Page 109 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“So, uh, you gonna tell me where that came from? Because I have the feeling it didn’t happen just because you were super horny,” Eli said, glancing sidelong at me.
I shrugged. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Uh-huh. I guess I should pretend I don’t know you’re lying.”
“Will you if I promise I’ll tell you soon?”
“It’s about everything...isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
He laid his head on my shoulder, taking a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll enjoy this last night of ignoring the world and talk about it...tomorrow?”
Tomorrow was too soon for my comfort, but reality would have to reassert itself after the weekend. Swallowing, I nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“Okay,” he said, twining his arm through mine and holding my hand as we sat there, him reaching over to grab some food. His question had brought back the worry for a moment, but in light of the much-needed cuddling, I felt it wither and die. Not for good, I knew it would come back in time, but for now?—
For now, there was just us, and that was more than enough for me.
ELIJAH
Humming to myself as I crossed the campus, I made a beeline for the on-site gym. It was a warm day, at least by the standards of a winter on the northwest coast, but it wasn’t warm enough to go for a run. That insanity was for people like Milo, while sensitive souls like me were more than happy to stick to a light workout in a temperature-controlled building.
The thought made me smile, and I ducked my head so I didn’t look like a grinning fool to anyone who saw me. Not that it would draw much attention, the campus was full of enough people that smiling to myself wouldn’t seem that odd. Plus, I had my ear buds in, so anyone who saw me reacting like a goober would assume I was talking to someone, or listening to something amusing. It didn’t matter, but not caring what other people thought about my oddities was more in Milo’s wheelhouse than mine.
My thoughts drifted to him again, and I hoped he was doing better. I sensed something was wrong the night before, but I couldn’t place what it was, especially with how distracted he had seemed. Of course, logically, I could make an educated guess. Yesterday was the last day of our deal, and we had to pretend there was nothing strange about what we were doing. Todayhad loomed over our heads and probably our thoughts, marking when we had to stop pretending the world didn’t exist and start figuring out how we would deal with things.
Which was...still prevalent in my thoughts. Although it had been nice to put off thinking about what we were going to do, that had come with downsides. Namely, it had been three days during which I had forced myself not to think too hard about a solution or plan. Now I was left with the understanding that the time had come to start thinking about those things, and I still didn’t know where to start.
That was why I worried about Milo, who had been unusually quiet throughout the day. Not that he hadn’t texted me back or anything, because he had, but they were shorter texts than I was used to. Part of me wondered if he had impulsively bitten the bullet and decided to talk to Raf or even Marshall without telling me. I knew he wouldn’t tell our family without me, but he could logically think he could tell either of those two without consulting me. Not that he would be wrong, they were ultimately only connected to me through him. Eva fell into the same category for me.
I considered why that thought bothered me as I changed in the locker room and made for the treadmill. I’d walked almost half the length of the campus after my last class to get here, so stretching wasn’t necessary as I stepped onto the machine.
My first thought was that I knew Milo was struggling with the idea of being open about everything. He hadn’t outright said anything, but the thought had occurred to me before, and it felt right. It also felt right that the explanation was that, on some level, Milo didn’t know what to do with the idea that he couldn’t be open about something. The same guy who had come out at a young age, had never hesitated to be his true self and had been willing to put himself in front of millions of people on the internet without worrying that people might treat him poorly.
Needing to be cautious in the face of other people’s judgments was...new to him, foreign even. Not that he’d said it, and I didn’t think he would, because the entire concept wassoforeign and strange to him that he didn’t...well, he probably didn’t know. Even the most self-aware person could miss something so obvious to others simply because whatever they were missing was so strange. The world’s hardest puzzle had been dropped in their laps, and they were told to solve it quickly.
Maybe it was on me, I thought as the minutes ticked by and I picked up the pace to push myself. I had started as his best friend, and now I was...well, we weren’t boyfriends, and lovers felt weird as hell, but we were more than we were, or had changed to the point that ‘partners’ took on a different meaning. Either ‘role’ was reason enough for me to speak up, and both practically demanded that I say something to him, yet so far, I hadn’t.
The thought was uncomfortable, and I looked around guiltily at the thought that I was failing to help someone who meant the world to me. For a moment, the guilt was intense enough that I seriously thought that a group of people standing near the entrance had known what was going on in my head, how I was failing to live up to expectations, and that’s why they were looking at me. The thought was quickly shoved away. I knew damn well that was just the guilt talking, and I looked away from them as one of them held out their phone to the others, and they all began talking.
I was also worried about whether Milo had told Marshall and Raf because...now more than ever, what he did affected me just as much as him, and sometimes more so. We were officially going to tie our lives and futures together, even if we hadn’t worked up the plan or the courage to enact that plan.
Even if he were just telling the people he was ‘responsible’ for telling, I would still want to know before it happened. He’d beworried about it, and I wanted to be there for him because who knew what Marshall or Raf might say to him, and me, when they finally saw me again. It was, after all, his biological father he had been growing closer to, and his boyfriend, hopefully soon to be ex-boyfriend.
Ugh, I still felt like shit about that. Again, neither Milo nor I had been doing anything wrong; we were operating within the bounds of the relationship he and Raf had set, but still...it felt wrong. I knew it was because it was the sort of arrangement I would never have agreed to do with anyone else, so I was pushing my morals and boundaries onto it. Neither of us had ultimately done anything wrong, but I was going to have to live with the feeling that we had until my logical and emotional sides got their shit together and started cooperating.
Slowing down, I pulled out my phone and stared at the icons on the home screen. There were a couple of messages, one from Eva asking if I was home yet, and another from Milo saying he had gotten home and wanted to know if I was hungry. The other icons, TikTok and Instagram, had no alert, but that was expected. I hadn’t turned the notifications back on, and while I hadn’t asked, I thought Milo hadn’t either. There was too much going on in our lives and our heads for us to be worried about what a bunch of random people thought of his food posts from the other day.
I sighed, slowing the machine down and giving up on trying to work out. Running for a long time, at least for me, required a kind of detachment from my thoughts to get into the zone that let me find the stamina I didn’t usually have. I had discovered it was the same for Milo, but I had also learned that he had a far easier time than I did disconnecting from his thoughts. I wasn’t sure how the hell he managed it so easily when usually the man was thirty million thoughts with rockets attached, but apparently, there was some skill he had learned that I never had.
Officially giving up, I texted Milo to tell him I was hungry and would be home soon. I replied to Eva that I was not home yet but would be in about half an hour and hit the send button, as I found eyes on me again. It wasn’t the group from before, who were still lurking near the doorway, but two people looking at me and then down at their phones.
“Huh,” I grunted as I grabbed the cleaning supplies and returned to the machine. I wasn’t as likely to be identified from the social media accounts as Milo, but it had happened on occasion. Milo was the main show, but apparently, a few people out there eagerly awaited seeing me in the videos. Not that I minded the attention, I guess, it was weirdly nice to know people were touched in some way or form by my contribution to the content, but it was still odd.
And that wasn’t counting the not-so-small number of men and women who made absolutely no attempt to hide their thirst for me...which was Milo’s fault, him and his ‘thirst trap lite’ idea.
That thought made me wrinkle my nose, and I quickly wiped down the machine and went to the locker room. It was one thing to meet a fan of ‘my work’ in the videos, but I preferred not to meet any more people who wanted to fuck me based on the content. I didn’t know what it was about people being into online personas, but they were a different breed. I’d been with Milo to clubs and bars that were exclusively for gay and bi men, and had quite a few run-ins with people who, quite honestly, acted a lot like the guy I had told to fuck off the other day at our gym. Yet even someone like him seemed normal and respectful compared to what people said after seeing me on the social media account.
