Page 50 of A Matter of Fact

“I would have lost everything,” he muttered. “He would have taken everything from me.”

“Who? Callahan?”

“Our father,” Rhys grit out. “I told him, you know. I told him I wanted to marry Callahan and he laughed me out of the room. I was not allowed to marry a man, Sebastian. Not then, not ever.”

“He hasn’t said a single thing to me about Remington.”

“Because you’re notme, Sebastian. You’re the youngest. The second one. It’s not on you. None of this is on you,” he said.

“Are you still in love with him?”

“What?” Rhys balked, annoyed at the way Sebastian just changed the direction of the conversation with no concern for the admission he’d just made.

“Are you still in love with Callahan?”

“No.” He was sure of that, at least. “I haven’t loved Callahan for years.”

“You’re fixated.”

“Not on him,” Rhys countered.

“What then?”

“I feel like you’re being very judgmental right now and I don’t like it, Sebastian.” Rhys stood and took his coffee into the kitchen, throwing it into the microwave to warm it back up.

“He’s my best friend,” Sebastian sighed. “I just want to understand.”

“Honestly, I don’t even know why I said anything.” The microwave beeped and he knew he’d only said something because Beckett had him feeling vulnerable and off-center. The tender pressure between his ass cheeks had him thinking about fantasies and futures that hadn’t ever been in his reach before. He was reluctantly nostalgic, and feeling terribly melancholic over it. “This isn’t for you and me. It’s me and him.”

“Then you should talk to him,” Sebastian said, like it was that simple.

“I have to get through his guard dog first.” Rhys pulled the coffee out of the microwave and took it back to the couch, collapsing against the hard and cold cushions with a groan.

“You’re right.”

“Back to the whole reason you called,” he said, taking a drink of the now scalding liquid. “Father says I have a week.”

“A week to what?”

“Come home, obviously.”

“You are home,” Sebastian said, like that was that. Like it was so easy, so simple.

“I’m inyourhome,” he corrected.

“Don’t be pedantic.”

“This sink, Sebastian.” Rhys rolled his head to the side and stared down the hallway, thinking about the ridiculous sink and how much Beckett liked it.

“I told you to get rid of it.”

Rhys huffed a displeased noise into the phone, and Sebastian laughed at him.

“My takeaway,” his brother said, sounding haughtier than Rhys liked, “is that you don’t want to go back to Mallardsville, but you don’t know how tonot. You don’t know how to do anything for yourself.”

Rhys snorted. “I swear you’ve accused me of quite the opposite in the past.”

“I think I see things differently now,” Sebastian hedged.