Atticus didn’t meet his gaze. “I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer.”
“You? But you never forget things.” Atticus didn’t respond, just pouted. Jericho kissed his pouting lips. “Okay. I’ll leave you and your new humanitarian effort. I’ll order dinner when I get out?”
Atticus nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
Jericho was almost to the bedroom when he heard Atticus croon, “Did you hear what he said? I would never throw you ina dumpster. Your daddy thinks he’s funny, but he’s really just an ass sometimes.”
Jericho grinned, walking to the bathroom and shutting the door, leaving Atticus to bond with his new pet. That man was crazy, but fuck, if Jericho didn’t love that about him.
Asa slid off his coat as soon as he walked through the apartment door, shaking off the cold before following the sound of voices into the living room. He stopped short at the scene before him, taking it all in. Felix sat on the couch, feet tucked beneath him, his ever present cardigan falling off his shoulder. Avi was dressed in plaid pajama pants and nothing else. Zane sat sandwiched between them, his head resting on Avi’s shoulder.
Asa blinked at them for a solid thirty seconds. “You realize that’s not me, right?” he teased.
Usually, his snark was met with an equally pithy response, but, this time, Zane turned dull eyes on Asa. “You weren’t here.”
Asa frowned. Zane’s eyes were swollen and puffy, his expression miserable. Only one thing made Zane this fucking despondent. Beverly. He glared at Avi and Felix as if they were personally responsible for the state his husband was in.
“How’d she get to him?” Asa demanded. “We have her blocked everywhere.”
Felix shrugged delicately, pulling his sweater up over his shoulder only for it to slide right back down. “She’s a virus. Just when we think she’s been eradicated, the bitch mutates.”
Zane nodded miserably, flopping his head from Avi’s shoulder to Felix’s, who curled a protective arm around him.
“Is somebody going to tell me what she did? Or said?” Asa finally asked.
Avi leaned forward and flipped over the paper sitting on the coffee table. It was the tabloid where Zane had once worked. A picture of Beverly’s weeping face sat in the corner beside a much larger picture of Asa and Zane in their wedding clothes. The headline was just a single word in capital letters.
BANISHED.
Beneath it, in much smaller font, was a subtitle:Beverly Scott Banished from Son’s Lavish Wedding to Asa Mulvaney.
That bitch. Asa should have fucking killed her and made it look like an accident. She was a fucking liability.
He continued to scan the article, rolling his eyes at things like ‘dead son’ and ‘cruel and inhumane.’ Felix was right. The woman was a virus. The worst kind of virus, far reaching, fast-moving, and insidious.
He shook his head, stepping up onto the coffee table and taking Zane’s hand, pulling him to his feet. “Alright, to the bedroom. I know just what you need.”
Felix snickered. “Surely, your dick doesn’t cure everything?”
Asa rolled his eyes. “Not that bedroom. The spare room. You guys know the drill. Raid the fridge and the bar. Let’s go.”
Asa helped Zane over the table then wrapped his arms around him from behind, picking him up and walking him so his feet hovered just off the ground before depositing him onto the king-sized bed in the room at the end of the hallway.
Zane flopped onto the bed dramatically. “I don’t want to play games.”
Asa rolled his eyes. “You say that every time.”
“And I mean it every time,” Zane retorted.
Asa grinned. “Liar.”
He flipped over the white murder board on wheels—stashed in one of the spare rooms for just such an occasion—erasing the drawing from the last game.
Avi and Felix arrived with cold pizza, sushi, and the remnants of a charcuterie board Cricket had insisted they take from her birthday party the night before.
Felix climbed into the middle of the bed with two huge bottles in his hand, propping himself against the headboard. “We have no emotional support vodka so, instead, we are subbing in poor life choices whiskey and always down for a good time rum.”
Felix plopped a pillow into his lap, and Zane dropped his head onto it.
