He came close with the last woman he dated. They made it to the third date before he brought her home to meet Josh, and he thought they’d hit it off. When Josh had stepped away to go to the bathroom, she asked Riley if he had any interest in a threesome. Apparently, Riley alone wasn’t enough for her.
That wasn’t the worst part, though. Thinking about her touching Josh,hisJosh, and watching Josh touch her had him seeing red. They’d had a threesome before, but it wasn’t something he was interested in repeating. He told her he didn’t think things would work out after all and asked her to leave. But not before she hit on Joshafter he returned from the bathroom.
The poor guy was so confused and didn’t understand why she’d want to bother with him when she had Riley. After that, she left pretty quickly. Good riddance. If only there was a woman out there who understood him like Josh did, but he doubted it.
“Okay, I guess that does sound a little creepy and threatening. Are you gonna hacktivize him?”
Riley chuckled at Josh’s attempt to make a verb out of the word "hacktivist." He'd adopted the hobby as he watched the world continue to crumble around them, using his computer skills to help others as much as he could. Hacking into an organization’s website to draw attention to the holes in their cybersecurity so they could fix them and taking down scammers who had wreaked havoc on people who didn’t deserve it was the least he could do.
Ever since he could remember, he had felt these competing rushes of adrenaline and contentment whenever he helped someone. It all started with Josh, as Riley would race to his aid on the playground when other kids teased him for looking nothing like his parents. If Riley remembered correctly, the first time he hit a kid was when they were six and some jerk had kicked Josh off the swings, telling him to go back to Japan.
Riley stormed right up to him and shoutedHe’s from China, numbnuts, and shoved him so he fellbackward off the swing and landed in the mulch underneath. Josh thanked him with a hug and it lit Riley up inside.
From then on, he made a vow to himself to protect Josh from all the bullies of the world. At the age of thirty, he was well aware that he had a savior complex, but he figured if he was doing good, then it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Anyone who didn’t deserve it, anyway.
Riley wasn’t sure which category CJ Rollins fell into. But, he was going to keep a close eye on him.
“Nah, he isn’t doing anything wrong, but I think I might go into detective mode on this one. It feels like a mystery. If it turns into something else, I could always fall back on those skills.”
Josh gave him a squeeze, still settled against him, and the spicy aroma of his deodorant invaded his senses.
“You got this, man,” he said, then deepened his voice. “Become the Batman!”
Riley may have, on occasion, pretended to be Batman when he went on his hacking crusades. He was one of the best detectives of all time, after all.
“Yeah, I’ll definitely be looking at his emails more closely from now on.”
Josh made no move to get back to work and instead focused on the television.
The screen blared an advertisement for a fitness center that had recently undergone a change in management, boasting about their two floors of workout equipmentand classes. A guy who looked like a fitness model in tight workout gear appeared on the screen touting the changes coming to the gym, including a salt water pool. The place was a couple towns over, about thirty minutes’ drive from Cherrywood, but Riley wondered if Tobias had to worry about losing members to them.
“I don’t think I would trust that guy with my fitness,” Josh muttered. “There’s something off about him. And he’s way too pretty.”
A niggling discomfort hit Riley’s gut at Josh’s comment. He blamed it on the way Josh showed… discomfort watching the rest of the commercial.
“Are your empath powers tingling?” he asked. Josh had an uncanny ability to read people. He may not have book smarts, but he understood people and could see through a false persona so easily.
“Yeah, but I don’t know why. Anyway, what time is your sister coming tonight?”
“She’ll be here at six.” He paused, checking the time on his laptop screen. “Only an hour. We better get started on making dinner.”
“What are we attempting tonight?”
Riley clicked over to a different tab on his screen, revealing a list of wild recipes they wanted to try. They were slowly making their way through it as an excuse to broaden both their cooking skills and their variety in food. It led to some delicious and disastrous experiments.
“I got things to make the chipotle barbecue chicken tacos. Should be a fun one.”
“To the kitchen, chefs!” Josh shouted as he pulled them both off the couch. Riley barely had enough time to put his laptop aside as they stumbled into their kitchen to tackle their next culinary quest.
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Sophie Hanson was a frenzied ball of chaos when she breezed through their door an hour later. When they were growing up, Riley called her Taz, like the Tasmanian Devil, because she walked through a room the exact same way.
Riley and Josh had just finished setting the table when she entered.
“Insane day at work,” she said by way of greeting, throwing her coat toward the couch and dropping her purse and work bag in a pile by the front door. “I had to fire my assistant because, get this, I caught her texting and harassing the players after she stole the team contact list from my computer. Then I find out the hall-of-fame goalie who has been playing in our alumni game for years had to drop out of our home game because his daughter decided to schedule her wedding the same day as the game, and I have to replace him, and, on top of all of that, my monthly came early and may have ruined myfavorite underwear.”
There was a concerned expression on Josh’s face as he listened to Sophie’s tirade, but all Riley felt was amusement at his sister’s dramatics. Josh moved forward to offer her a hug hello, Riley following with his own.
