Page 70 of Moonstruck
Zane let his head drop to Asa’s chest, listening to the solid thud of his heart beneath his ear. “No. It would be nice to have a family who actually likes me and wants me around.”
Zane felt a little like he was going to cry when Asa said, “I want you.”
Fingers began to thread through Zane’s hair once more and he found his lids growing heavy. “My father likes you. Noah, Lucas, and Jericho will be allies. They remember what it was like to be the new guy. My brothers don’t really like people so much as tolerate them, so that’s as good as you’ll get with that. And Avi… Avi will come around.”
Zane rubbed his face against Asa’s t-shirt, the warmth of his body lulling him to sleep. “I hope so.”
“Let me worry about that.”
Zane nodded. “Okay… I’m going to be really hungover tomorrow, aren’t I?”
Asa chuckled, pulling the blanket from the back of the couch onto the both of them. “Oh, yeah. But I’ve got you, Lois. I promise.”
Asa had woken with Avi on his mind and a skull-splitting headache. They’d been apart too long. Was he feeling it, too? Maybe it was all the talk of Avi between Asa and Zane last night. Maybe the distraction of Zane was no longer the buffer it had been. His near constant presence made Avi’s absence feel even bigger.
Asa buried his face against Zane’s neck, smiling when his head tilted to give him better access. “Time to get up, Lois.”
“I’m totally awake,” he grumbled, voice sleep-soaked.
“That’s what you said when I scraped you off the bathroom floor at five a.m.—”
“A gentleman wouldn’t bring that up,” Zane rasped.
“A gentleman wouldn’t bring up that you weigh a lot more when my dick isn’t buried inside you.”
Zane crushed his face deeper into the pillow. “That’s scientifically inaccurate.”
“Whatever you say, Lois, but it’s a good thing I don’t skip leg day.”
“Shh,” Zane said, holding up a finger. “I’m awake. I mean it.”
“And that’s what you said when I woke you up at six-thirty to drink water. And again, at seven, when I made you take ibuprofen.”
Zane squirmed away from him to do one of those big joint-popping stretches he did every time he woke up, then rolled back into Asa’s arms, facing him. “Maybe I’d be more well rested if you’d stop waking me up.”
Asa bit the tip of Zane’s nose. “Maybe I wouldn’t have had to wake you up so many times if you hadn’t drank a liquor store,” Asa countered.
Zane buried his face against Asa’s bare chest, wiggling his knee between his thighs, clearly intent on going back to sleep. “This is nice,” he murmured with a contented sigh.
“Uh-uh. No time for that, sleepyhead. We have to go to my dad’s.”
Zane leaned back, cracking open painfully bloodshot eyes. He had drool dried on his face, his hair was a wreck, and he smelled like vomit and stale vodka, but if given the opportunity, Asa would have gathered him back into his arms and let him sleep off his hangover.
“Did somebody call?”
“Yeah, Lucas and August worked up victimology, and they want us to meet at Dad’s house so we can help narrow it down.”
“How am I supposed to leave the house like this?” Zane asked pitifully.
“Buck up, little camper. We could finally be close to solving this thing, and that means we can finally get with the killing. That’s the fun part.”
Zane stared at him for so long, Asa thought, for a minute, he’d broken him somehow. Then, finally, he said, “Did you ask me to fuck your brother last night?”
Asa blinked at him, dumbfounded. “Well, that was a hell of a non sequitur, Lois. No, I absolutely didnotask you to fuck my brother. Which, by the way, is a sentence I never expected to utter out loud.”
“Did I imagine that?” Zane said. “God, that’s embarrassing.”
“No, what I said was that my brother and I have shared…bedmates…in the past, and then you asked if I expected you to have sex with my brother.”
