“You’re being…flexible?” Sebastian tested the word. “Inventive, maybe.”
“How so?”
“First, you’re asking about budget dates, now you’re borrowing instead of buying.” Sebastian smirked. “However are you managing something you can’t just throw money at?”
He took the seat beside his brother and scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t even know.”
“Is it worth it?”
“What?” He turned to study his brother’s profile.
“It’s not like you to not look at the long game, Rhys.” Sebastian glanced toward the hallway and lowered his voice. “You know you have to go home. And even if you figure a way out of that, you know Father won’t approve of this.”
“Of this,” he repeated, once again thinking of the time he had to break his own heart. How was college so far behind him, but so prevalent in his mind all the time. And yes, of course he’d thought about all of that. He knew his father’s opinion on what Rhys—as the oldest—was allowed to do and not do. He knew how his father viewed and treated disobedience and rebellion. In fact, that was what he’d always seen Rhys’s bisexuality as in the first place—a form of rebellion, when it was anything but. It was simply the one thing he wanted to have for himself in a world of being everything and everyone for other people.
“Does he know you’re leaving?”
“I’m not leaving,” he snapped. “I told you that already.”
“You implied it.”
Rhys sighed. “I haven’tfullydecided.”
“And now Beckett?” Sebastian asked. “Dating below you to…”
Rhys cut him off, “He’s not below me. Not by any stretch.”
“He has no money.”
“Neither does Remington.”
“Technically.” Sebastian smirked.
“Neither does Jace,” he said.
“Half of what is Callahan’s will soon be his,” Sebastian shared, and Rhys bit the tip of his tongue until his eyes watered.
“Beckett is far more than I deserve, Sebastian.”
Sebastian patted Rhys’s thigh. “I would hope so.”
Down the hall, the bedroom door opened and they both jumped up off the couch. Rhys fiddled with the cuffs of his jacket and the seams of his pants. He was staring down at the way the hem of his slacks brushed over the laces of his shoes, when Sebastian made a soft sound beside him.
And he looked up.
The first thing he saw was Beckett’s face. The tight lines and nervous trepidation marred his features, but Rhys dropped his eyes, taking in the way the crisp white collar of Sebastian’s shirt framed his throat and the way the shoulders of the jacket set like it had been tailored specifically for him. Beckett was slim, and the suit pants clung to his thighs in a nearly indecent way, and Rhys had to work to pull his attention back to his face.
“Is it okay?” Beckett asked, pulling open the button on the suit jacket and letting it fall to the sides, revealing a buttoned up double-breasted vest that wrapped around his torso like a hug.
“It’s more than okay,” Rhys answered, his throat suddenly raw.
He could feel Sebastian’s attention on him, and under his breath Sebastian teased, “Far more, indeed.”
Rhys shook off the implication and went to Beckett, pinching the hem of the jacket between his thumb and fingers and following the seam up to the lapels. He smoothed them flat and left his hands to linger against Beckett’s chest, his heart slamming wildly behind his sternum.
“Are you sure?” Beckett asked, his face nearly scarlet with embarrassment.
“Positive,” he whispered, leaning closer so their noses touched. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
