Page 45 of Colin

“Okay, fine,” Jay said with a pout. “Not all deets are meant to be shared, is what Alexei says.” He gave Colin his most sincere face. “But you can.”

“Right.” Colin toyed with the comforter at his waist, unsure of how to phrase any of it. “I have roommates. I like them okay.” There. That counted as sharing deets, right? But apparently Jay knew him enough to know there was something more, because he was making incredibly unsubtle wide-eyed faces off-screen to Alexei. “Roommates? Plural?”

“Yes. Brothers. Vampire brothers. Twins.”

The wide-eyed faces stopped, and Jay was suddenly looking incredibly seriously at the camera. “Redheaded twins?” he asked.

“Yeah…”

Jay took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “So, Colin,” he began, as if apropos of nothing, “I’m anicevampire.”

Colin resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes.”

“And Alexei here is the nicest vampire.”

Debatable, but Colin let it slide.

“And since we’re the only vampires you know, you might thinkallvampires are nice. But some—”

“Are assholes,” Colin filled in. “Jay, I know enough about your past to know that. And I know all about Jamie and Luc now. And the creepy child turner we’re on the lookout for.”

“Oh, okay.” Jay’s tension relaxed all at once, as if the matter was fully settled. “So the twins are nice?” he asked hopefully.

Colin almost laughed again. “Not exactly.”

“They’re nice…to you?”

Colin considered. Nice? He wasn’t sure about that. Spit roasting him probably didn’t count on Jay’s niceness meter.

But then again, Jay was a horny little thing, so maybe it did…

“They’re very…clingy,” he finally settled on.

“Oh! Clingy is good.” Of course Jay would think it was, codependent creature that he was. “And—”

“Short stack,” Colin interrupted. “Why don’t you tell me what I’ve missed at DBC? Is Alicia still fending off that one douchebag who comes in to flirt with her?”

Jay narrowed his eyes, like he knew exactly what Colin was doing, but then seemed unable to resist the urge to chat about his favorite place on earth. “Yes! So…”

After an appropriately long gossip session, they ended their call. Jay hadn’t asked any more about the twins, but he’d certainly have more questions soon, and Colin would have to figure out answers. And to do that, he’d have to figure out what the twins were to him.

Besides clingy, that was. But clingy they were: following him around the house, insisting on coming to his dad’s…

In fact, where the fuck were those clingy bastards? It was annoying of them to be so inconsistent, disappearing when he was used to having them underfoot at all hours.

Colin rolled out of bed with a huff, pulling on a pair of shorts. He stumbled downstairs to find the two of them on the couch, playing some video game on low volume that seemed to involve a lot of explosives.

“There’s our sleepy boy,” Fox crooned, a teasing glint to his eyes.

“I’ve been up for an hour,” Colin countered. It came out sullen for some reason. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he cared that he’d woken up alone, or that they hadn’t come up in all the time he’d been awake.

“We heard you on the phone,” Dane said. “Figured you’d throw something at us if we interrupted.” He tilted his chin. “Come here.”

Colin made to sit on the carpet at their feet, but he was pulled off the ground and arranged before he knew it, his head on Fox’s lap and his feet draped over Dane’s legs.

“Manhandling,” he accused with a yawn.

“Hush,” Fox scolded. “I’m beating Dane.”

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