there, glowing faintly in his palm.
Undecided.
Reece was still glaring at the message when his phone rang. His actual phone, the one clipped to his belt, vibrating hard with a call that meant only one thing.
The station.
He answered before the second ring. “Boss.”
Miller’s voice crackled through the line, urgent and tight. “Sorry to chew into your me-time, Morgan, but we’re stretched. Fairhaven warehouse is fully involved. Heavy smoke, suspected arson. Reports of kids inside. Squatters. It’s bad. We need all hands.”
Reece was already moving, kicking gravel off the soles of his boots as he strode towards the Bonneville.
“I’m on my way.”
The Grindr screen faded out behind his thumb. No goodbyes. No guilt.
Fire didn’t wait for feelings. And neither should he.