Page 68 of Dead Serious with Benefits
“Don’t worry, he’s not hitting on you,” I said, making Dom give me a dirty look. We both knew he was acting strange about the compliment, not because he was worried Ward was trying to get into his pants.
“Hitting on you in front of Arlo would be in exceptionally poor taste,” Ward said brightly. “Fine me later.”
Dom stared at him with a blank expression. “I don’t do dudes...usually.”
Ward laughed, missing the surprise on my face because Dom had admitted one of his more closely guarded secrets so casually. “Usually? Well, alright. I can understand that...no, scratch that, I don’t understand it.”
“He’s a man of many tastes,” I explained at Dom’s confused expression. “Mason.”
“Oh,” Dom grunted and then nodded. “That makes more sense.”
“Another sibling?” Ward guessed.
“Yes,” I said as I took the bacon out of the pan and layered it with stacks of paper towels on a plate. “He and Moira are the oldest siblings, twins, and Matilda’s firstborns. Next oldest is me, followed by Dom, both of us were adopted by Matilda and her husband, Marcus.”
“My parents died in an accident while they were on vacation,” Dom explained. “My mom and Matty were bestfriends growing up. So I guess it was an easy choice for her to take me on. It made things easier for me since I already knew Matty, Mason, and Moira.”
“And I was taken out of the foster care system like I explained before,” I added as I grabbed the eggs to crack into the pan. “Elijah is Marcus’s son from a previous marriage, and Milo was the last in line. Matilda had him before she met Marcus, with Marshall.”
“Just...how many M names are there in your family?” Ward wondered.
Dom and I’s eyes met. We stared at one another before turning back to Ward, and I laughed. “You know, I’d never given it any thought before. But I suppose we do have a few, don’t we?”
Ward chuckled. “Funny the things we miss until some outsider comes along and points it out. And you grew up in a hotel?”
“Since we were adopted, yes,” I explained.
“That had to be an interesting way to grow up,” Ward mused.
I nodded, taking the spatula and shifting the eggs around. “It was unique, at least I thought so. But all in all, I’d say it was a normal, perfectly happy family.”
One of the eggs was stuck to the bottom of the pan, and I sighed, leaning forward to scrape at it. The pan sizzled and popped, and I jerked when light flashed before me, and I jumped back with a yelp as flames spread across the pan toward my face. I fell backward, caught by someone as my face ached and I cursed. Half hanging in their arms, I peered at the pan, seeing flames leap up as Dom jumped forward with a lid and slammed it down over the fire.
“Jesus Christ!” Ward hissed as he smacked at my head. “How the hell did you manage that?”
“Good question,” I said, touching my face and wincing at the tenderness. “How bad is it?”
Dom whirled around and looked me over. “Well, you’ve got a bit of a sunburn from the looks of it, and uh...well, your eyebrows are...mostly there. Gonna need a haircut though.”
Sighing, I tried to pick myself up, which required some help from Ward, who got me on my feet with a shove and a yank. “That was...unfortunate.”
“That was ridiculous, is what it was,” Ward said with a huff. “How did that even happen? It’s an electric stove.”
“There was plenty of grease from the bacon,” I said, taking my phone off the counter and turning on the front-facing camera. I winced at the sight looking back at me. Half of my eyebrow on one side was gone, and the front of my hair looked like I was going bald. “Most unfortunate. Over the weekend, I’ll have to look for someone who can make me presentable. There is no way I can go to work looking like this.”
“Better that than what could have been,” Dom muttered, flipping off the heat and shifting the pan off the burner. “What’s that noise?”
“My phone,” Ward said, leaning down to touch my face and sigh. “Well, I’ve seen worse.”
“I would expect, in my line of work, that to be something I would say,” I said grimly.
“There was a party I went to once, all the way down in Miami, not my party, mind you. Someone decided it was a perfectly reasonable idea to allow people to do bath salts, if you remember that trend.”
“Jesus, I remember that,” Dom muttered, picking up the lid carefully, and after confirming there was no fire, set it aside. “People did the craziest shit on that stuff. Night of the Living Dead kind of shit.”
“Among other things,” Ward said, distaste thick in his voice. “One fine gentleman decided he was immune to fire, or at least that’s the conclusion I came to, since I never actually heardhis reasoning for walking through that bonfire. The results were...well, you smell much better than him, though the memory put me off pork for quite some time.”
“Jesus Christ,” Dom barked out a laugh. “That’s fucked up, man.”
