Page 53 of College Town

The driveway Tommy turns into is flanked by low stone walls, and barred by a heavy, black iron gate. There’s a keypad, and Tommy buzzes down the window and leans out to punch in the code.

There’s a speaker there, and it crackles to life, a staticky voice saying, “You went out alone.” It’s Noah, Lawson realizes.

“Yeah, tough shit,” Tommy says. He hits the green button, and the gate swings soundlessly open. “Be there in five.”

As the window buzzes back up, Lawson says, “I’m beginning to think you’re not just rich, but that you need constant babysitting, too.”

Tommy sighs, wearily, and pulls through the gate.

The driveway is pale concrete, narrow, and snaky, gliding between stands of hickory and ash. Through a half-screen of leaves, Lawson spots a wooden bridge, and a flagstone path; the glimmer of water, and a spill of frothy white flowers dappled with sunlight.

“How big is this lot?”

“Big.”

They round a bend, and the house rears up ahead, dark and towering. An artful heap of stone, crawling with ivy, its black slate roof patched with moss.

Lawson lets out a low whistle, and doesn’t have to fake being impressed. “Is this a house or a fortress?”

“Little bit of both.” Tommy steers them down and around to a drive-under garage, where one of the five doors stands open, Noah waiting with arms folded and toe tapping.

“Get out of the way, dickhead,” Tommy says to the windshield, and Noah gives them a stern, unimpressed look before he finally steps aside.

“You guys used to get along better.”

“Shit changes,” Tommy says, with more than a trace of bitterness, as he pulls in and parks. “Come on,” he says, kills the engine, and opens his door.

Lawson climbs out of the Navigator and into a garage that’s more nicely appointed than his house. The Town Car is in the next bay, something low and sleek and sporty in the one beyond that. The floor looks, impossibly, as if it’s terrazzo, and Lawson hopes it’s just a fancy epoxy job rather than the real thing, its tidy tan and white checkerboard pattern. If there are tools, they’re kept somewhere else; this garage’s walls are dedicated to ornate, dark wood storage lockers and benches; shoes lined up neatly in racks beside boot brushes and boot jacks. There’s achandelierabove each bay, rather than janky bulbs or tube lights.

When he gets caught staring, Tommy grips the edge of his sleeve and tugs.

Lawson goes.

And Noah follows them up a carpeted flight of steps, crowding in close at Lawson’s back and speaking over his shoulder at Tommy.

“Frank’s losing his mind upstairs.”

“Frank can get the hell over it.”

“The Giacolettis will know you brought Lawson here. I can’tbelieveyou–”

“Noah. Shut the fuck up.”

Noah shuts the fuck up.

“Guys,” Lawson says, between them, as the stairs continue up and up, “not that I don’t love the idea of being in the middle of a Cattaneo sandwich–”

“Ugh,” Noah says.

“But would someone like to kindly tell me what in thehellis going on? Please?”

“Tom’s being a dumbass, that’s what,” Noah says. “Itoldyou–”

Tommy’s reached the top of the stairs, and an open door. He stops in the threshold, and turns, without losing his grip on Lawson’s sleeve; it’s a short-sleeve shirt, which means his knuckles are digging bruises into the meat of Lawson’s bicep, four hot pinpricks of sensation where they touch. He tilts his head to peer around Lawson at his brother, and his gaze goes flinty. It’s chilling, that look, the flat black of his eyes in the shadowed threshold, the tightness of his jaw, the flare of his nostrils.

If Lawson didn’t know him – or used to know him – he’d be properly spooked. As it is, arousal licks up his spine and he struggles to tamp it down.

That’s the secret of their relationship that perhaps only Dana ever understood: Lawson was bigger, but Tommy ran the show. If Tommy was sweet and yielding and gave himself up to pleasure, it’s because that was exactly what Tommy wanted. And where Lawson’s concerned, Tommy always gets what he wants.

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