Page 5 of Love By Design

I studied my younger brother for a tell, but he kept his eyes trained on his lap until the color in his face returned to normal,only looking up again after he’d taken a substantial swallow of his wine.

“Silas has the potential to be a brilliant architect,” I said. “If only his father would stop suffocating him.”

“The opposite of our father then?” Smith countered.

“You’ll appreciate it when you’re older,” Hunter promised, and I knew he understood our father in the same way I did. He was far from the best, but he was the best we had. It was his name and his money that had given all of us our lives, and he’d asked for nothing in return. It seemed he prided himself on knowing the name would carry on after him and that it would carry on well. Maybe that would happen in spite of him, but I’d long ago made peace with the kind of man my father was compared to the kind of men who fathered my friends.

I was nowhere near as practical as him. Finn had once gotten drunk and suggested Willem Covington was a sociopath, but I had always found him to be a product of his own environment. Hunter and I didn’t hold his detached parenting style against him anymore, at least not in the way Smith seemed to. My whole life, Dad had his girlfriends and he had his hookups, and before my brothers had joined the family, I’d idolized that way of life. I thought my father was the pinnacle of all things, and when I eventually learned otherwise, it was too late.

Reaching up, I subconsciously tucked my hair behind my ears. Not that it was long enough for that, but it was going gray, and I was the oldest of all my brothers. While I held no ill will against my father, I didn’t want to be like him anymore. I’d modeled myself after him because I had no other role models to look up to, and by the time I’d reached Hunter’s and Finn’s age, there were dozens of notches on my bedpost and not a single serious relationship under my belt.

I rubbed my fingers and thumb around the stem of my wine glass, glancing across the table to see the twins deep inconversation about something that would only ever involve them, so I angled my head toward Smith.

“You don’t have to change your name to not be like him,” I said softly enough for him to hear, but not the other two.

“I don’t want to be like him.”

“You’re not.”

Smith reached for his wine, sliding his thumb and fingers around the stem the same way I’d done, then he lifted it to his mouth and took a drink. “You don’t want to be like him either, do you?”

“It’s not a goal I’m actively pursuing, Smith.”

He rubbed his lips together, and it was so easy to see him as the angry, abandoned ten-year-old he’d been when I met him for the first time. Sometimes I wished I could have done better by him, but I was fresh out of college, fighting so hard to make the Covington name my own.

“You’renotlike him,” he said to me, like the question had only meant to confirm his suspicions that Dad and I weren’t the same man.

“I know,” I said, doing my best to commit the observation from Smith to my memory for later in case I forgot it.

Which I sometimes did.

CHAPTER 3

SILAS

By the time I got home, I was somehow in a worse mood than when I’d left. I’d spent the whole drive stewing about my father, my brain helpfully playing back Marshall Covington’s smooth voice as he complimented my work over the top of my father’s constant dismissals. Slamming the front door behind me, I dropped everything just inside the door, then I toed off my oxfords and shuffled into the living room, hoping my roommate Lincoln was there. He wasn’t, but the steady thump of EDM coming from down the hallway led me straight to him.

I found my roommate—and friend—standing in front of his full-length mirror, wearing nothing more than a pair of tight leather pants. I flung myself down face-first onto his bed, muffling a frustrated cry into his pillow. Lincoln turned down the music and sat beside me on the bed, his talented fingers plucking my shirt to untuck it from my pants.

I rolled onto my back and let him finish the job, tugging out the tails before undoing my belt and pulling down my fly. Without a word, he stripped me of my slacks, then he finished unbuttoning my dress shirt, fingertips drawing a swirl around the base of my throat as I shrugged out of the confining material.Collapsing back onto his sheets in only my boxer briefs, relief trickled up my body, accelerated by the careful slide of Lincoln’s hand.

“Rough day?” he asked.

I hummed in response.

“Come out with me tonight,” he said, pressing on my hip until I rolled to my side and then back onto my belly.

“I’m not in the mood,” I grumbled.

Lincoln chuckled, kneading the globes of my ass until I groaned and arched up against his grip.

“You’re always in the mood.”

“I’m not.”

He released one side of my ass, only to spank it. Not hard enough to count, but enough to remind me he was right. I was always in the mood.

“Come out with me,” he said again, getting rougher with his handling of my ass. I fought the urge to hump his comforter, even though it wouldn’t have been the first time.