Page 25 of Toren

That was a loaded question, because for the most part, Andrew saw parts of them in each other. He struggled most of the time to fit himself into their equation, to understand the way they were all connected, and for the first time in a very long time, he thought about the man he’d stumbled across on the dating app before he and Dave had reconnected.

Donovan looked so much like his oldest brother, Marshall, and the rest of them had agreed, but everyone decided it was best not to reach out. They could have been wrong, and there was a stronger possibility it was a fluke of genetics rather than another half-brother running around. Now he’d deleted the app, so he couldn’t even go back and check for himself, examine the similarities.

“Sometimes in Finn,” Andrew admitted. “Smith is certainly the most earnest, the most hopeful. Hunter is the most levelheaded, apart from Marshall. Finn is a bit of a loaded gun, but his bluster is mostly an act, I think.”

Andrew had seen a shift in his brother, from the way he’d been the night they met for the first time to the way he’d been on Friday with his partners on either side of him. Love had changed Finn and settled him, and Andrew felt that pull in his own heart. The need of it, if nothing else.

“You’re full of hope,” Holt teased, knocking his elbow against Andrew’s arm. “Or you wouldn’t have taken Dave back a second time.”

Sawyer barked out a laugh, and Andrew groaned, dropping his head back to stare at the ceiling.

“A lapse in judgment,” he agreed. “I won’t make the same mistake a third time.”

“Are you ever going to introduce us to your brothers?” Holt asked, sipping his beer like the question was anything other than casual.

“Did you want to meet them?”

“Of course.”

“We want to meet Toren too,” Sawyer chimed in.

Andrew waved him off.

“If you’re serious about him, I’m serious about wanting to meet him.”

“You’re not my boss,” Andrew said.

“Maybe if you had a boss of you, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Andrew climbed off the barstool and gave Sawyer the finger. “We aren’t in any mess.”

He gestured for both of them to follow him outside. He only had two chairs at the small table, but Holt snagged a cushion off a chair on his way out and tossed it into the grass. The three of them sat down, the air outside nice and calm, the promise of a warm summer.

“I do like him,” Andrew said quietly, scratching the side of his nose.

“Of course you do.”

He rubbed the lip of the beer bottle against his lower lip, thinking of Toren sitting in the chair Sawyer now occupied, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and the contentment that came from being freshly fucked on his face. Andrew had to close his eyes to stop his expression from shifting into something that betrayed his train of thought, but Sawyer, as usual, caught the shift anyway.

“It’s got to be more than sex if you want it to work.”

“Yeah, but can’t it be just sex for now?” He threw a sidelong glance at his best friend and finished his beer, the silent statement loud enough for all three of them to understand.

Whatever was going on between him and Toren was already way more than just sex.

CHAPTER 9

Toren

Friday night, Toren showed up at Andrew’s house as soon as he got off work. He’d packed himself clothes so he could go straight there, and the relief he felt at seeing Andrew open the door proved he’d made the right decision. The attraction was somehow stronger than it was before, and they were on each other as soon as Toren stepped inside. Andrew shoved the door closed and pressed Toren against it, his hands roaming up Toren’s sides while their tongues tangled together between their lips.

“How did it go?” Toren murmured, head landing against the door when Andrew broke away from his mouth to kiss his way down the side of Toren’s neck.

“Caught him with another man.”

Toren shivered. That could have been them.

Andrew chuckled against his ear. “You like that.”