Page 9

nine

ADELE

“I’m in trouble.”

Ridge looked over from where he was dunking the sponge into the large bucket and lifted a brow behind his aviators. “What kind of trouble? Legal shit, or?—”

“I think I’m in love.”

Ridge dropped the sponge and walked over, pushing his glasses into his hair. “Ah yes, the bestie.”

Adele tried not to cringe at the word, and he nodded. “Yeah. And don’t give me shit, please. I’m apparently obvious except to the one person that matters, and it’s fucking killing me. But maybe it’s for the best,” Adele added.

Ridge raised a brow at him. “How exactly is that for the best?”

“Because…” He stopped. The truth was, he was pretty sure Kash had some idea, and Adele was on board now with Bowen’s theory that Kash had been in love with him for years. But no matter what Adele put on the table, Kash wasn’t taking it .

They’d had their moment in the shower—a good moment. A fucking great moment once Adele figured out that Kash wasn’t really hurt. But after, it had been awkward silence and emotional distance until the next day, when Kash went back to pretending like nothing happened.

He didn’t know if it was a self-esteem thing or if it was Kash struggling with his feelings, but either way, he felt stuck. He couldn’t be more obvious if he tried, and he had no idea what to do. The wooing plan was failing, and Adele was starting to panic. What if this whole thing really was one-sided?

What if Kash was going along with it because he thought Adele needed it? Bowen could very easily be wrong. Maybe Kash hadn’t wanted Adele to touch him at all. He wasn’t the one who’d asked for it. He’d just said yes. Maybe Adele was putting him into a situation where he felt like he couldn’t say no.

Panic rose in his throat, and his breath started to shake in his lungs.

“Hey,” Ridge said softly. “Are you okay?”

“Honestly? No. I mean, yes, I’m fine. But I feel like I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone, and pining, and miserable.”

“That’s…defeatist. And not like you,” Ridge said.

Adele groaned and rested his head against the side of the truck. It smelled like car wash soap and dirt, which wasn’t the most pleasant combination. “Yeah. I can’t seem to shake myself out of this funk.”

Ridge walked over and leaned next to him. “How can I help?”

“I don’t think you can.” Adele turned his head to the side to look at his friend. “I’ve tried everything to get him to crack, but he’s…he’s so distant. And not just because he’s going through health shit. This is different.”

Ridge let out a small sigh. “Have you talked to him directly?”

Adele’s laugh was almost hysterical. “No.”

“Because that’s what? Too reasonable?”

Adele flipped him off, but deep down, he knew Ridge was right. He should just talk to him. He had no idea why his head was still lodged so firmly up his ass about this. “It’s, ah…well. It’s a little worse than not talking to him directly.”

Ridge raised his brows. “Go on.”

Adele’s face heated. He hadn’t confessed this to anyone except Bowen, who refused to hear details—and for good reason. But he was keeping this from most of the guys, and it sucked. At their last meeting, he told himself he was going to fess up and tell the truth, but then he realized if they judged him for the way he was making a mess of this whole thing, he wouldn’t ever recover.

He couldn’t lose their respect or their trust. They were all he had left.

“You can talk to me, man,” Ridge reminded him. “You know I have your back.”

Adele bit his lip, then said, “We’ve been fooling around.”

“So…you think he doesn’t know you want him for real, but he’s letting you touch his dick?”

“That’s oversimplifying it. But that’s not the problem. It was kind of…me who started the whole fooling around thing. I came on to him.”

Ridge’s face went blank. “But he said yes.”

“Yeah,” Adele said, then fell silent for a beat. “Except now I’m panicking because maybe he felt cornered into it. ”

Folding his arms over his chest, Ridge gave him a pointed look. “Not that I want too many deets here, but can you elaborate? What do you mean he might have felt cornered?”

Adele dropped his face into his hands and groaned, then grimaced because they were covered in truck dirt. “He was having a hard time the second day we were in DC. It had been a rough afternoon, and his body was being really uncooperative. He was angry that his hands weren’t working. He was talking about not being able to do the things he used to.”

“Like?” Ridge asked.

Adele flushed. “Jerking off. He said it had been a while because his arms were weak, and every time he tried, he couldn’t finish.”

“So you offered a hand. So to speak,” Ridge said, his lips twitching.

Adele flushed, but he nodded. “It’s not the first time we fooled around. We used to call it practice when we were younger.”

Ridge rolled his eyes with a laugh. “Yeah, been there.”

“I offered to help him out. I told him it didn’t have to mean anything, and he agreed. But he, uh…he said my name when he, you know…”

“Came?”

Adele swallowed heavily and nodded. “It happened again after we got home. In the shower.”

“Did it seem like he didn’t want it?” Ridge asked.

Adele shook his head. “No. I told him he could think of anyone he wanted, but he said my name both times.”

“Jesus Christ, dude.”

“I know. I should have done better at making sure he?— ”

“No,” Ridge interrupted. “That’s not what I mean. Christ, you both deserve each other.”

Adele blinked at him. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means you both seem to be experts at self-sabotage when it comes to falling in love. You two obviously want each other. I saw the way he looked at you when I was over for dinner. I saw the way he looked at me.”

Adele felt something hot in his chest. “How did he look at you?”

Ridge laughed. “Like he wanted to carve my heart out with a rusty butterknife. Every time I got near you, I got a death glare.”

Adele wanted to argue, but the truth was he hadn’t noticed. He’d been so fixated on making sure Kash was okay that he’d shut everyone else out. “That doesn’t mean he wanted any of this.”

Ridge shook his head and took Adele by the shoulders. “I’m not going to say it’s impossible to coerce him because, honestly, that can happen to everyone. But your best friend, who clearly has big, big feelings for you, is letting you touch his dick, and he’s saying your name when he comes. I could be way off base about this, but I’d say that’s a clear path to at least tell him you want him.”

Adele closed his eyes. “If I do and he tells me he doesn’t want me back, I’m not sure I could take it. And…” He trailed off.

“And?” Ridge pressed.

Adele took a shaking breath. “And he’s too much like me. If he doesn’t want me, I’m scared he’ll lie and say he does to make me happy because that’s what I’d do for him. Then he’d spend the rest of his life quietly miserable because he thinks he’s doing the right thing for me.”

Ridge looked at him carefully. “Would you really condemn yourself to a relationship where you weren’t in love just to make someone happy?”

“I would if it was him.”

Ridge burst into laughter. “You jackass. That’s love. No one does that for someone they’re not head over heels with. You can’t think about this clearly because you want him to the point of what I’m starting to think is insanity.”

Ridge was probably right, and Adele hated it. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“What are your options?”

“Well,” Adele said, then bit his lip in thought. “I could tell him the truth, and it could be great. We could fall in love, and we’d have babies and shit.”

“Or?”

“Or I could say something, and he’d say yes to make me happy, and we’d end up burning down one of the best friendships I have in my life.”

“And the third option?”

“Why do you think there’s a third option?” Adele asked, but he was blushing because there was one. It just wasn’t going the way he planned.

Ridge crossed his arms and stared at him until he cracked.

“Okay, fine. I’ve decided to seduce the absolute fuck out of him until he has no choice but to see we’re perfect together. And then we’d fall in love and have babies and shit.”

Ridge snorted. “Mhm. And how’s that working out for you?”

“I’ve given him two hand jobs, and while we both promised not to make it weird, it’s gotten weird. He’s been my best friend since we were kids. I know him better than anyone except maybe my brother and my son. But suddenly, I feel like he’s a stranger. And fuck, I need to come up with some way to make him understand that I could be the best thing that ever happened to him. Because he’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

Ridge closed the distance between them and cupped Adele’s face between his hands. “Hey.”

Adele tried for a smile but failed. “I know. I’m?—”

“You’re a good guy,” Ridge said, interrupting him before he could go on another tirade about what a disaster he was. “You’re an amazing guy. Hell, if you weren’t so head over heels for someone else—and if you were more my type…and if there wasn’t that whole policy about not dating your boss,” he added with a laugh, “you’d be at the top of my list. Now, I can’t say for sure that Kash isn’t trying to avoid you—I don’t know him well enough for that—but there’s a good chance he’s trying to protect his heart. If he’s as much like you as you say he is, he’s probably shit-scared you’d set yourself on fire to keep him from getting even the slightest chill. And that’s probably not the kind of future he wants to condemn you to.”

“God, this sucks.”

Ridge snorted. “Seems like it. But I get why you haven’t talked to him. I understand the fear that he’d lie to you to spare your feelings.”

Adele swallowed thickly. “Do you think seducing him until he realizes this could be good is a terrible idea? I mean, do I stop? Or keep going?”

Ridge eased back and looked Adele in the face. “Well, you’ll be in love with him no matter what, right? No matter what his future looks like? Or how bad this thing with his body gets? ”

“That’s the one thing I know for certain,” Adele answered honestly.

“Then I think all you can do is ease him in. But you might need to try being more obnoxiously obvious.”

Adele laughed. The advice was both absurd and perfect. “I’m not sure how much more obvious I can get after literally getting into the shower with him and making him come all over himself.”

Ridge grimaced. “Those are the deets I don’t need.”

Adele laughed. “Sorry. I just…need to come up with a plan better than the one I’m using now.”

Ridge sighed. “And I guess I’m going to help you with that.”

“Bud, you don’t need to. I don’t need to make my problems your problems.”

“Yeah, well, since my love life is going absolutely nowhere,” Ridge said with a grimace, then leaned his head on Adele’s shoulder, “I might as well do my best to give someone else their happily ever after.”

Bowen, Adele, and Ridge sat at the table at Lane’s bar, staring at each other, all of them looking lost and uncertain. Adele hated himself for keeping his feelings from the rest of the guys, but he had a feeling if he let Frey or Dallas in on his little plan, it would turn into an epic disaster. Worse than it was now.

They’d end up planning a parade or one of those public flash mobs that gave him secondhand embarrassment so badly he wanted to cry. So, he’d do this now and ask for forgiveness later. The only problem was his brother and his friend weren’t any better than he was .

“Okay. Let’s start with what you have done,” Bowen said.

Adele flushed as Ridge burst into laughter. “Hand jobs in hotel rooms and in the shower is as far as he got.”

Bowen reared back. “Dude. This is my brother we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, well, he hasn’t given me much to work with besides that,” Ridge defended. “And that’s about all he’s done so far.”

Bowen stared at Adele. “Seriously?”

Adele shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Bowen dropped his face into his hand and shook his head. “Okay. I mean, sex is good. It’s great. But that’s not going to convince him this is a forever deal. You know him. He’s always been fragile?—”

“Don’t,” Adele cautioned.

Bowen’s lips thinned. “I’m not calling him fragile as an insult. But you fucking broke his heart when you got married, dude. He literally fell apart at the wedding.”

Adele blinked at him. What the hell was Bowen saying? “What are you talking about? He was fine. I mean, we got a little drunk and weepy about life changing, but that’s normal.”

Bowen’s laugh was high and tight. “Oh my God, you really believe that. Jesus, I thought you were being obtuse on purpose. He was a wreck, dude. He cried during the ceremony.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Adele stopped and bit his lip.

He’d seen Kash weeping out of the corner of his eye, and he’d thought it was sweet. He hadn’t assumed it was for any other reason than why everyone else cried at weddings. Adele hadn’t really loved his ex—not the way she deserved to be loved—but even he’d gotten a little misty at watching her walk down the aisle in the white, puffy dress, looking like an actual princess.

God, had he really had his head buried that far in the sand?

“Shit,” he muttered.

“You both deserve each other,” Bowen said. “If you two had this talk years ago, we wouldn’t be here right now. You’d be married and happy and dealing with this crisis together.”

Adele’s chest felt tight. “I wouldn’t have Gage.”

“You don’t know that. Kash loves him more than anything. He would have been on board for adopting a kid,” Bowen pointed out. “But it’s too late for what-ifs. You’ve spent years ignoring how much he loves you. Now, you need to pull out all the stops if you want him to believe that he’s it for you.”

“Where do I start?” Adele asked.

Bowen and Ridge looked at each other, and then Bowen said, “You need to take him on a date. A real date. Not some bullshit trip to DC where you…do whatever you did—please don’t tell me—and then come home with everything all broken.”

“A date,” Adele repeated.

Ridge lifted a brow at him. “You know what he likes, right?”

Adele did. Or, at least, he thought he did. But he was starting to second-guess himself with everything. He thought he knew how Kash had felt at his wedding, but he’d been wrong. He thought he’d known how Kash felt about him their entire lives, but he’d had his head firmly lodged up his own ass.

God, for the amount of shit he’d given his friends over the years, he deserved to be raked across the coals .

“Help me,” he said.

Ridge sighed and looked at Bowen. “How did this man raise you?”

“It’s a damn mystery.”

Adele wanted to fight back, but at this point, he had no argument at all.

Through the dinner and drinks, they brainstormed as much as they could. Adele had a couple of decent ideas by the end, and he also had a feeling his jig was up. Lane had seen them with their heads bowed, and he’d caught his brother mouthing, ‘I’ll tell you later,’ when Lane raised a brow at them.

“He’s not going to tell anyone. Unbunch your panties,” Bowen said as they were walking out.

“I want this to go well before everyone starts giving their opinions.”

Bowen grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Hey, I get it. Life is already a shitshow as it is, and you don’t need uninvited commentary on all the things you’re doing right or wrong.”

Adele let out a small sigh. That was exactly it. He adored his friends beyond measure, but for the first time in his life, he knew they’d pave the path for him getting in his own way yet again. This was too important to risk.

“Did you decide where you’re going to take him?” Bowen asked as they got to Adele’s car.

He shrugged and looked up at the sky. “He loves boats. I think I’ll take him on the ferry tomorrow out to Cape Andrew. The beach there is really flat. We can go shelling and…I don’t know, pack a picnic like a couple of nerds and hang out with the seabirds.”

“That’s so disgusting,” Bowen said. “And so perfect for you both.”

Adele laughed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “If he turns me down…”

Bowen took him by the shoulders. “He’s not going to turn you down. He doesn’t do that. He’ll go on these dates and tell himself that you’re trying to cheer up a friend. You need to make it romantic. The date isn’t going to do that for you. Effort, Addie.”

Adele nodded and squeezed his eyes shut. “He’s worth it.”

“Yeah, he is. I was fucking devastated when you married someone who wasn’t him. You two were my family, and it felt like you’d split that up. I was so mad at you.”

Adele had no idea about that either. Bowen had been in his young adult angry phase at the time, and he’d assumed his brother was mad at the world. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I wasn’t going to be the one who destroyed your happy home,” Bowen told him. “If I’d known you married her because you thought Kash was never going to love you back, I would have stopped the wedding when that weird perv-stache priest asked who objected.”

“Or you could have told me sooner so I didn’t have to shell out fifteen grand on that farce,” Adele said.

Bowen laughed. “Your next wedding will be better. And cheaper.”

Adele smiled. “And I already have a wedding planner.”

Laughing again, Bowen shook his head. “Rex will kill you if you use anyone else. Anyway, it’s going to be fine. Just remember, be more stubborn than him. It’s your one superpower. Lean in.”

Lean in. He could do that. Maybe.

Probably.

He really, really hoped.