Page 38 of Toren

He’d been wrong.

It wasn’t Marshall coming up the stairs; it was somehow worse. It was a man he’d seen before on One Night Stand, a man who looked just like Marshall must have before he hit thirty and started to gray around his temples, a man who didn’t have the Covington name, like Andrew, but certainly had to carry Covington blood.

“Leaving so early?” Donovan—not Marshall—teased.

“Yeah,” Toren answered sheepishly.

“Is this the infamous Andrew?”

Andrew’s mind cleared enough for his cock to go soft and his brain to stop his mouth from saying something stupid.

“Andrew Calavert,” he answered, nodding slowly. “And you must be Donovan Coleman.”

“I didn’t think I told you his full name,” Toren murmured. “Do you know each other?”

Andrew traced his tongue across the front of his teeth. All his plans for the night went up in smoke when Donovan’s mouth twitched, and it was all Finn, that wry smile he had when he didn’t want to admit he’d lost the upper hand.

“I think you have me at a disadvantage.” Donovan tilted his head to the side, pale blue eyes flickering from Toren to him and back again. “Do we know each other separate of Toren here?”

“Well. That’s…kind of complicated.”

CHAPTER 13

Toren

Five minutes later, the three of them were upstairs in one of the private playrooms, lights on and door closed. Toren sat on the couch and Donovan leaned against the wall while Andrew paced like he’d seen a ghost, scrubbing a hand down his face. Toren had never seen Andrew so frazzled, and he beckoned him to the couch. Andrew obliged, sinking into the overstuffed cushions and resting his elbows on his knees.

“How is it complicated?” Donovan asked, calm and collected as he ever was.

“I deleted it,” Andrew muttered under his breath, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone but not doing anything with it. He looked at Donovan. “You’re the one who found me on the app, right? One Night Stand.”

Donovan nodded.

“I found you on there a few months ago,” Andrew said. “Deleted the app now, though.”

“I know,” Donovan said. “But I’m sure you’ve found other people on the app. I’m not understanding why I’m an outlier worthy of this sort of reaction.”

Andrew finally clicked the button on the side of his phone to wake the device up and Toren watched over his shoulder while Andrew scrolled through gallery photos before picking one and enlarging it. Toren saw it first, and the resemblance between the man on the screen and Toren’s best friend was uncanny. Same floppy dark hair, same intense blue eyes, same long nose and high cheekbones, but the man on the screen was older, a bit of gray at his temples, some wrinkles around the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

“Who?” Toren murmured, taking the phone out of Andrew’s hand to look at the image close up.

With an unimpressed sigh, Donovan abandoned his post against the wall and joined them, sitting down on a low table so he was face to face with them both. Toren passed the phone to Donovan, studying his expression when he looked at the picture. The way he reeled back slightly at first before zooming in, the way he squinted his eyes and created the same pattern of wrinkles in the picture.

“Who is this?” Donovan asked.

“My brother, Marshall,” Andrew answered, blowing a long breath up toward the ceiling. “He’s my half-brother. There’s…there’s five of us that we know of. Maybe more. Probably more. Our father, he⁠—”

“Wasn’t around,” Donovan guessed.

Andrew nodded, and Toren patted his hand on his thigh for support.

“I found your profile and showed it to them. You look so much like Marshall, we thought for sure you’re related to us, but…” He trailed off, worrying the inside of his cheek hard enough to hollow it. Toren tapped the divot and he let go.

“My father was never around,” Donovan said, brow furrowed. He handed the phone back to Andrew. “My mom raised me.”

“Me and my brothers, our father…God. He bought us, essentially. Well, them. I didn’t find out about any of it until my mother passed away, but the other four of them grew up together.”

“What do you mean he bought them?” Donovan asked.