Page 35 of Enemies with Benefits (Finding the Right Brother #1)

After two months of dealing with him like that, I couldn't exactly claim innocence on my part either.

I kept coming back; at first, it was aggressively reluctant, but now.

..now I didn't know what to call it. I might have privately come to acknowledge that yeah, I enjoyed what we were doing, and yeah, I would probably enjoy doing it with another guy if I ever found the courage to follow through on that.

Except that idea was weird as hell to think about for too long, and I'd never expressed it, not even when Mason had casually asked if I'd branched out to really prove to myself that I was. ..bi I guess.

Not that I was going to give him the answer he wanted, even if I sometimes wondered just what sort of answer he wanted.

Plus, it was a stupid thought in the first place.

We hadn't gone any further than hands and mouths as it was, so why the hell would I branch out by trying things with someone else?

Not that I hadn't thought about us fucking.

..a lot. He still pissed me off, but damned if my new understanding of myself didn't make me aware of how good the guy looked.

..when he wasn't talking anyway. And that translated all the way to his ass.

Well, his dick too, which was still weird to admit even if it was just in my head, but the idea of him using his dick on me was just..

..yeah, I couldn't help but pull back from that thought every time.

It was still uncomfortable to think about fucking him, a sentiment he clearly didn't share, but it felt. ..safer somehow.

And goddamn tempting as well.

When we entered the hotel's lobby, we were met with chaos, which was something I’d come to accept as a fact of life for the Beckett family.

I'd always been confused about their reputation in school once I'd started dating Moira and had shown up at the hotel occasionally.

Now, though, I knew the peace I'd seen and been so confused about had been because I’d only dealt with Moira or their mom.

When more than one sibling was around, chaos inevitably followed, and I sometimes wondered if Moira had engineered it so her brothers weren't around as often when we'd been dating.

If she had, she clearly wasn't doing that now, or maybe it was because it was Milo and Elijah that I was witnessing having a 'fight' on one of the staircases.

Really, though, it was just a slap fight with cushions that had been taken from somewhere, and it was just Milo being the aggressor.

Elijah seemed content to defend himself, perfectly innocent to all the onlookers who had stopped to watch the ridiculousness.

That, of course, was just a facade, because from the few times I'd seen them over the past couple of months, Elijah was just as bad as Milo, but far more patient and cunning.

Sure enough, all it took as they reached the bottom of the stairs was for Elijah to take two steps down, encouraging Milo to follow him.

I missed what happened next when I glanced up the staircase and saw Mason jogging down toward the lobby, not oblivious to his brothers, but used to their shenanigans.

His eyes locked on me, and a ribbon of familiar heat curled in my gut when his lips twisted into a familiar smirk, his stride never breaking.

I was brought back to the 'event' as Milo cried out, jerking my attention back to him as the blond fell the last couple of steps and sprawled at the foot of the stairs.

Elijah remained a few steps up with a small smile on his face, walking down the stairs and dropping his cushion over Milo before heading toward the restaurant with a wave at me.

Kayden and I met Mason at the bottom of the stairs, who gracefully hopped over his brother and stopped.

"And that," Mason said with a roll of his eyes, "right there, is why I always take one of the rooms in the hotel when I'm staying here, and those two are around.

Well, that and Milo loves finding ways into my room when it's locked.

Even if I have company. You'd think being scarred once or twice would teach him, but you'd be wrong. "

"How many times has this scarring happened?" Kayden asked, glancing down at Milo, who was still sprawled on his stomach, looking around slowly as if waiting for something.

"I have lost count," Mason said with a shrug.

"I feel like after two, maybe three times, it stops being scarring and becomes enjoyable," Kayden said with a shake of his head.

"Dude, gross, that's my brother," Mason protested.

"I thought he was adopted," Kayden said in confusion.

"Milo is his and Moira's half-brother," I explained with a shake of my head. "Same mom. Arlo and Dominic are the adopted ones. Elijah is Marcus' kid, so he's everyone's step-brother."

That was all well and good until I noticed the two of them staring at me, and I felt perfectly justified in glaring back. "What?"

"Even I still get confused once in a while," Mason said slowly. "You rattled that off like it was nothing."

Kayden sighed. “He does that on the clock too. I can forget something you told me thirty seconds ago, whereas this jerk only takes notes in interviews because the captain told him he has to, even though everyone knows it's not necessary."

"I pay attention," I grunted, feeling uncomfortable. "Try it sometime."

Kayden rolled his eyes. “Why are you like this?"

Mason snorted. “Tell the guy he's tough, and he'll practically stroke himself off, tell the guy he's good at remembering things about people, and he suddenly turns modest."

It was my turn to stare at him. “What?"

Mason didn't falter under the attention like I did. “What? It's true. Give you a manly compliment and you're all about it, but God forbid anyone thinks you actually have a caring bone in your body. Then suddenly you're all grumpy and pissy because... Actually, I don't know why."

"Because he's thickheaded," Kayden offered, because he knew there were too many witnesses around, saving him from being murdered.

Well, that and if he died, too many people would start sniffing around my doorstep, so there was no way I was going to get away with it.

Still, one of these days, I might consider it worth it.

"I would have gone with a stubborn ass, but I guess I can play nice today," Mason said with a smirk.

"Is anyone planning on helping me?" Milo cried out from the ground, having rolled himself over to glare up at the three of us.

Mason glanced down at him in mild surprise, as if having forgotten he was there.

"You're able to move on your own. Plus, Mom is right, if you're not going to learn and be smart, then you might as well be tough.

Just think of this as toughening you up since you aren't going to learn that Eli is always going to get the better of you. "

"It's a bad day when Mason starts talking sense," I said, looking down at Milo, who was now looking at me hopefully. "Fuck no."

Milo turned his eyes to Kayden, blinking. "You're as nice as you are cute, right?"

"Seriously?" I sighed. "Why are you bait for every gay man?"

"Bi," Mason corrected.

"I'm gay," Milo answered helpfully, clearly forgetting he was supposed to be injured and in need of help. "And I have good taste."

"You do," Kayden said with a grin. "And I appreciate that. But I'll have to pass. I'm still holding out hope that one day, you might learn."

"That's stupid," Mason said with a weary sigh. "A hopeless case."

"What can I say? I'm an idealist," Kayden said with a shrug.

I glanced over as Moira's clicking heels foretold her arrival. "Oh, you two are here. I wasn't expecting you to…why is Milo on the ground?"

"Because he's Milo," Mason said with a shrug.

Moira's brow furrowed before her eyes rolled to the ceiling and snapped back to us. “Anyway, if I'd known you were coming today, I would have told you not to bother."

"Why?" I wondered.

"Because Micah isn't going to be back until later tonight. Him and Mom went upstate to join Marcus for a bit of shopping and some...festival."

"It's about sea otters," Mason explained at my confused expression.

"Oh...that makes sense," I said in understanding. Micah never settled on one interest from what I’d heard, but when he did find one, he apparently latched onto it with surprising tenacity. Over the past month, he’d become obsessed with marine animals, and it made complete sense to me that if there was somewhere with the enthusiasm for sea otters to have a festival about them, then Micah was going to want to be front and center.

"You know, I've been around enough to wonder why I’ve never seen your stepdad," Kayden wondered, glancing between the siblings.

It helped to think of them as simply that, because thinking of them as twins meant I had to acknowledge their similarities.

It also meant I had to acknowledge that I had been with Moira and now I was.

..doing things with Mason. That was a mental load I really didn't want to take on now or, hopefully, ever.

"Literally just bad timing," Mason said with a snort. "He was here a couple of days ago while you two were off working your double or whatever it was. He travels a lot."

"Doing what?"

"Interim medical...administration? Something like that. Really, it's just a fancy title that amounts to his being a substitute co-administrator for hospitals up and down the coast. He works in six-month intervals and travels a lot. Six months on, two or three months off, six months on."

"Oh."