“Sure.” The quiet one quirked an eyebrow, waving his hand for the first guy to continue.
“The Lodge is the same way,” he explained. I cocked my head to the side, letting out a huff of
laughter as I realized the guy might be onto something here. “When you first walk in, it seems like a
normal club with a chill vibe. But then…” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Party in the rear.”
I quickly snatched a stack of napkins and a damp rag when his friend started choking on his soda.
He jerked his head in thanks, unable to verbalize his appreciation while he coughed and sputtered.
“You just had to say rear, didn’t you?”
The first guy nodded. “Seemed logical to me.”
“Jerk.”
“But you love me anyway.”
“If you say so.” Guy one started shredding the napkin, creating a small pile of scraps on the
counter. His shoulders hunched as he curled in on himself. “And it doesn’t gross you out? I don’t
know if I could even come to a place like this if anyone I knew was there.”
“Nah, we have a pretty open family,” guy two explained. “It was never a secret that he was gay,
and I wasn’t really surprised when I overheard him talking to Jack about working here after he got
out.”
“Jack?”
“The owner,” guy two clarified. “They were friends when they were kids, and every time my
uncle came home, Jack was there. For a while, I thought they might be together.”
“They weren’t?”
Guy two threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, hell no! Now that I know more, it’s obvious the
two of them would have killed each other as a couple.”
“Why’s that?”
“They’re too much alike.” I kept my head down and pressed my lips together to keep from
laughing my ass off. Jack and William were nothing alike. Jack was a workaholic who needed to
learn to take a step back, and William was… Well, William struck me as a drifter who didn’t want to
be tied to anyone or anything. “If they’d tried hooking up, it would have ended in disaster. They’d
have been fighting the whole time, trying to figure out who was going to be in charge.”
This time, a small laugh did escape. The guy wasn’t wrong in that sense; Jack and William
wrestling for power would be hot as hell to watch but the results wouldn’t be pretty. When I looked
