“No, you didn’t,” Ric said.
“Of course, I did. Blayne would never have been dragged into any of this if he had never met me. He would never know that any of this…whatever existed.”
“The dude doesn’t blame you for getting shot, does he?” Orr asked.
“Not at all. Blayne’s glad he got shot and not me.” Ethan looked around at his friends. In that moment, he knew this group of guys would always be there for him. They were brothers.
“Lucas, if you want to leave, now would be the time. As it is, you already know more and could have a target on your back. You have the option to walk away from all this. In fact, if anyone wishes to step back from this, feel free to do so. ZERO can always replace me—”
“Don’t even think about that,” Ric said. “I never want to hear those words from your mouth again. Is that understood?”
“I knew you had discussions about it last month when I disappeared,” Ethan said flatly. “Stephanie told me.”
“We,” Orr said, pointing around the group, “didn’t have discussions. Were there discussions? Yes. We”—he pointed at the bandmates again—“would rather have disbanded forever than replace you.”
Ethan hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear the group say this after the trouble he’d caused them the past month. He wiped a tear away from his eye.
“Okay, enough sappy shit,” Ric said. “Pile on.” He dove on top of Ethan, and the other guys followed suit. They’d done it with each other since they were in college. When someone needed to be reminded that they were brothers, they all dog piled on top.
“Clearly, I missed something,” Blayne’s voice cut through the laughter. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m here,” Ethan said from the bottom of the dog pile.
“Are you okay?” Blayne asked. From the tone of his voice, Ethan could tell Blayne wasn’t worried, so he shoved his arm between the guys on top of him and gave his boyfriend a thumbs-up.”
“Pizza?” Lucas asked. “And you’ll probably want a beer.”
The guys started rolling off Ethan. When Ric was finally off, he sat up and looked at Blayne, who had opened the pizza boxes and was investigating what the guys had brought.
Blayne sat down at the table next to Lucas, held the pizza up to his mouth and asked, “What did I miss?” before chomping down.
Lucas looked at Blayne and asked, “Did an assassin make you breakfast?”
Whatever Blayne had been expecting to hear, that clearly wasn’t it, as he immediately choked on his food. Ethan jumped up, ran to his boyfriend, and got to him just in time to see Blayne take a massive swig of the beer Lucas had handed him.
“I told you you’d need a beer,” Lucas said.
“You told them?” Blayne asked, looking at Ethan.
“It kind of came pouring out of me. At first, they thought you were beating me up or using me as your sex slave, so telling them what was happening seemed like a lesser evil.”
There was a knock at the front door.
“Are we being too loud?” Orr asked. “We’ve had hotel security called on us a few times for that. Once someone swore we were having some wild orgy, we were just gaming and got a little louder than we should have.”
“I’ll get it,” Zach said.
He popped off the couch and was already heading to the door when Ethan and Blayne yelled “No!” in unison.
They jumped out of their seats when they heard the front door open, and Kira’s voice said, “Oh! Not who I expected.”
Ethan rounded the entryway just as Blayne did. “Oh, thank God,” Blayne muttered. “It’s just you.”
“What kind of fucked up welcome is that?”
“He was probably afraid it was one of your new assassin friends,” Zach said as he closed the door behind Kira.
Kira shot them a look.
