Page 40 of A Real Good Lie

“It’s spicy?”

“That’s a word for it.” Callahan smiled, his cheeks turning a little pink, then he looked back to his own plate. He reached under the table and rested his hand on Jace’s thigh, which seemed a little personal, but they were supposed to have been together for a year, after all. A hand against the thigh was probably chaste compared to the things everyone in the room assumed they’d done together.

“So, tell me more about yourself, Jace.” Rhys smiled across the table, the inflection on Jace’s name very nearly a sneer. Callahan caught it too, his fingers tightening around Jace’s leg.

Jace slipped his hand under the table and patted Callahan’s reassuringly. He might not come from money or have experience in the social circles Callahan and Rhys ran in, but he was, as he’d been accused of before, a smooth talker, and he knew his way under people’s skin.

“What’s there to say?”

“Where did you go to school?” Rhys tilted his head to the side.

“Chicago School of Photographic Arts,” he answered.

“When did you graduate? You look young.”

“I’m twenty-six.”

Rhys’s eye twitched, but Jace was certain he’d caught the evasion. Jace only hoped he didn’t decide to press the timeline.

“So, you’re a photographer?”

“You saw him earlier,” Callahan snapped.

“I saw a tourist with a mid-range piece of equipment around his neck.”

Beside Rhys, Ashley rolled her eyes, but smirked just the same.

“I’m only out here for the weekend,” Jace said, tightening his hand around Callahan’s and raising them above the table. He pressed a quick burst of kisses around Callahan’s knuckles and returned their hands to his leg. “I have more entertaining things to do than take pictures.”

On Rhys’s other side, Sebastian barked out a laugh and polished off the contents of his glass.

“I knew you two would hit it off,” Sebastian said, smacking his lips.

“Your timing with the introduction was impeccable,” Jace said, hoping desperately he’d remembered the correct word. Living with Remington had its perks, like a rarely usable but expansive vocabulary. That was another Remington word.

Expansive.

“You gave me Jace when I needed him most,” Callahan said.

“That’s sweet,” Rhys interjected.

“What about you?” Jace asked. “How did you meet your fiancé? She seemsso…youthful.”

“We met on campus.”

“He caught me when I was walking between classes,” Ashley said, leaning toward Rhys and wrapping herself around him. Her giant engagement ring flashed under the dim lights of the restaurant, and Jace tried not to choke as he mentally calculated how much money the sparkler must have cost. More than he made in a year, he’d wager.

“I couldn’t control myself.”

“I was crying,” Ashley continued, offering up a sad little smile. “He said to me, ‘no one as beautiful as you should ever cry,’ and I told him how I’d failed my last statistics exam. Math just…doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway, I’d failed and he offered to speak to my professor for me.”

Callahan cleared his throat and straightened. “Did he now?”

“He did, and whatever he said worked, because the tests became so much easier after that. I’d told the professor the coursework was just too advanced for our grade level and he just talked to Professor Zaxon and that was that.” Ashley grinned, not even aware of what Rhys had done.

“What grade did you end up getting in the class?” Jace asked, eyebrow raised.

“An A, obviously.”