by Alie Nolan
Caleb was the first person I’d told that I was going to work with animals one day.
The conversation continued like that for a while—just general catching up, nothing too deep or personal, things like where Jake went to uni, where we both lived now, and so on—before it was almost dinnertime and Jake and I were ready to leave.
Caleb and Jake exchanged phone numbers as we stood by the front door of the bakery, and we agreed that the four of us would have dinner together the following week.
After saying our goodbyes, Jake and Caleb had shared another heart-warming hug, and then Jake and I left.
I got into the driver’s seat of my car, and Jake slid into the passenger side.
“I think that went well,” Jake said as he fastened his seatbelt.
I nodded. “It did. How do you feel about everything?” I knew he was probably feeling a lot of different emotions, and that was my way of letting him know I was ready to listen when he was ready to talk.
“Good. Weird, but good. I’m hoping the awkwardness will lessen over time, but it will be nice to have dinner with them next week. Get to know them a little more. You’re coming to that dinner, right?”
“Of course,” I told him. I wasn’t going to send Jake on his own. He was a grown man, but that didn’t mean I didn’t sometimes struggle to accept that he wasn’t still nine years old.
“Okay, good.”
“Are you going to tell the family?” I asked.
He immediately shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s see how next week goes. I don’t want to get everyone’s hopes up, you know, in case he leaves again.”
Jake said the words so casually, it broke my heart. He was expecting Caleb to bail again. I knew Caleb wouldn’t. If it wasn’t for me, he never would have in the first place, but I couldn’t tell Jake that.
“I don’t think he’ll leave again,” I assured him.
“We’ll see,” he shrugged.
There was no malice in his tone, and I knew from having spoken to him on numerous occasions, that while he didn’t know the exact reason Caleb left, he didn’t resent him for it, and wasn’t angry at him for doing what he did.
He was a better man than me, because I was not as easily accepting of Caleb’s choice.
I was okay with Jake’s decision not to tell the rest of the family, this was Jake’s thing to tell, and he’d do it whenever he was ready. It was probably a good idea not to tell them anyway, because our family had a tendency to get too involved in each other’s lives. Jake would be hounded with endless questions, and the entire family would probably march over to Hillam’s Bakery within the hour.
I loved my family more than anything, but they could be a bit much, and I wouldn’t want to be Caleb when the ‘welcome back to the family’ wagon arrived on his doorstep—they would be doing it out of a place of love, but still, that could be overwhelming even if you were prepared for it to happen.
“I’m proud of you, Jake. I love you,” I told him.
“Thanks. And I love you too.” He nudged my shoulder with his as I started the car, and pulled out of the parking spot.
The entire drive back to Little Hollow, and the rest of the evening once I was back at Max’s and my house, I couldn’t seem to think of a single thing other than Caleb and Elliott.
Wondering what their life was like.
What they were doing at that exact moment.
What it must be like to have what they had with each other.
FIVE
Elliott
Caleb stood in front of the mirror in our bedroom, as he buttoned up the fifth shirt he’d tried on.
“Jesus, I don’t think you put this much thought into what you wore to our wedding,” I laughed, and he put his middle finger up at me in the mirror’s reflection.
I was lying on our bed, watching him get ready for our dinner with Jake and Matty.
He was overthinking every outfit he put on—he’d look fucking gorgeous in a black sack—and we were only going to a pizza restaurant a few roads away from our house. I understood that he was nervous, but it was a casual dinner that did not require this much preparation. If I didn’t stop him soon, we’d be looking into this mirror for the rest of time.
He hadn’t had a chance to overthink his previous meeting with Jake and Matty, but this time, he’d had days to fret and worry over the details.
Once he’d finished buttoning up the shirt, I stood from the bed and walked up beside him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing a soft kiss to the side of his neck.
“You look amazing,” I whispered in his ear before pressing a kiss to the shell of it.
“You sure?” He asked.
“One thousand per cent. Now, come on, otherwise we’re going to be late.”
Caleb’s final outfit choice—the one he was wearing whether he wanted to or not—was a pair of black jeans, black shoes, and a navy buttoned-up shirt. He looked incredible, but there weren’t many items of clothing that my husband couldn’t make look stunning.
Grabbing his hand, I pulled him away from the mirror, down the stairs to the front door and grabbed my keys, tugging him through the door before he could delay us any more than he already had.
The restaurant was only a short walk away, so I didn’t see the point in driving. As we walked, I could see the anxiety radiating off Caleb the closer we got to the restaurant.
As Caleb and I arrived, I saw Jake and Matty already sitting at a table through the window. Rationally, I hadn’t thought they wouldn’t show, but there was obviously a small part of me that did, because I felt a sense of relief when I noticed them.
We walked into the restaurant, and Jake immediately stood to wrap his arms around Caleb. It warmed my heart to see them greet each other with much less awkwardness than the first time.
“Hey,” Caleb said into Jake’s hair.
“Hi,” he said back.
“Hi,” I greeted Matty with a smile, leaving the brothers to finish their hellos. Matty gave me a nervous smile and looked like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Like he was debating a hug, a handshake, or a simple nod in my direction. He settled for the nod.
He was adorable.
I’d thought it from the second he walked into the bakery, and his adorable qualities only amplified the more time I spent with him.
He was also beautiful.
Exactly as Caleb had described him to me, but more.
His dark-brown eyes were a warm chocolate shade, the exact same colour as his perfectly styled hair.
With his clean-shaven, sharp jaw, and pouty lips that he occasionally worried between his teeth, all of it made him even more attractive.
There was a tiny voice in my head telling me that I should stop eyeing up my husband’s ex-boyfriend, but I couldn’t really find it in me to care.
He was stunning, and adorable, and I wasn’t blind.
Caleb wouldn’t care that I was attracted to him. We often talked about being attracted to other people, it didn’t mean we were going to act on those attractions.
Caleb and I were in this relationship for life. We’d been young when we got married, but we meant it when we vowed ‘til death do us part’ to each other—not that we’d actually said those words in the registry office the day we got married, but the sentiment was implied.
Caleb and I had discussed the idea of having a threesome at some point, although that idea had been with some random stranger in a bar. I knew that if we were ever to indulge in that fantasy… Matty was not an option.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the view… subtly, of course.
We all took our seats around the table, Caleb and I on one side, Matty and Jake on the other.
Jake and Caleb fell into an instant conversation, telling each other things about themselves.
Jake’s friends.
Caleb’s favourite things to bake.
It was so nice to see Caleb’s nerves melt away as he enjoyed reconnecting with his brother.
&nb
sp; Although, that left Matty and I trapped in an uncomfortable silence as we stared at each other across the table.
“It’s nice seeing them together, isn’t it?” Matty asked quietly, thankfully breaking the silence.
“It is,” I smiled. “I’m so glad you two found him.” We kept our voices quiet, so as not to disrupt Caleb and Jake’s conversation with ours.
Matty smiled at Jake and Caleb. It was one of the most stunning smiles I’d ever seen in my life and I couldn’t help getting lost in it.
“Did he ever consider coming to us?” he asked.
I shook my head slowly. “No. He said Jake was better off without him just showing up. I tried to convince him to come and see you all a few times—he told me all about your family and how wonderful they are—but every time I brought it up, he somehow distracted me from the conversation.”
Matty chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Hasn’t changed then?”
“Not one bit,” I laughed.
“He was always good at avoiding things he didn’t want to talk about.”
I nodded my agreement.
I had met Caleb only a few months after he and Matty had been together, so I’d met the exact version of Caleb that Matty remembered.
“He’s a bit better now, with talking about most things, except when it comes to you and Jake.”
Matty turned his head to look at Caleb, and I saw a hint of longing in his gaze.
That look should have made me feel jealousy, right?
Well, it didn’t.
If anything, butterflies started swarming around my stomach. I knew what it was like to look at Caleb, to stare at him and be awed by how incredible he was… incredible, and hot as fuck.
For some reason, I liked that Matty still looked at Caleb the way I assumed I looked at him too.
Like Matty and I somehow shared a connection through Caleb.
I wasn’t bothered by thoughts that Caleb had once loved Matty the way he now loved me. I wasn’t even convinced, no matter how many times he denied it, that he didn’t still harbour feelings for Matty.
You never forgot your first love, and all that.
The idea had never bothered me, even from the first time Caleb has told me about Matty. Although, at the time, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel if Caleb and Matty were one day reunited… turned out I still wasn’t bothered.
If anything, I now understood a little better about why Caleb had fallen for Matty to begin with. If he’d been half as attractive, half as kind, and half as adorable back then, I’d have fallen for him too.
Before I could spiral any further with my out-of-control thoughts, Jake turned his attention to me.
“So, you owned the bakery before you met Caleb?” he asked.
“Yeah, we met at the bakery, actually,” I said. I didn’t want to go into more details than Caleb wanted to share about the night we met.
Caleb had been living on the streets for several months when I found him scavenging for food in the bins behind Hillam’s Bakery. I’d taken him in, not wanting him to have to spend another night out in the cold. I didn’t know how much of that period of his life he was ready to share with Jake and Matty, so I left it at that.
“Cool,” Jake responded.
“So, Jake,” Caleb started, looking a little nervous again. “Can I ask more personal questions?”
“Sure, ask whatever you want,” Jake smiled.
Caleb nodded, taking a moment to think over his question before asking it. “The Logans… they took care of you, right? They loved you, and gave you everything you needed?”
I knew the tougher conversations were going to come up eventually, because there was only so long they could discuss surface things like favourite foods and colours before they needed to address the parade of elephants in the room.
“They did,” Jake smiled in Matty’s direction. “I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t heartbroken when you left, and I still don’t fully understand why you did—although I believe you must have had your reasons—but you left me in good hands, don’t worry.”
“Good. And they supported your transition?”
“Yeah, wholeheartedly,” Jake beamed. “They’ve been amazing. Whatever I needed, they sorted.”
I could see the relief on Caleb’s face.
I knew Caleb had worried a lot over the years that the family he’d left Jake with might not have been as perfect as he’d thought, and he worried that Jake would have struggled, but now that he knew that wasn’t the case, I was sure Caleb could finally lay those worries to rest.
As we ate dinner, Jake told us about uni, Matty told us about the veterinary practice he worked at in Wiltonham, and we told them about our bakery. The conversation flowed so easily, I almost forgot that a week ago we’d been strangers.
I managed to keep my brain in check for the rest of the meal, and only occasionally had inappropriate thoughts about Matty and Caleb together.
SIX
Caleb
The air was brisker than I’d anticipated on the walk home, and I’d arrived home feeling cold and in need of a hot shower to warm me up.
After showering, I walked into our bedroom from the en-suite, naked except for the towel wrapped around my waist.
Elliott was spread out on our bed, also naked, his cock half-hard. He gave his cock a few gentle strokes as he watched me slowly unwrap the towel and let it fall to the floor.
His tongue licked across his bottom lip, moistening it before pulling it between his teeth.
He stood from the bed and stalked towards me with a hungry look on his face—the same look he always got before he was about to fuck me into oblivion—like I was the most tempting treat he’d ever seen.
Fuck.
He crowded me against the wall, pressing his now fully hard cock against mine.
“Hmm,” he hummed as he took my lips in a kiss, his tongue sweeping across mine as his steady hands held my hips in place.
He wrapped his fist around both of our erections, torturing us both with impossibly slow strokes.
“El,” I panted, my body heating and my breathing becoming erratic. “Please.”
“Please, what, sweetheart?” He breathed into my ear, nibbling the lobe before trailing nipping kisses down my neck.
“Fuck me,” I growled.
“Turn around,” he instructed, before placing a chaste kiss to my lips.
I did as he said, turning away from him, and placing my hands flat against the cool wall. I heard him walk away, assuming he was going to grab some lube, and I stayed where I was and waited for him to return.
His body pressed against my back, his hard cock nudging at the crease of my arse, as he pressed open-mouthed kisses down my shoulder blades and spine. Goosebumps erupted across my skin, the heat of his body and lips against me contrasted by the cool air of the room.
A lubed finger teased at my hole as he continued to kiss his way up and down my back.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispered as his finger entered me. My channel constricted at the intrusion, but quickly relaxed around his digit. He began to slowly fuck his finger in and out of me, stretching me, and brushing against my prostate, before adding a second.
Once I was prepped enough to take him, his fingers left me and I expected to feel the head of his cock at my entrance, but both of his arms reached around the front of me, one spreading a generous amount of lube on my needy erection, the other… sticking a suction cup-based fleshlight against the wall, lined up perfectly with my cock.
With one hand gripping my cock, he used his other to push me forwards until the tip of my erection was lined up with the entrance of the fleshlight, but not enough that I entered the toy.
Before I even had time to process what he was doing, he pushed into me, his length bottoming out in a single thrust. The force of his hips pushing me forward so that my lubed cock was enveloped in the ribbed channel of the fleshlight.
“Fuck,” I moaned, the sensations of both him filling me and t
ight friction on my cock making my legs nearly give out.
We’d brought the fleshlight years earlier—an impulse buy when we’d been ordering a few other sex toys—but it rarely left our bedside drawer… now I was confused as to why we didn’t use it all the fucking time.
“Holy shit, El,” I moaned.
He pulled out, and drove back in, over and over, fucking into me as I fucked in and out of the fleshlight.
The friction heated the channel of the toy, and although it wasn’t nearly as incredible as being buried inside Elliott, the slick heat almost felt like I could have been fucking someone… while Elliott was fucking me.
We’d talked about threesomes in the past, though never all that seriously, but I could totally get on board with the idea of being sandwiched between Elliott and someone else like that.
My mind wandered, and as much as I tried not to, I couldn’t help but imagine Matty under us, Elliott using me to fuck Matty.
The image in my head alone was almost enough to send me hurtling over the edge, but I restrained, reminding myself that the idea was ridiculous.
“Fuck him,” Elliott whispered, so quietly I was sure I’d heard him wrong.
“What?” I asked breathlessly.
“Imagine it’s him, that I’m fucking you into him,” he growled.
Holy fucking shit!
Had he read my mind?
I froze, my body tensing.
“W-w-what?” My voice came out all kinds of broken.
“You were imagining the toy was Matty, weren’t you?” He breathed, still slowly pumping in and out of me. I was about to defend myself, when he continued. “I was too.”
What the fuck?
He nipped at my neck and his thrusts picked up again.
He’d told me to imagine it was Matty, so fuck it, I was going to do just that.
But we were going to talk about this once we were done.
My hands slid up and down the wall, unable to grip the flat surface, as Elliott pounded me into the toy… into Matty.
I closed my eyes tightly, picturing Matty spread out in front of me, eager and waiting for me to give him what he wanted, what he needed. I imagined my hands, which were pressing firmly against the wall, were instead pressing his shoulders into the wall. He was writhing in my grasp, moaning and begging for us to fuck him harder.