Page 81 of Carry On
LINCOLN: Does that mean you’ll join us?
Yeah, I’ll be there.
For Lincoln, I’d do whatever to make his life easier.
Except leave him alone,the voice commented.
LINCOLN: I’m sending you where to go and when. Let me know if you need some help filling out applications in the meantime.
Fuck. I didn’t want to fill out more applications. That sounded miserable. I knew all of them would be rejected. I didn’t fit anywhere. I was broken glass, better off discarded than saved. And that killed me because it was the one fucking thing Lincoln was counting on me to do.
All I was doing was letting him down one application at a time.
What did you expect?the voice said.You let everyone down.
CHAPTER 56
LINCOLN
Dopeoplereallyusecoconut oil?” Milo exclaimed with a giant grin on his boyish face.
“It’s organic,” Nash said, shrugging like it was the most casual thing in the world for him to bring up as we waited for our food.
Meanwhile, I was dying next to him, silently and eternally embarrassed by his audacity.
“But isn’t it… messy?” he asked because, of course, he did. Milo Graves was everything his brother wasn’t. Where Sebastian was put together, clean cut, and professional, Milo was feral, scruffy, and wayward in every sense of the word. With unruly chestnut hair, stubble, and worn-down clothes, he was a wild child with a big heart for adventure.
“No more than any other lube,” Nash told him. He glanced over his shoulder at me, smirking. Those rich green eyes of his were full of amusement. He was a goddamn pain in my ass.
“So, do you two,” Milo gestured between the two of us, “have experience with it—”
“No!” Sebastian interrupted quickly, slamming a hand on the table. Thank fuck.
“What?”
”No, we’ve talked about this,” he continued. “You aren’t allowed to ask people about their personal experiences.”
“Yeah, but people make the best references,” Nash countered.
“You’re not helping,” I muttered into my glass.
“Mmm,” he hummed as he leaned in close so only I could hear. His hot breath fanning across my skin had my heart beating faster in my chest. “Should I tell him about the window escapades? I’m sure there’s a place for that in one of his books.”
My ears burned hot, and I liked how it made him laugh.
“Next time, sugar plum.” He patted my thigh for reassurance. For a man who was faking it with me, he was awfully comfortable doing so. Admittedly, I wasn’t complaining. I liked the little touches and little moments with him, even if they fucked with my head.
“No.”
“No to telling them next time?” Nash replied, cocking a brow. “Should I tell him now—”
“No to sugar plum,” I retorted. This man and his goddamn nicknames. It made me wonder if he was keeping score.
“So, how’d you two meet?” Sebastian asked. Nash and I glanced at one another.
“It’s not so much how we met, but how we reconnected,” Nash said. That was the thing we agreed on: to put the focus on the present. Neither of us had any desire to try to tie together our childhoods. There were too many details in that—too much childhood trauma to touch on. “We haven’t seen each other in years. Ran into each other here, and the rest is history.”
“It’s a small world,” I murmured in agreement. In reality, we had a very elaborate, damn near meet-cute cover story planned, but Imayhave stolen a handful of the details from one of Milo’s books. We couldn’t exactly tell that story in front of him. Milo would know in a heartbeat.
