Page 32 of Spring Fling
The ride all the way back to Teresa’s was pure torture. I crammed myself into the back of Shawn’s car with Aiden, and all I wantedto do was touch him. Would it be obvious? We’d been affectionate before. Fuck, it was weird now. Why the hell had we made it weird?
“Joe?”
I almost missed Aiden’s whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
Hell, I probably looked like a twitchy idiot. I’d been so worried about if Aiden could handle this and it hadn’t crossed my mind that I would be the one who was fucked up about everything.
Once the car pulled up outside of my sister’s house, it hadn’t occurred to me I hadn’t answered him yet. My door was open, and I was halfway onto the sidewalk before his hand grasped my arm. Uncertainty sat heavily behind his eyes, and I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the car, press my lips to his, and let him know that this was fine. Everything was fine. But nothing was, in fact, fine.
“Joe?”
I gave him the best smile I could, even though I wasn’t feeling it. The trunk popped open, and I pulled my luggage out, heading to the front door of the house where my niece came running out onto the porch to greet me.
“Uncle Joe! You’re home. Don’t ever leave me again. Did you bring me a present? You promised me something.”
I chuckled at McKenzie’s enthusiasm, but something gross unfurled in my stomach at the sound of Shawn driving away. It hadbeen shitty that I hadn’t even said goodbye to Aiden. Hopefully, he’d understand that my head wasn’t on completely straight. I’d call him later and try to explain.
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, McBug. I got something really nice for you. First, I need to get my stuff inside so that I can unpack it for you, okay?”
She squealed in excitement, peeling around the front door and into the house. Teresa stood there, a small smile on her face. “How was it? Everything go okay?”
It was as if my sister knew that not everything was right, but not the depth of what all was going on. Without questioning it, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. “Oh, baby brother. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Chapter 21
Aiden
“Aiden, get your ass in here!”
I groaned and rolled out of bed. Why the hell was Nathan at Mom and Dad’s house? All I wanted to do was rest. I still couldn’t wrap my head around how fucking weird it was when we’d dropped off Joe. He hadn’t even said goodbye.
We’d talked about things and I thought we’d settled on continuing to pursue things when we got back home, but maybe this was how we did that. Neither of us wanted Nathan to know about it yet because he’d been pretty adamant about Joe keeping his hands off of me.
“There he is. Glad to see you’re alive.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Nathan.”
It was good to see Chase. It made me feel a bit better about the way my brother stood with his arms crossed over his chest, like he was ready to tear me apart for all the stupid decisions I’d made this last week.
“Still alive. You know, you’d think you’d trust your friends a little more.”
Nathan threw his hands in the air. “I do trust my friends. But this is you we’re talking about. You’re my little brother, and Joe has a reputation. As much as I love the guy, I don’t want you to be a part of that.”
I sighed as my shoulders slouched in defeat. “You’re right, but don’t worry. He’s a better guy than you give him credit for. We had fun, but he made sure I was responsible about it.”
Nathan’s eyebrow rose. “The words responsible and Joe don’t belong in the same sentence.”
I only shrugged. “Maybe that was the case while you all were still in college. People change.”
Before my brother could say anything else, his boyfriend stopped him by placing a hand on his chest and pushing him back down onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter.
“Did you at least get to do anything cool?” Chase asked. The poor guy had never left the Washington coast until he moved to Seattle to be with my brother, so he lived vicariously through everyone else.
A grin spread across my face as I thought about some things I’d gotten to do over the last week. “We went parasailing one day. Then there was the day we went on a historic tour. That was really neat, but the best part was the rape dolphins.”
