Page 57 of Carry On (Love Doesn’t Cure All #4)

LINCOLN

Do people really use coconut oil?” Milo exclaimed with a giant grin on his boyish face.

“It’s organic,” Nash said, shrugging like it was the most casual thing in the world for him to bring up as we waited for our food.

Meanwhile, I was dying next to him, silently and eternally embarrassed by his audacity.

“But isn’t it… messy?” he asked because, of course, he did.

Milo Graves was everything his brother wasn’t.

Where Sebastian was put together, clean cut, and professional, Milo was feral, scruffy, and wayward in every sense of the word.

With unruly chestnut hair, stubble, and worn-down clothes, he was a wild child with a big heart for adventure.

“No more than any other lube,” Nash told him. He glanced over his shoulder at me, smirking. Those rich green eyes of his were full of amusement. He was a goddamn pain in my ass.

“So, do you two,” Milo gestured between the two of us, “have experience with it—”

“No!” Sebastian interrupted quickly, slamming a hand on the table. Thank fuck.

“What?”

”No, we’ve talked about this,” he continued. “You aren’t allowed to ask people about their personal experiences.”

“Yeah, but people make the best references,” Nash countered.

“You’re not helping,” I muttered into my glass.

“Mmm,” he hummed as he leaned in close so only I could hear. His hot breath fanning across my skin had my heart beating faster in my chest. “Should I tell him about the window escapades? I’m sure there’s a place for that in one of his books.”

My ears burned hot, and I liked how it made him laugh.

“Next time, sugar plum.” He patted my thigh for reassurance. For a man who was faking it with me, he was awfully comfortable doing so. Admittedly, I wasn’t complaining. I liked the little touches and little moments with him, even if they fucked with my head.

“No.”

“No to telling them next time?” Nash replied, cocking a brow. “Should I tell him now—”

“No to sugar plum,” I retorted. This man and his goddamn nicknames. It made me wonder if he was keeping score.

“So, how’d you two meet?” Sebastian asked. Nash and I glanced at one another.

“It’s not so much how we met, but how we reconnected,” Nash said.

That was the thing we agreed on: to put the focus on the present.

Neither of us had any desire to try to tie together our childhoods.

There were too many details in that—too much childhood trauma to touch on.

“We haven’t seen each other in years. Ran into each other here, and the rest is history. ”

“It’s a small world,” I murmured in agreement. In reality, we had a very elaborate, damn near meet-cute cover story planned, but I may have stolen a handful of the details from one of Milo’s books. We couldn’t exactly tell that story in front of him. Milo would know in a heartbeat.

Besides, vague was better with Sebastian. He’d start poking holes in a complex story if we fucked up a single detail. Knowing my luck, I’d screw up something like the weather, and Sebastian would know.

Sebastian said nothing. He just stared at Nash. I didn’t like how he scrutinized Nash, like he was dissecting him little by little until he could figure out everything he needed to about the man I’d married. It made me uncomfortable.

“You look familiar,” Sebastian commented finally.

Fuck. I drew in a steady breath, trying to calm the sudden kick up in my heart rate. More than once, Sebastian had crossed Nash’s path when he played for money on corners and around coffee shops. It came down to: did Sebastian pay enough attention to recognize him?

If he did, this whole thing would blow up rather quickly, and Sebastian’s moral compass knew no boundaries. He’d report my ass to the police in a heartbeat if it was the right thing to do.

“What can I say? I have one of those faces,” Nash answered, calm and cool about the whole thing. At least one of us was. His fingers squeezed my thigh for reassurance.

“No, it’s not that.”

“Well, that’s a you problem to solve, not me,” he retorted. I tried not to roll my eyes because his smartass commentary wasn’t going to help the situation any.

“How is writing going?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from Nash and mine’s backstory.

“Eh,” Milo let out in frustration. “I’m struggling with my current manuscript, but I don’t have a deadline, so it’s not that big a deal.”

“That’s good.”

“The characters just aren’t talking to me, you know? I can’t hear their voices clearly in my head right now, and it’s messing up my process.”

“That sucks,” I replied like I understood any of that.

“Sure, he says he can’t hear his voices, and it sucks. I say it, and I’m crazy,” Nash muttered under his breath. I shot him a concerned look, but he just shook his head quickly.

“Do you guys know Spencer Harding?” Milo continued, completely oblivious to the two of us.

“Vaguely,” I told him. “I’ve heard of him, but epic fantasies aren’t my thing.”

“Yeah, well—and this is just between us, so shh—I secured a co-author contract with him,” he said with that big grin of his. “His agents want him to branch out into romantic fantasy, so he and I are going to be writing a book together. I leave next month for New Hampshire to meet him.”

“Now, when you say romantic fantasy,” Nash interjected, “do you mean it has dragons or it has dragon dicks?”

The table fell into shocked silence. I just stared at him. What the actual fuck? Nash, however, was undeterred and just shrugged.

“It’s a valid question,” he said.

“To be fair, to be fair! Yes, it is!” Milo replied with excitement. “Honestly, I don’t think Harding would be down for it, but me? I could go both ways.”

“You could go both ways?” Nash smirked.

“Oh, come on!” he exclaimed. “You can’t tell me if you were presented with the opportunity to fuck or be fucked by a dragon, you wouldn’t do it once.”

“The semantics play a big part in this, starting with… how big is the dragon’s dick?”

“Well, coconut oil will make it fit right?” Milo shot back, making Nash laugh.

“What is this goddamn conversation?” Sebastian whispered to me, leaning closer.

“Fuck if I know,” I replied. But I really didn’t care about the conversation. I was too busy admiring Nash’s laugh.