Page 33 of Toren

He chuckled, rolling over to grab the phone. “You need salt.”

Toren called room service, ordered some hashbrowns, bacon, and orange juice. The thought of getting out of bed to make coffee in the small pot on the dresser sounded worse than cutting his own arm off so he ordered a fresh pot as well. Andrew made a pleased sound in the back of his throat and shimmied up so his cheek rested on Toren’s shoulder.

“How was dinner?” he asked.

“Good. They’re all good, you know?”

Toren worried his lower lip. “I don’t think Riggs would date someone who wasn’t, so I have to say at least Smith is.”

“Smith is so sweet, Toren. He idolizes Marshall so much and wants to be like him but was trying so hard to not lose himself.”

Toren hummed, appreciating that struggle. He’d felt very much like losing himself after losing his brother.

“I still haven’t met Marshall.”

“Soon,” Andrew said.

He yawned. “And what about the rest of them? Finn and Hunter?”

“Yeah, they’re the same age. Hunter is really serious, and Finn is a golden retriever shoved into the body of a black cat.”

“He’s the one with a boyfriend and a girlfriend?” Toren asked.

“They all wear rings so I’m not sure it’s that casual, but yeah.” Andrew stretched his limbs, pressing his toes against Toren’s ankle. “We think there’s at least one other brother.”

“It is curious how you’re all scattered to the wind.”

Toren, having grown up with not just a brother but a twin had wondered how unsettling it must be to know there were bits and pieces of you floating around in the world, unknown and untethered. It was a life he couldn’t imagine, but from what Andrew had told him, he had taken things in stride.

“I’m jealous sometimes that they were all raised together for the most part and I wasn’t.”

“Your mom loved you more than money.”

Andrew shrugged, any rebuttal interrupted by a knock on the door and a call for room service. Toren moved to get out of bed, but Andrew shoved him back down.

“Wait here.”

Toren didn’t need to be told twice to not leave the comfort of the warm and borrowed bed. He closed his eyes and listened to Andrew speak with the hotel employee and bring breakfast into the room. He climbed back into bed, downing the orange juice before Toren had a chance to pour them both coffee. He tore into the bacon next, and Toren arranged himself against the headboard with a content sigh.

“Your life would have been different if you’d been raised with them, but if that happened, you wouldn’t be here with me right now, chewing that fatty bacon and wondering when I’m going to have my first cigarette of the day,” Toren said.

Andrew’s cheeks flushed a violent shade of pink, and he folded the rest of the bacon strip into his mouth, chewing without confirming or denying that was the case. Toren didn’t need to hear it to know it was the truth, though. He grabbed his own strip of bacon and bit into it, smiling innocently at Andrew.

“That’s true,” Andrew agreed.

“And maybe it’s better to know people later in life. Riggs now isn’t anything like the Riggs my brother fell in love with.”

“Really?”

“He’s more himself now, I think. More himself with Smith maybe than he was with Ev, and that pains me to say. They were great together, but…I don’t know.”

It was one of the things Toren had struggled with the most since coming back into Riggs’s life. He couldn’t find fault with Smith, nor with the carefree way Riggs engaged him. Things between Riggs and his brother had always been so serious, so strained. Happy, but…

“You look like you need a smoke,” Andrew murmured.

Toren scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I’ll go outside and have a smoke, then.”

He had on his underwear, and he kicked the sheets out of the way while balancing his coffee in one hand and grabbing his cigarettes and cell phone with the other.