“Sorry, but I need to turn that off so I can hear the car,” I reminded him, and turned the radio off.
“Oh, right. Sorry!” Ethan looked ashamed and blushed deeper.
“It’s okay. I like their music, too.” I couldn’t help myself as I added, “And the singer? He’s really good.”
“He’s also really, really hot.”
If only you knew, buddy.
“That, he is,” I replied.
I chose a route that gave us enough turns and little traffic so I didn’t have to divide my concentration too much.
Maybe five minutes into the drive, Ethan blurted out, “You know it’s not just that you’re a wolf, right?”
I chuckled and glanced at him. “I know.”
He nodded rapidly, then exhaled with obvious relief. “I just… I don’t want to come across like… like that.”
“You don’t,” I assured, then added, “but I’m pretty sure part of all this is hero worship.”
He looked surprised. “You remember that?”
I smiled as I waited for a car to pass us at an intersection. “I do.”
A handful of years ago, I’d saved him from a bunch of homophobic assholes outside the high school he’d still gone to back then. He’d been about to graduate, but his obvious queerness had rubbed some of the jocks the wrong way.Idiots.
It had taken me showing up and them realizing I was a wolf and older than them to erm… diffuse the situation.
“Oh.” He didn’t have much more to say after that. I just hoped that he’d come to his senses.
“Okay, let’s try this turning thing again….”
He was right. Something was grinding a little around the driver’s side wheel when I turned right, and it ended up taking half an hour to fix the issue.
Ethan was more subdued when he left, but I could tell he still carried a torch. Not that I’d thought I’d extinguish it by telling him I remember the kid he used to be.
He was a grown man now, of course, and if I’d had a type he could’ve fit into it, but…. My life wasn’t that simple. Myattractionwasn’t that simple.
When I got home to the scent of something delicious being cooked in the kitchen, I smiled.
This was the home I would’ve loved to have as a kid. The one that wasn’t possible back then. For a while, we’d had a mom who wasn’t reduced into a quivering mess of bruises, but then escaped into drugs. We’d also had Brodie and Bella’s mom, who had been lovely until she’d gone a similar route. Bella had been somewhat of a big sister to Max and I, too, but with what our father had done to her… I couldn’t blame her for leaving, nor did I ever blame Brodie for running, too.
We’d done what we could after. We’d hung on to life by the skin of our teeth, but we were here now.
“Oh, hi,” Kye said when I peered into the kitchen. “Your guys are taking a nap. There was a very emotional phone call to Luca’s handler and….”
“Oh, okay.”
As I turned away, he added, “Dinner’s ready in about an hour. I forgot to turn the slow cooker on.”
Chuckling, I jogged up the stairs. I could hear the girls talking in Carys’ room, and very faint music drifted from Rian’s.
I went to the door of the room I shared with my brother and carefully slipped inside.
Max was sprawled halfway on top of Luca, who was on his back. They were both asleep, and for a solid thirty seconds, I just stood there and looked at them.
There was a comfortable ease in them like this. They were close already, and I felt like their connection was only getting deeper.
