“Bon appétit.” Lucas bowed, grabbed a chair from against the wall, and sat on Riley’s other side.
For a few seconds, everyone was quiet. Then, beside me, I heard a soft, “Holy shit.”
I grinned wide at Landon as he licked a string of cheese off his bottom lip.
“Good, right? This place is my favorite.”
I picked an extra big piece, and not even that first perfectly greasy, sharp, cheesy bite was enough to distract me from Landon’s little, “I know.”
CHAPTER 7
LANDON
It turned out that Lucas’s brother was sort of a mainstay at work events—pizza night and trivia night and swinging by randomly to take his brother out for lunch.
Not that it bothered me to see him. He was... he was gorgeous. Plus, as fucked up as it was, the shivery little feeling of a predator watching me didn’t bother me at all.
But nope.
That wasn’t okay.
Lucas had asked me to come to this thing, and while I wouldn’t—couldn’t—get involved with Lucas, I also wasn’t going to be that guy who came between two brothers. It simply wasn’t going to happen.
So I sort of avoided Dean.
Okay, no, I didn’t. I avoided meeting his eye, and then stared at him when he wasn’t looking.
Not creepy at all.
He showed up before me for trivia night on Thursday, and by the time Lucas and I got there, he had already ordered us drinks.
Lucas utterly beamed, like his brother had gotten him a brand-new car instead of just a beer. It was super sweet, and made me wonder if maybe they’d been going through a roughpatch, and that was why the whole group of Crescent employees had sort of adopted Dean into the fold.
Regardless, I wasn’t going to be that guy.
Not ever.
No matter how pretty Dean was, and how much anything between me and Lucas was impossible.
Trivia night was still fun, with a mix of questions that ranged from sports stuff I couldn’t have figured out if they’d given me the answer, to fun things I kind of wanted to have conversations about. Like Pluto’s sister-planet, Eris, and whether they should both be reclassified as planets—the answer was yes.
I was a fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson and all, but he was totally wrong about this.
I decidedly did not stare after Dean when he got up to go to the bathroom partway through the night. His tight black jeans and broad, muscled back. The heathered-gray T-shirt he wore clung to his shoulders spectacularly. He wasn’t exactly my type, quiet and self-assured and heartbreakingly beautiful, his dark eyes filled with whole worlds of emotion I wanted to hear all about.
Normally, I wound up with guys who weren’t half as confident as they seemed, and it was a quick slope between posturing and assholery.
“He’s cute, huh?” Lucas asked, leaning into me till our shoulders touched.
I almost jumped, turning to look at him. “What?”
“My brother,” he said, motioning toward where Dean had disappeared into the back hall. “Everyone always says so. He’s cute. Or, like, he’s broody and something, something James Dean, blah blah blah. I stop listening once I realize they want to sit in my brother’s lap, ’cause you know, gross. Brother.”
For a moment, I just blinked at him, feeling ridiculous and wrong-footed. “He’s... I mean, he’s your brother.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, well I’m not the one staring at his ass.” He stopped, sitting up straight and blinking, then shaking his head hard, like his brain was one of those kid toys and he could erase a picture in there if he shook it hard enough. “Gross. Anyway. Brother.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Brother. I...” I bit my lip, looking at him, wondering if I’d been reading the whole situation wrong. “My brother is going to marry my ex-fiancé.”
