“What happens now?” I asked.
Both brothers looked at each other, giving identical shrugs. “I want to be with you, and so does Adam,” Andy said. “We’ve proven that jealousy doesn’t have to be an issue for us if we don’t let it be. Why don’t we just see where this goes, and enjoy it?”
I nodded, giving him a tight smile as the truth of my last few escapades hovered on the tip of my tongue. I wondered whether I should tell them about what I’d done with Aaron and Austin, about whether they needed to know that I’d now slept with all four of them… but I thought better of it.
Now wasn’t the time, not now that we were all lying so lovingly together.
Adam reached forward, pulling the ice cream from my hands, holding me against him. “Andy’s right,” he said, smiling. “Let’s not worry.”
I sighed, reaching my arm out so that it lay across his stomach. I felt the mattress dipping on my other side and turned around in Adam’s arms, allowing myself to be spooned by him as I reached forward and placed my hand on Andy’s shoulder. He covered it with his, bringing it to his mouth for a kiss before holding it to his chest.
We fell asleep like that—exhausted, sated, and full of love for each other.
26
AARON
I checked the delivery of the medications against the order number on my invoice, ensuring that the numbers matched up.
“What are you checking up on now?” Adam asked from the opposite corner of the barn where he was stacking up feed bags, checking them against the last invoice that we’d gotten in.
“Medicines,” I responded, unable to keep my thoughts from straying to a certain blonde veterinarian. We hadn’t talked much since our tryst in the barn—but any of the words that we did exchange were cool and professional, with her texting me to check up on Briar and make sure that she was recovering well. I’d responded as professionally as I could, not saying anything about the way I wanted to kiss her again… to taste her again. All I needed was for her to give me the opening.
She didn’t, and that fact made my skin heat up in an entirely new way.
I was annoyed—deeply so—and even a little angry, but I knew that I couldn’t be angry at her. After all, it wasn’t like it was the easiest situation. She was friends with all my brothers. Even more than that, her parents were good friends with my parents, and it made for an all-around complicated situation that was hell-on-earth to deal with.
Well, not hell on earth. That was next-level exaggeration… or hyperbole, as Andy would say.
Regardless, our little escapade in the barn had been providing the fodder for my solo sessions since then, so it was fair to say that she’d been on my mind if she ever decided to accuse me of not having thought of her since our last non-professional meeting.
I shook my head, breaking myself out of the reverie, and turned back to Adam, who’d been whistling in the corner of the barn where he was still checking on the feed bags.
Strange. Adam was a good whistler—we all were—but he almost never did it. It was only something he did if he was in a particularly good mood, and he just hadn’t been over the last few weeks.
Normally I was happy to hear his whistling. Loving my little brother as much as I did, I was always happy when he was, but today, listening to him whistle just made my skin itch.
“How’re we looking on feed over there, Adam?” I asked, thankfully causing a break in the high, piercing tune. “Are we going to be okay with the delivery, or will we need to put in another order?”
He paused, looking down at the papers in his own hands one more time before looking back at me. That face was a far cry from the one we’d seen at Sunday dinner a few weeks before, when our mother had commented on at least one of us bringing home someone for us to meet. “We should be good, but I still need to check on the feed in the far barn before I can be sure.”
“I think Austin’s checking on the far barn, so he’ll be able to confirm on that when he comes in,” I said, looking down at my own clipboard. “The storm is supposed to hit this weekend, so if we need to order anything else, we should get it in in ASAP. Do you need to go grab anything from home?”
He blinked at me before closing his eyes tightly, and I could practically hear the thoughts going through his mind. Oh, shit.
“You forgot your overnight stuff, didn’t you?”
It was our usual modus operandi. Whenever a major storm warning went into effect, we placed emergency orders of everything that we needed to keep the horses fed and healthy until the storm had passed, in addition to shopping for a bunch of food that wouldn’t go bad in case we lost power.