“Obviously, I got a tattoo.”
After Lincoln finished his inspection, he passed my arm over to Hunter, who hadn’t stopped frowning since we ran into each other in the hallway.
“First the name change, then wanting to quit your job.” Hunter returned my arm to my lap. “You’re too young to have a midlife crisis.”
“Aw.” Lincoln knocked his shoulder into mine. “It’s not a crisis. It’s…like a birth.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“You’re trying to break out of the shadow of your brothers,” he said, leaning forward to shoot a punishing look at his boyfriend. “Marshall especially, I think, but probably all of them.”
“Maybe,” I agreed.
“You could have just gotten a fish,” Hunter suggested.
“Probably would have been cheaper and less embarrassing.” I dropped my head against the back of the couch. “I passed out when we were done.”
“Shut up.” Lincoln surged into an upright position, twisting his legs until they crossed and both of his knees pressed into my thigh. “No, you didn’t.”
“I absolutely did.”
“Is that why you looked like shit at dinner?” Hunter asked.
I glared at him but sighed and nodded. “Maybe should have gotten a fish.”
Hunter lifted my arm again, inspecting what he could see of the tattoo through the bandage.
“Why don’t you go give it a wash,” he suggested.
Riggs had given me aftercare instructions on my way out the door, but I was so embarrassed about what had happened I’d tossed them on the passenger seat and not bothered to read them.
“I don’t remember what he said to do.”
“I got you,” Lincoln said, climbing to his feet and dragging me down the hallway to the guest bathroom, where I’d been headed in the first place.
He sat me down on the closed toilet and sat down between my legs, carefully picking at the medical tape and the wrap, doing his best to avoid applying any sort of pressure to my skin.
“I’ve been a bad friend, haven’t I?” he asked.
“Why would you say that?”
“The past two weeks, I’ve just…after everything happened with your brother, I’ve sort of checked out.”
“You’re very checked in with him, which is what he deserves,” I said, and I meant it.
I loved all of my brothers and they all deserved to be adored the way Lincoln adored Hunter, the way Silas worshiped Marshall. Finn was a man on his own and so was I, but he deserved it too. So did Andrew.
Lincoln didn’t have anything to say to that. He stood and pulled my arm toward the shower, then he turned on the sprayand rinsed the gunk away from my skin. The water burned like hot oil, and there was no hiding the grunt of pain when the first drops hit.
“I meant to tell you, a friend of mine took me to Rapture last weekend.”
Lincoln’s fingers went still, then he returned to rinsing my arm, but he glanced at me with a mischievous spark in his eye.
“How was that?” he asked.
“Eye opening,” I admitted. “It came up at dinner tonight. Apparently all of my brothers had been there before but me.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you the things Hunter likes in the bedroom,” he said, sounding like an apology.
