Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 94220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 377(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
“I appreciate you got to it at all.”
He glances between us. “You guys are a lot cuter than the pics I’ve seen of you online.”
“You looked at Leif’s?”
“I checked out his profile when I got that reply on the subreddit, so I already knew what he looked like, but I pulled it back up when you said he’d be coming with you. And obviously, I’ve seen you on Mike’s Insta.”
So I was right.
“We didn’t have that same advantage,” Leif points out.
“Probably for the best. All my socials link to my OnlyFans, so you’d have gotten to know me way better than I would’ve gotten to know you.”
Wes just gets more and more interesting by the second.
“But if y’all want to see…” he goes on.
“We’re good,” I say.
Leif turns to me, not even attempting to disguise his smile as he rests his hand on my thigh. I’m waiting for him to call out my jealous streak, but he offers a gentle rub of his thumb, and damned if that doesn’t offer the reassurance I need.
“But enough about me,” Wes says. “We should get to the point of why you wanted to meet up.”
“You said you were friendly with my brother.”
His gaze wavers. “Eh, he’d come over and we’d smoke a joint or take an edible…and stuff.”
And stuff?
Holy fuck. Not that I’d never considered my brother might have been queer too, but is this how I’m going to find out?
“Wait. You and my bro were hooking up?”
“What the hell?” Wes asks. “That’s what you thought I meant when I said stuff? No. We played Fortnite together. You know your bro’s straight, right? But trust me, if he’d let me, I would have let that guy do whatever the hell he wanted to me. But speaking of…you guys are sitting awfully close. I figured when you said you were bringing Leif that it was only because of the note on the subreddit, and maybe my instincts are totally off, but is there more here?”
“We’re boyfriends,” Leif says. It’s nice hearing him claim me like this in front of a stranger, especially one that, frankly, I’m intimidated by. This guy is way more in Leif’s league, and I’m enough of a creeper without sitting near fucking Adonis.
Wes’s eyes widen, a smile sweeping across his face. “Wait. Okay, there’s a story here. So I assume you didn’t know each other before any of this?”
“No,” I say. “We met…” As the details come to mind, I realize this is going to distract from what I actually want to get. “You know, maybe we can get to the stuff about my bro and then tell you about our fucked-up meet-cute.”
“He held me up at gunpoint,” Leif pipes up.
Wes winces. “That a joke?”
“It wasn’t funny at the time.”
Wes cringes, like he’s not sure what to think, before his smile returns. “You guys are weird. I like it. Are you exclusive, or are you open to—”
“Closed as closed can be,” I spit out, surprising myself. Some knee-jerk response to make it clear Leif is mine.
And only mine.
“Ooh, a challenge?” Wes says with a wink, making something flare deep within me, before he adds, “I’m teasing you, man. Sorry. I forget you guys don’t really know me, so it’s hard to get my sense of humor.”
“Trust me. I know the feeling.”
Leif chuckles, which makes me think of that first discussion, when he was still adjusting to my sarcasm.
“So you hung out with Mike some,” Leif says, “but you weren’t friends?”
“We were both taking what was supposed to be a basic graphic-design class, and the teacher was kicking our ass. Nothing brings people together like a crappy teacher. So we’d study a little. Then chill and drink, get high, play video games. He was easy to talk to. We both had weird stuff in our childhood. Oh shit. Maybe that’s not stuff I should be bringing up.” He glances between Leif and me again.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ve talked to Leif about how we grew up.”
“I was raised in a New Agey religious group,” Wes continues. “I figure most people would call it a cult. Didn’t get out until I was in my teens and went to live with my mom, so both Mike and I had daddy issues to bond over. Long story short, even though we didn’t get into the details much about our experiences, he felt like a kindred spirit.”
“And he told you about a note he received?” Leif asks.
“One day, after we ate some brownies and were playing Fortnite, he mentioned this weird-ass letter he got. He thought it might have been from me, but I don’t write weird-ass notes when I’m into someone. But when we were talking about all this, it was just a funny thing. I didn’t think much of it.
“Then he went missing like a month later, and that rattled around in my brain. And people were already talking on campus about how Jason Kilbourne had disappeared a year before that, so I thought there might be a connection. The cops didn’t seem all that interested in my vague recollection about a note. I told them what I remembered, but they didn’t, like, document it or ask me to write it down.”