The concierge in the lobby gave him the same polite but searching look he’d given him the last time but merely nodded as Thad passed him.
Out on the street, Thad lit up a cigarette.
He guiltily smoked it, hating the way the nicotine soothed the restless feeling inside him. For a moment, he briefly considered going back upstairs and seeing if the cigarette was enough to calm him.
But his phone buzzed, and a car rounded the corner a moment later. At this point, he might as well fucking go home.
He needed fresh clothes for work tomorrow anyway. After all, he had a lunch meeting with the boss tomorrow.
Or, his brother.
He wasn’t entirely sure which guy would be sitting across the table from him as they ate.
“Wowthis is good,” Thad said the following afternoon, a little surprised Gavin had sprung for sushi from the fancy place he liked so much.
“Yeah, it’s the best,” Gavin agreed, smiling in a way that made Thad vaguely uncomfortable with how dirty it looked. Like he was remembering something particularly hot.
Thad really didn’t want to know what his brother and Dakota got up to, with or without sushi, so he shuddered and forcedthatthought out of his brain.
Thad honestly had been kidding when he teased Dakota about having a threesome with him and Gavin. He’d been trying to shock him, but it hadn’t really done anything but gross Thad out when he imagined it.
“So why are you buttering me up?” Thad asked now.
Gavin stammered out some nonsense, but Thad raised an eyebrow and stared at him until his shoulders slumped.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he finally said.
“No shit. What about?”
“Umm, have you thought more about talking to Mom and Dad about me?”
Thad set down his container of sushi and the chopsticks, suddenly feeling a little queasy.
“Honestly, no.”
Gavin set down his food too. “Why not?”
“Because …” Thad hesitated, not sure how to explain it.
Because their relationship with their parents was fucking complicated as hell.
They’d always had high expectations for their boys. And were weirdly obsessed with what their friends and acquaintances thought of them.
“I think maybe it’s time,” Gavin said in that cautious, measured tone of his that drove Thad absolutely up the wall, even though he knew Gavin was trying to choose his words carefully so as not to piss him off.
“It’s probablypasttime,” Thad admitted. “But I … it’s hard for me.”
Gavin frowned. “Well, it’s hard for me to know they think Iforcedyou to confess to save me.”
“They don’t—” Thad protested, then stopped because … did they? “Do they?” he asked.
Gavin shrugged. “That’s certainly what they implied the last time we spoke.”
“Fuck.” Thad rubbed his jaw. “I thought they understood I jumped in to protect you. Not that you somehowmademe do it.”
With a sigh, Gavin sat back in his chair. “I think at the time, they were so fed up with my bullshit they were willing to believeanythingabout me.”
Although there was a trace of bitterness in Gavin’s voice, he didn’t sound angry.
