Page 100 of A Matter of Fact

“Callahan.” Rhys grinned. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“You’re not the only one of us who has gotten more mature with age.”

“Jesus,” he groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face.

“I’ll give you a week to make sure you’re legally out of his mess, and then I’ll take care of the rest,” Callahan said.

“If you didn’t hate me, I would kiss you.”

“Ew, Rhys.” Callahan frowned, but it was playful. “No.”

“Besides,” he went on, “I can feel your fiancé staring at me with the fury of a thousand suns.”

“He’s not a fan of yours,” Callahan agreed.

Rhys sighed. “I owe him an apology, too. I know.”

“You do.” Jace’s voice was much closer behind him than it should have been.

“How long have you been there?” Rhys didn’t turn around.

“Long enough to hear you comment about kissing my fiancé.” Jace stepped around to the other side of the table and tapped the underside of Callahan’s chin with the side of his finger. Callahan looked up at him with a dreamy smile, and Jace bent down and kissed him.

“It was a figure of speech,” he said.

“I know.” Jace pecked another kiss against the corner of Callahan’s mouth, then turned his attention to Rhys. “So, as you were saying?”

“I was saying I owe you an apology, too,” he repeated.

“For?” Jace cocked his head to the side, all smug and proud.

“For being a miserable human.”

Jace twisted his mouth into a complicated expression. “I don’t think that’s what you were going for.”

“Jace.” He offered a sincere look across the table. “I am sorry for the things I said to you in Mallardsville. They were malicious and unnecessary.”

“And childish,” Callahan added.

“And childish,” he agreed.

“Apology accepted. Besides, if you weren’t the way you are, Callahan never would have agreed to have Sebastian set us up for pretend to make you jealous.” Jace smirked, checking a white handheld timer. “I gotta get back to work.”

Rhys’s mouth fell open at the admission as Jace dropped a kiss against Callahan’s quickly reddening cheek. His brother had already outed the whole fake affair between Jace and Callahan, but something about the brazen way Jace threw it in his lap was borderline abrasive.

“Sebastian may have set you up, but it was clearly never pretend.”

“Obviously not,” Jace murmured.

Callahan shrugged.

“It was believable. You told me you and Jace had been together for a year and I believed it,” he said. It had been clear from the first time he saw them together how invested they were in their relationship, and perhaps that’s what had driven Rhys to spew the vitriolic garbage at Jace that he had.Jealousy was a miserable beast.

“You’re not the only man at the table who can play games to get what he wants, Rhys.”

“And what did you want?”

“Him.” Callahan’s stare drifted over Rhys’s shoulder, finding Jace because he smiled and quickly looked away, turning his attention back to Rhys. “And I wanted to make you jealous.”