Page 86 of Love By Design

“Not really.”

“You don’t look like the kind of man who should be alone.”

“Probably not,” he agreed.

My earlier war over which of my priorities needed to take the top spot raged back to life. Silas was home waiting for me, but Silas had Lincoln. In this moment, Smith didn’t have anyone besides me.

“I’ll invite you over,” I said. “The guest room is always clean, but I need you to know that I have company.”

Smith raised his brows, and I knew I’d accidentally given him the distraction he’d been hoping for.

“Who?”

“I’m seeing Silas Ayres,” I admitted.

The corner of Smith’s eye twitched, and I stared him down, waiting for him to say something.

Anything.

What he finally gave me was, “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Alright, I’ll come over,” he said, ignoring the confession that my boyfriend was closer to his age than mine.

“His best friend is also there, but he is going home after dinner. At least, I assume he is.”

“You have more than one spare bed if not,” Smith said.

“Yeah. Why don’t you run back in and let the twins know you’re coming home with me? We’ll all take some time to regroup and then decide what we want to do about Andrew.”

Smith grimaced, but nodded, then pushed off the car and trudged back into the restaurant. As soon as he was far enoughaway to be out of earshot, I reached into my pocket for my phone. I had to let Silas know I would be home earlier than I’d planned and that my brother would be with me. It wasn’t quite how I’d imagined their first meeting going, but life was life, and this was the situation we’d all found ourselves in.

The real issue with the turn of events was that none of my brothers knew I was into BDSM, and I was minutes away from walking my distraught baby brother into a house with a man who was very likely going to call meSir.

Quickly, before Smith returned, I called Silas, who answered on the first ring…like he’d been holding his phone and waiting for my call.

“Hello?”

“Silas.”

I could hear the smile in his voice when he asked, “How’s dinner? Is everything all right?”

“Dinner is…” I bit back the lie. Dinner wasnotokay, but I realized with the mistruth just how much about my life Silas didn’t know. It wasn’t anything I’d kept from him. Things were simply so new we hadn’t had the time to have some of these discussions. He knew I had brothers, but there was so much more to our story. Just like there was so much more to mine that Hunter, Finn, and Smith weren’t privy to.

“Sir?”

Groaning, I kept my stare trained on the door to the restaurant. “My youngest brother is coming home with me. He’s your age. I actually think you know him from school.”

I wanted to dig myself a hole in the asphalt and never come back up for air.

“Who?”

“His name is Smith. Smith Covington.”

Silas laughed on the other end of the line. “I can’t believe I never put two and two together.”

“Did you know him well?”