Page 27 of Code Word (The Atrous #3)

“Okay, stop. I’ve already told you what we did. I can’t change that. But we never... Becca and I, we?—”

“It’s okay, Blake. She told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That it wasn’t . . .”

“That it wasn’t what? Good? Did she say it wasn’t good? Oh my god.”

He barked out a laugh. “No. She said it wasn’t love. She said the intimacy part wasn’t earth-shattering because the emotional connection just wasn’t there. And she said it wasn’t... frequent.”

“Oh wow. Not earth-shattering. That’s great. Tell me, when we go to family dinners, will there be scoring cards like the Olympics diving?”

Luke laughed again, seemingly unfazed. “I dunno. I kinda feel better after talking it out with her though. Like it’s all out in the open. I don’t want secrets or her thinking we can’t talk about it.”

“Well, there are some things I’d rather you don’t talk about. Not earth-shattering? Did she really say that?”

Laughing, he pushed me down on the lounge chair, crawled over me, and kissed me. “I told her we haven’t done much, but what we have done has been pretty fucking good.”

“Oh dear god. You told her that?”

“Yep. And she said of course it would be, because we have an emotional connection.”

“Well, yeah. Of course. But did you have to tell her that?”

He chuckled, not horrified at all, and kissed me softly. “And I told her we had plans to do a whole lot more and I’d keep her posted.”

I gasped. “For the love of fuck, Luke. Noooo.”

He laughed, but then ran his nose down my neck, back up to my ear. “I will defend your honor,” he murmured, his voice low and warm. He sucked my earlobe in between his lips. “I will prove her wrong.”

I shivered and my breath caught, my brain short-circuiting. “That’s great,” I said, panting. “Is that a sibling rivalry thing? Because I gotta say, you win.”

He chuckled, and his warm breath sent another wave of shivers through me, my whole body a trip wire. With my hands on his hips, I pulled him down onto me as he kissed my Adam’s apple.

“Holy fuck,” I rasped. I was getting hard, my body wanting, needing, unable to get enough of him.

But then he stopped and met my eyes, his smirk filthy. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Get up and put a shirt on. We’re going down to the bar at the end of the beach. ”

Then he crawled off me.

I palmed my half-hard, very confused dick. “Are you into torture or edging or something? Is this a thing I should know about?”

He laughed from the doorway. “Nope. But making you think about it the whole time we’re at the bar is fun. Kinda guarantees some shattering earth when we get back.”

I stared at him. “Oh, so you are into torture. This is torture, Luke. And I can guarantee earth-shattering without the torture.”

He laughed as he disappeared inside like the evil jerk he was. “Hurry up. Put a shirt on. I’m starving.”

I grumbled as I followed him in. I found a shirt and pulled a cap on my head so I didn’t have to bother doing my hair. He was waiting for me on the patio, grinning in the fading sunlight, looking all kinds of fucking cute.

“You okay there?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m great. My dick sends its regards.”

He laughed and shoved me down the steps. “You gotta admit, it’s kinda fun.”

“It’s gonna be a whole lot more fun when we get back.”

“I know. That’s why I did it.”

I sighed. “So, torture, huh? Never had you pegged as the pain-inflicting type, but okay.”

We walked down the long strip of sand, barefoot, as the sun began its descent. The sky was a palette of pinks and oranges, the salty air was warm, the sand cool and damp.

I slung my arm over his shoulder like I’d done ten thousand times. I kinda did it without thinking, but he gave me a shy smile that was new.

“So,” he said, “we could be photographed. Or filmed. It’ll be all over social media. There’ll be a frenzy.”

“Let them talk,” I replied easily. “I don’t care. They’ve always shipped us together, and I’ve always put my arm around you, or yours around me. There’s literally hundreds of photos. I saw them on the floor in your house.”

“Ah. My folder of pain,” he said. “I’d go through them when I wanted to torture myself.”

“So you are into torture.”

He laughed, but then it drew out into a sigh. “I really was going to set them on fire, you know. When we got back from the cabins. I was done trying to not love you. I couldn’t deal with it anymore and I was going cold turkey.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t. So I left instead.”

“Yes. When you left me. We keep circling back to torture.”

He chuckled. “I’m glad you found them. I’m glad you found me.”

“Me too.” I pulled him closer as we walked. “And I don’t give a fuck who sees us. They wanna take photos? Have at it. I’m not hiding anything. Unless you don’t want to...” I dropped my arm and put a little distance between us. “Are you comfortable with this?”

He laughed, and sliding his arm around my waist, he tucked himself under my arm. “I’ve waited a fucking decade for this. You think I’m gonna hide it?”

I smiled and kissed the side of his head. “I hope the whole board of directors of Platinum sees photos of us and Arlo Kim pops a vessel.”

Luke snorted. “Poor Arlo. I’m sure the sound of the billion dollars he made from us will soothe him to sleep.”

I growled at that and let go of Luke so he could step through the gate to the bar.

It was a great little setup. An outdoor bar with a firepit, lights hung up from poles, and mariachi music playing softly in the background. There were a few people at a table who spared us a smile as we pulled up to the bar.

We ordered two beers and a pizza between us, then found a table closest to the beach .

“Pretty sure they recognized us,” Luke murmured.

I didn’t have to look to know he was talking about the folks at the other table.

I clinked my bottle to his. “Still do not care. As long as they leave us alone.”

And they did leave us alone.

Maybe they’d be doing us a favor by posting pics all over the internet of us together. Not that we were doing anything overtly couple-y. We were just hanging out.

But I could see the stupid headlines already.

Blake joins Luke in Mexico

Is it to help heal his broken heart after splitting from Vana?

Where’s Blake’s girlfriend?

Bluke is real: witnesses say they looked too cozy to be platonic

Romantic walks on the beach and dinner for two

I sighed and Luke chuckled. “Still not bothered?”

“It’s better here than back home,” I replied. “The fact we could go to the market, we can walk on the beach, make out on the lounge chair. No one cares here.”

“Still don’t wanna go back home?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about that,” I admitted.

“It’s not the place I don’t want to go back to.

It’s me. I don’t wanna go back to the old me.

I’m not that guy anymore. Who I was. Me, the house at Malibu.

That’s not who I am. I don’t want to be that person anymore.

I like this version of me. With you. No worries. No problems. Just us.”

“No Atrous.”

“Exactly.”

He stared at me, and maybe I’d replied to that too quickly. But it was the truth.

I looked him right in the eye. “It’s not who I am anymore.”

He nodded slowly, his brow furrowing. “Okay? So, then what?”

“I’m gonna sell the house in Malibu. And buy something here with you. ”

He couldn’t hide his surprise. “Oh, you are, are you?”

“Yep. It was your idea before and it’s perfect. And we’ll have our own studio. Where we can make our own music. And do what we want. Make what we want, release what we want. No Arlo Kim, no schedules running us into the ground, not caring if it almost kills us.”

“No dance practice,” he added.

That made me laugh. “Fuck no. Never again.”

“I haven’t missed that.”

I shook my head. “Me either.”

He was quiet for a moment. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t a question. “One hundred percent. Do you not want that? New house, new music. New life. With me?”

“Of course I do. That sounds perfect.”

I kinda got the feeling he wanted to say more, but the waiter slid our pizza on the table and our conversation was forgotten.

Luke demolished most of the pizza and another two beers, and he had a cute-as-fuck glow on his face. “You know what I really do want though? More than anything?”

I drained the rest of my beer. “What’s that?”

“I want to go back to the house and test a few theories.”

“Theories?”

He nodded and leaned in close. “One. That my sister is full of shit. You do have earth-shattering moves; I know you do. Two, because of the emotional-connection theory. And three, that we haven’t done a lot of the things I wanna try, and we need to remedy that. Stat.”

Jesus Herbert Christ.

“Oh, and four,” he said, holding up four fingers proudly. “That my torture theory worked, and I’m going to count exactly how many seconds it takes from leaving this bar until I’m naked.”

I stood up and started peeling bills out of my wallet. Which, of course, made him laugh. “And five, how to get me to pay.”

I tossed a bunch of cash on the table—possibly ten times what we owed, but I didn’t give a fuck. “You wanna start running,” I warned.

Luke laughed again, and I knew people were watching. Still didn’t give one single fuck. Luke waltzed merrily to the gate, grinning at me. “I said run, Dougherty,” I called out.

All I heard was Luke’s laughter in the darkness as he took off up the beach, and I raced out after him. I hit the loose, dry sand, my momentum going in one direction and my knee in another.

Fuck.