by Mia Ashlinn
“I understand you’re concerned,” Brooklyn replied in a too-polite, almost-clinical voice.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Brett snarled. “I’m not concerned.” No, concerned was far too tame a word for what he was. “I’m pissed. I’m worried. I’m confused, and I want to know what the hell is going on. Since you’re the only person who knows a damn thing, I suggest you start talking. Now.”
Brooklyn didn’t acknowledge him or his angry outburst as she continued on, “Sam is his own man, and he’s decided it’s time to move on—alone. If he changes his mind, he’ll come back. And if he wants to talk to you two, I’ll be the first to let you know.”
Fuck no. This was not happening. Sam wasn’t gone, and Brooklyn wasn’t hiding him. There was no way Sam had turned to her for help rather than him and Ethan. He wouldn’t do that. Surely, Sam realized Brett would take care of him. He’d be there for him and watch over him. He’d fix whatever he needed to, and he’d love him while he did. God, Sam had to know that. Brett couldn’t bear it if he didn’t.
Air rushed in and out of Brett’s chest in harsh pants. Still, he managed to speak. “I know what he is, Brooklyn. I know who he is, and I know how he thinks. He doesn’t walk away from the people he cares about. He doesn’t run from his problems. He stays, and he fights. And he always does it with us by his side.”
“Maybe, he’s tired of fighting,” Brooklyn said, her tone unnervingly calm, remarkably steady.
“And maybe you’re full of shit,” Brett shot back. “Sam’s not a quitter. Unless something happened that you’re not telling me, his stubborn ass would still be sitting in our apartment.”
“Maybe this is something that can’t be fought. Sometimes we just have to accept the status quo and move on.”
Brett pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it as if that act alone would help him translate the stupid riddles Brooklyn was speaking in. When he realized that wouldn’t help, he put the phone back to his ear. “I’m calling bullshit.”
“Maybe it is bullshit. Maybe it isn’t.”
Brett growled. “Could you please stop saying maybe? It’s really getting on my nerves.”
Brooklyn ignored his request. “Maybe he needs to find himself. Or maybe, he just wants to start over. It doesn’t matter why he left. It only matters that he did. You see that. You just don’t want to believe it.”
Well, that took the wind right out of his sails. How did he respond to Brooklyn—without looking like the world’s biggest and most selfish jackass? He couldn’t exactly say, “If he’s tired of fighting, he can let me fight for him,” or, “If he needs to find himself, I can help him,” or even better, “If he wants to start over, I’ll start over with him.” None of those would help his case. In fact, they would probably just end up getting him into trouble with the only person who knew where Sam was.
So instead, Brett swallowed his anger and put his pride on the line. “Brooklyn, please. It matters to me.”
“I know it does,” she replied quietly, her voice sounding sympathetic for the first time since they’d started talking. “But he needs time to sort things out. He’s…confused and upset. Don’t make this situation worse for him. Let him go without a scene that will only hurt the three of you. Please.”
Brooklyn’s please robbed Brett of his words for a moment. And he had to regain his bearings before he said something stupid. As he tried to calm himself, Brett’s gaze drifted to Ethan. He cringed when he saw his friend’s nearly purple face. The expression Ethan wore reflected a man warring with his emotions. Equal parts worry and confusion marred his features. But neither of those had anything on the anger contorting his handsome face. And the tight line of his lips, the torture blazing in his eyes, were agonizing, more excruciating than an ice pick skewering Brett’s chest.
“Give it up, Brett,” Ethan snapped as he dropped down onto the bed. “She’s not going to tell us a damn thing. She gets off on torturing people.” Leaning forward, his movements rough and choppy, he planted his elbows on his thighs before lowering his head and bracing his chin on his hands.
No. Brett refused to cave. He wanted answers, and he was going to fucking get them.
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Brooklyn said, her words sounding eerily like Ethan’s earlier ones. Evidently, she’d either heard his friend speak or she was using her strange gift. It was hard to tell. “Sam asked me not to, and I won’t break his confidence. He and I might not be a couple any longer, but I care for him.”
They broke up, but she cares for him? Bull-fucking-shit. She doesn’t love him, not like I do. Brett cursed, the vehemence astounding, even to him. I can’t love him. No. I won’t let myself. That would be fucking emotional suicide. But he suspected it was far too late. No, he didn’t suspect. He knew.
Unnerved, Brett trembled. He felt his hands start to shake and his palms grow sweaty. Now? Now, he gave in to what he’d always known—that Sam was his, that he loved him as much as he loved Ethan. Shit, I’m such a motherfucking bonehead. Falling in love with two men, the two men who wouldn’t want him for all time, was stupid. My straight best friend. And my bi best friend who has massive commitment issues. Yep, I’m a goddamn numbskull.
Ethan and Sam wanted wives and children. For that matter, so did he. But he would give up his dreams for them. He knew, however, they wouldn’t do the same for him. After all, they’d told him over and over how much they wanted a family. They’d said wife and kids so many times he’d wanted to wring their necks. They didn’t want a partner who’d rob them of everything they’d ever dreamed of. Brett couldn’t legally marry them. He couldn’t give them children or grandchildren. His body just wasn’t equipped for that kind of thing. The depressing reality was that loving them was a dead end. They wouldn’t settle for what he could give them, and he wouldn’t ask them to.
Without realizing what he was doing, Brett mumbled, “I—I’ve got to go,” then ended the call. He carelessly tossed Ethan’s cell phone on the bed before sinking into the closest chair. What am I going to do? Fuck, he couldn’t ask Ethan that. He couldn’t risk his questions. One wrong word would make a bad situation worse.
Rather than saying what was really on his mind, Brett slouched back against the chair then asked, “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Ethan replied, his voice brusque. “And honestly, right now, I don’t particularly care.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do. If he doesn’t care, why the hell should I?”
The raw honesty in Ethan’s answer caught Brett off guard, and he lost his breath. He couldn’t speak. And he didn’t. There was no point. Maybe tomorrow they could talk. Maybe once they calmed down, they could hatch a plan. But not right now. Not when the wound was fresh, the pain and anger so new. And not when Brett was drowning in the turmoil crashing through his system like ocean waves amidst a hurricane.
Yeah. Tomorrow, I’ll fix this. Tomorrow, I’ll fix everything. Then we can go back to the way things were.
Chapter 3
Present day in Serenity…
Holy hell, Brett hadn’t fixed anything—not once in the last four months. Now here he was strolling around Sam’s bedroom with his heart weighed down by despair, struggling to remember everything that had been there before his friend had abandoned them.
It was silly and sappy and all-around stupid, a fucking punishment for him. But Brett wanted every detail ingrained in his mind, embedded so deeply he would never forget. Since pretty much everything was gone, forgetting seemed far too easy to him. And he didn’t like that prospect one damn bit.
As he moved around the stark room at will, Brett was drawn to the bedside table. Or he should say he was lured to what he knew was sitting on top of the table, the one and only thing Sam had accidentally left behind—a picture of the three of them on a camping trip as teens.
Nearing the photo he’d found in one of Sam’s drawers, Brett did something he rarely did. He picked up the crump
led paper and looked at the image. Then he lovingly ran his forefinger across Sam’s face. He pretended, just for a moment, he was touching his best friend’s skin rather than a piece of glossy paper, and a wistful sigh escaped his lips. If only I was touching the real thing…
Brett studied the picture with sharp eyes, and his memories came flooding back. He didn’t blink. He forgot how to. He stayed so focused that he didn’t break contact until his eyes burned from the strain. Once he managed to tear his gaze away, he had to blink to focus. Yet he couldn’t keep his gaze from straying back to the photo in his hand.
A sad smile touched Brett’s lips. He remembered that camping trip. He remembered it well. It should have been a disaster because the most God-awful storm had descended upon them and rained down all around. But it hadn’t been. Shit, they hadn’t even minded the torrential downpour or the ear-splitting claps of thunder. They’d been together. They’d talked and raised hell like nothing mattered anyway, just the three of them.
“Remembering the good times?”
Ethan’s voice from the doorway startled Brett, and he lost his grip on the picture in his hand. “No,” he growled as he fumbled to catch the paper before it fell to the floor. Luckily, his reflexes were quick from his years in the Marines, and he managed to snag one of the corners before it was too late.
“Liar,” Ethan accused, stomping into the room and storming across the cherry flooring to the side of the bed.
“Why aren’t you working?” Brett immediately countered as he lowered his eyes to the photograph once again.
“I got bored and shut down early.”
Brett snorted. ‘‘Bull.”
“Fine, I hired a new guy in town,” Ethan answered, his tone resentful.
Brett’s head snapped up at Ethan’s announcement. “What?”
Glancing away, Ethan shrugged with a jerk. ‘‘I figured that I might as well do it. Sam isn’t coming home, and no one will tell us where he went. So, fuck it. Fuck him, and fuck them.”
Brett grimaced. They’d tried their damnedest to find Sam, but they hadn’t had any luck. Sam’s two friends, Deke Andrews and Brooklyn Sokolov, had made sure of that. With enough money and a psychic, anyone could disappear at the drop of a hat. “Why the sudden change?”
Ethan ran a hand through his stylishly disheveled blond locks. “I don’t know. The new guy needs a job, and I’m tired of working sixteen hour days.”
“I’m tired of it, too,” Brett grumbled offhandedly. “We never get to spend time together anymore.”
Ethan slid his hunter-green eyes to Brett, sensuality seeping from their depths. “Are you saying you’ve missed me, big boy?”
Brett’s cock stirred to life, twitching furiously in his pants. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re full of shit,” Ethan declared as he cut eye contact then flopped back onto the bed with a grunt.
Indignant, Brett snapped, “What?”
Ethan lifted up and braced himself on his elbows. His new position gave Brett a better look at his fit body. The tight blue T-shirt he wore clung to the hard contours of his chest and the flat slab he called a stomach. And the low-riding jean Ethan preferred molded to his lean hips and long legs. For five foot eleven, Ethan had legs that went on and on for days. Boy, do those feel good wrapped around my back as I plow inside him. Oh my God. No.
Brett ground his teeth together, trying to withhold the groan clawing its way up his throat. ‘‘Don’t push me, pretty boy.”
Oh yeah. That fixed Ethan. He clamped his jaw shut then bared his teeth.
“That’s what I thought,” Brett gritted out.
“You know what? I’m tired of playing this stupid game,” Ethan blurted out unexpectedly as he shot himself off the bed and stalked toward Brett. “We’re fucked without Sam. You know it, and I know it. But we need to get a grip and move on. He’s not coming back. We need to accept that.”
Unwilling to back up a step, Brett stood firm. “News flash, Ethan. I can’t just move on. I’ve been…lost without him. That’s not going to change today or tomorrow or the next day.”
“What? Are you going to waste the rest of your life on a person who doesn’t want you around? God. It wasn’t like he was our lover. He was our friend—our straight friend.”
“Really?” Brett shot back, using every ounce of sarcasm he’d been holding in for months. “He was straight? He was just our friend? I didn’t know that. I was under the impression I was his piece of ass, his goddamn booty call. We screwed every time you turned your back, and we did it oh-so-motherfucking good. But we kept our affair a dirty little secret so your precious ego wouldn’t get pricked.”
“Whatever,” Ethan growled. “You might have been interested in more than friendship, but he wasn’t. I think he made that fairly obvious when he left.”
“I don’t give a shit whether or not he felt the way I did. He’s my friend, and I won’t just walk away from him like he doesn’t matter.” He pinned Ethan with a frigid look. “I will find him, and I will get him back. And when I do, I will take whatever he gives me.” He cleared his bone-dry throat before going on. “I can live with being just friends as long as he’s here—with us. God knows I did it for over twenty years. I think I can do it for another fifty or sixty. What I can’t do is continue to live like this, not without him, not without his friendship. I need Sam as much as I need you.”
Ethan’s eyes widened, his jaw opening and shutting in an adorably fish-like way. If Brett weren’t so damn mad, he’d kiss that shocked expression right off his face. Too bad for both of them, he was.
“Come on, you know how I feel, Ethan. You’re not as stupid as you like to pretend you are.” A knock at the front door stopped Brett from embarrassing himself any further in front of Ethan. Grateful for the interruption, he sighed in relief and offered, “I’ll get it.” Then he hauled himself toward the door as fast as his big feet would carry him.
* * * *
Helplessly, Ethan watched Brett walk away from him. His anger boiled inside him, and he saw crimson, the bloodred haze clouding his vision. With his frustration at an all-time high, he was ready to punch a wall, preferably Sam’s. He figured it was symbolic. It would show Sam, not that he was likely to see the hole in his wall. Hell, he might never be here to see it or anything else, for that matter.
Ethan’s mood darkened—if that was possible. He missed Sam with every fiber of his being. Each day was worse than the last, but he couldn’t waste his life missing a man who didn’t want to be his friend. Or my lover.
Immediately, Ethan cast away his thought. Now was not the time for this lovesick bullshit. He had to fix the damage he’d done with Brett. That was more important because Brett was actually here—with him.
Ethan took a small step toward the door before stopping himself. He realized it was highly inappropriate given the tension between them, but he couldn’t help admiring a shirtless, sweating Brett. The man’s body, oh shit, his body was unbelievable. He was entirely muscle, ripped in all the right places and rippling where he should be. His form was big and brawny, every inch of him demanding respect. Instinctually, Ethan gave him whatever he wanted, whether he was commanded to or begged to. Not that he could actually stop himself. When it came to Brett, Ethan did well to keep his head on straight. All his best friend had to do was come close enough to touch, and their passion combusted. Hell, if Brett even looked at him with those heavy-lidded eyes, Ethan was a goner. The brilliant shine, the nearly onyx depths, were irresistible.
While Ethan’s dick was elongating in his constricting jeans, pleading for the touch of his dark-haired best friend slash lover, he heard a commotion at the front door followed by Brett saying, “Hello, Brooklyn. It’s…nice to see you,” in a voice that contradicted his words. His tone exhibited how very unhappy he was to see her. Although, Ethan wasn’t exactly thrilled to have her here, either. Of course, that probably had a lot to do with their last meeting, or he guessed he should say their last fight.
Since Sam had left, he, Brett, and Brooklyn were constantly at each other’s throats. They couldn’t be near each other without breaking into a verbal battle. Brooklyn’s incessant riddles were enough to drive a saint crazy. But when she started trying to tell him and Brett what was best for Sam, Ethan had to fight the urge to release the temper he kept on a thin leash. He knew Sam. He’d been friends with him for too long for someone to come in and treat him as though he didn’t know him at all.
“Ethan,” Brett suddenly bellowed from the foyer. “We have a visitor.”
Great. Ethan had been hoping he could hide out until she left. That way he didn’t wind up arguing with her like he had with Brett. He just wasn’t up to it right now. Fighting with his best friend had put him in a bad enough mood. The last thing he needed was yet another disagreement with Brooklyn. Considering today’s date, he was likely to blow a gasket if she pushed the wrong buttons and inevitably, she would. After all, she was Brooklyn Sokolov, Psychic Extraordinaire.
“Coming,” Ethan hollered back at Brett, despite his urge to give them both the finger and walk away. But he didn’t. He trudged out of Sam’s room and down the hallway that led to the front door. He moved slowly, hoping to buy himself some time. It didn’t. And too soon, he found himself in front of the tall, lithe woman.
Eyeing Brooklyn warily, Ethan sized up the blonde woman. She was gorgeous, her blue eyes intense and her exotic face fascinating. Her lips were full and pouty, the pale-pink color unusual yet so right on her. And she had a slender body that most men would sell their souls to the devil to have for just one night. But she didn’t appeal to him in the least.
Ethan found it funny and more than a little ironic that she left his body as cold as a glacier floating in arctic waters. She was the one woman who had the power to connect him and Brett with Sam on a permanent basis. In a town like this one, she could have been the “one,” the woman they shared, the wife they loved, the mother of their children. But no, Ethan couldn’t dredge up even the barest arousal for her. If he had, maybe none of this emotional crap would have happened. Maybe Sam would still be here. Then again, Ethan believed in fate. And if it was meant for them to be apart, they would be.