And then he saw that Ernie had buried his face against Burton’s knee and was trying to pull in air using deep, shuddery breaths.
“It was a bad time,” Burton said softly, glancing up at him. “Maybe someday we’ll tell you, but right now we need to talk about something else before they come back inside.”
“Fair,” Eric said. “Uhm, so do you think I’ll be able to move in before it starts to get hot?”
Burton blinked. “Oh. Yeah! Jason, you got the keys to the places, right?”
Jason grunted. “Yeah. Your shit’s still going through escrow, but it would be better if you could park the RV next to the house and put a car in the driveway instead. I’ll bring you keys and have one of the boys set all your meters up. You can probably start ordering furniture right now.”
Eric brightened. “Would I get kicked out of the circle if I ordered a porch swing?”
Burton chuckled. “No, but you’ll probably need some serious sun shades around it, and maybe some misters. I’d even say build a lattice and plant something unkillable to climb it to shade the entrance. Your place’ll get the morning sun like a giant fuck-you, but in the evening, with some shading, it should be almost pleasant.”
There was some relieved laughter then, and Eric was pleased he’d picked the right subject.
“Until July and August,” Jason chimed in. “And then I expect you all to be living in the pool.”
“Oh my God, yes,” Ernie muttered. “Including in the middle of the night—I hope you don’t shoot first, ask questions later.”
“That’s what all the outside cameras are for,” Cotton said, sounding happy to contribute to the conversation. “So no sex.” He gave such a wholesome smile then that Eric—and everybody else in the room—stared at him in shock.
Cotton stared back, absolutely unflappable. “I worked in adult film,” he explained patiently, as though they were all college students. “My boss used to fly batches of us out to Florida to film us having sex in, near, or floating on top of the pool. All I’m saying is, this isn’t Florida, and it’s not porn.”
“Fair enough,” Eric said, trying hard not to laugh.
“They are all practically virgins,” Jai said in disgust, rolling his eyes in sympathy with Cotton. “Look at them. It had occurred to nobody until you opened your mouth.”
The double entendre hit and hit hard, and when Brady walked back in, the whole room,exceptfor Cotton, was in a contortion of suppressed laughter.
Eric saw Brady, though, and sat up quickly, taking in his expression, his posture, his eye contact—anything,anything, to tell him if he’d just been betrayed, one more time, by a man he’d taken to bed.
But Brady simply took them all in, like a schoolteacher trying to make a guess as to what his students had been doing while he’d been gone.
Ace walked in behind him, took in the room, and asked, “’Sup?”
Jai grunted. “It is sex,” he said, shaking his head. “Americans and sex. It is always sex.”
And that set them off. A room full of serious, hardened men—no puns intended, almost ever—and they went off. Jason rubbed his eyes like the CO he was who knew he’d lost his troops, and Burton covered his mouth, laughing behind his hand. Jai’s wicked chuckle rumbled the floorboards, while Ernie threw his head back against Burton’s knees and whooped, and Cottonburbled, one of the most wholesome sounds Eric had ever heard.
And Eric met Brady’s bemused gaze andlaughed, as he hadn’t laughed since he’d been in high school, surprised to find he couldstilllaugh like a schoolkid, and that something as pureas a dirty joke and a tense situation could cause this giddy sense of relief.
Brady and Ace both chuckled, having caught the contagion of laughter, and resumed their original positions, cross-legged in front of the coffee table. Brady picked up what was left of his donut and ate contemplatively as he waited for the rest of the room to compose itself, and Ace took a sip of coffee.
Brady met Eric’s eyes and gave him a brief, welcome touch on the knee.
In a held breath, Eric saw his acceptance, at least of the things he knew, realized he hadn’t been betrayed—at least not yet—and covered Brady’s hand with his own, fleetingly, his heart stopping with the sweetness of Brady’s smile.
In a moment they all seemed to heave a collective breath, and it was time to soldier on.
“So what do you think happened to your FBI friend?” Jason asked as they were suddenly all right there in the moment.
“I think somebody got to her,” Brady said. “I’m not sure who. If she was solid, maybe they threatened her family. I swear—she didn’t bat an eyelash when I told her about the phone, or about the brother and the connection.” He dragged his hands through his hair, and while Eric fought a flashback to the night before when he’d knotted his own fingers in the somewhat shaggy mess and held Brady to his cock, Brady let out a chuff of air. “I was so confident when I left, you know?” he said, asking for absolution. “Cuthbert was dirty, he had the phone, and here was… I don’t know. A grown-up in the room. And I thought, ‘Yes! I have turned this giant problem over to the grown-up in the room, andshewill know what to do with it!’”
He glanced around at the sympathetic faces, and then slowly, like the sun rising, he seemed to understand.
“None of you all have had the grown-up in the room for a very long time, have you?”
“I was a late bloomer,” Constance said, his voice hard. “I thought I had a functional grown-up until this fall, when it tried to kill us.” He squeezed Cotton’s shoulder. “But yes. I’d wager most of the people in this room lost their grown-up at a much younger age.”
