Page 19 of Turning Tides
If I wasn’t careful, Archer could become an addiction. I wanted his touch, his words, the sound of his voice thick with arousal and heavy with approval.
“Are you coming for dinner tonight?” I asked him. The Anchor wasn’t Kieran’s favorite place, but sometimes I could convince him to come for a burger.
Kieran shook his head. “I made plans with Mom. I’m supposed to drag you over there kicking and screaming. She knows Mickey is working tonight.”
Mom ran a women’s shelter that I helped fund. One of the volunteers was a sometimes drag queen named Milo, who knew Mickey. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my mom, but I definitely wanted to see Archer more.
“Dinner at six?” I asked, knowing that she was a creature of habit.
Kieran only rolled his eyes at me. “Always is.” He set his empty cup in the sink and pulled his keys out of his pocket. “I have places to be and things to do, but I’ll see you there.”
“That wasn’t vague at all. You’re not meeting with the mob, are you?”
“You’re an idiot.”
I grinned at him. “Always.”
Kieran rattled his keys in his hand. “Don’t blow off dinner. Brodie’s birthday is coming up and I think she misses him more than she lets on. They talk, but it’s not the same.”
“Maybe I should stop funding his globetrotting and make him come home.”
Kieran barked out a laugh. “As if that stopped him before.”
“I’ll be at dinner. And I’ll see what I can do about our dear, sweet, baby brother.”
Kieran let himself out and I flopped down on my couch. When I won the money, I didn’t want to be an idiot with it and just piss it away on stupid shit like cars and boats and big fancy houses.
I bought a house and filled it with modest, but comfortable furniture. My couch was light grey and it was like sitting on a fucking marshmallow. It had easily become my favorite purchase. Before the money, I’d had an old futon with a lumpy mattress that never stayed on properly.
My couch was selected after an entire day of sitting on couches in furniture stores. When it was just me, and it usually was, I slept on my couch. I liked it better than shutting myself away in my bedroom. The bedroom was a lonely space for me. It represented things I wanted but hadn’t found. Call me a romantic, but I wanted someone to fall asleep next to every night. Someone to wrap my arms around at two in the morning when I slid into bed.
I pulled up the chats on my phone and opened the one I had going with my youngest brother. I thought about messaging him, but called instead. Maybe he’d be more apt to listen that way.
“Hey,” a deep voice, familiar, but still strange after so long just texting, answered.
“Hey, little brother. How’s… where are you?”
“In an airport. I’m heading to my next gate to catch my connection.”
“Maybe one of those connecting flights will bring you this way sometime soon. We all miss you.” I didn’t want to pull the Mom card unless I had to.
“Stranger things have happened. Is everyone okay? Is that why you’re calling?”
“Everyone’s fine. I was talking to Kieran and missed having you around to team up on him with me.”
“I’m almost at my gate. Give me some juicy gossip from home.”
“I rented the space above the bar to Cyrus’s younger brother. He’s a tattoo artist and he’ll be opening up a shop.”
I left out the part where we fucked first. I didn’t kiss and tell. And even if I did, I wanted to keep what happened to myself. I’d never been with someone who read me so well, someone who gave me what I needed so thoroughly. I’d only had him once and I felt empty knowing once was all it would be.
“Shane?”
“What?”
“Did you hear anything I said?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “No, sorry.”
