Page 5 of By All Accounts
“He’s at home. I didn’t want you to feel overwhelmed when you woke up, but he’ll head to your house whenever you’re ready to start painting.”
I downed the last of the coffee in the mug and it was nowhere near enough to make me as coherent as I wanted to be for the tasks at hand.
“I know it’s getting late, but I’d like to go home and shower and change first. Then I’ll go pick up some paint. Maybe lunch time?”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Smith asked.
“No, but thanks.”
“Do you want me to at least take you home? Your car isn’t here.”
I didn’t want my brother to do one more thing for me than he had to, and he’d already done so much. Picking me up from the sheriff’s office, letting me stay at his house, renting out his boyfriend on a Monday afternoon to help cover up my bad decisions. The last thing I wanted from Smith was one more thing to owe him for.
“I’ll call a car.”
“With your two percent battery?” He reached across the counter and tapped the screen of my phone. “One percent.”
I snatched it away from him and used the last of the juice to get a car request into the app. As soon as the confirmation popped up on the screen, the thing died again.
“One percent was enough,” I said with a smug grin that barely even reached my lips, let alone my eyes. I put the phone back into my pocket and climbed off the barstool. My hip cracked again, and I hated it. “Thank you for this, Smith. I?—”
He cut me off, “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.”
“Agree to disagree.”
I looked at my brother, like really looked at him for the first time in weeks. I’d given him a good study the night he showed up to dinner with a hickey and a tattoo on his arm, when he’d stood up to Marshall and cemented himself as a functioning adult member of the family. Not to say he hadn’t been either of those things before, but his relationship with Riggs had marked a line in the sand that Smith clearly had no interest in walking back on.
He looked older now, more sure of himself. He looked like he was in love, held by it and empowered by it, and I loved that for him, but hated it for myself. Marshall had Silas and Hunter had Lincoln, and now Smith had Riggs and that left me on my own little island of single and potentially depressed Covington brothers. There was Andrew, though, all the way in San Diego and only marginally interested in having a relationship with any of us. He spoke with Hunter the most, maybe with Smith, definitely not with Marshall. There was a group chat for the five of us that had sat untouched for well over a month, and I had no plans to change that. It was bad enough two of my brothers knew about Neil and Annette and the mess they’d made of my life. I didn’t want the other two—other three, if we counted the suspected one Andrew had found—to hold me in the same horrible regard.
“Lunch, then?” I asked, suddenly desperate to get out of my brother’s house.
“We’ll see you at twelve. Do you want us to bring anything?”
“Just clothes you don’t mind getting paint on.”
“Okay.” Smith didn’t move from his perch against the counter. I gave him an awkward wave, then left him.
The car arrived shortly after I made it outside and the twenty-minute drive home gave me more contemplative silence than I should have been allowed, all things considered. The slamof my heartbeat in my own ears was worse than the bass beat of any song I’d ever heard in my life, and I’d never beenlessgrateful for a quiet driver than I was that morning.
Once home, I plugged my phone in and turned it face down on my pillow, then I stripped out of my clothes and tossed them all into the hamper. I turned on a song that didn’t have a single drum on the track, some modern piano piece I’d stumbled upon by accident, then walked right into the hottest shower I’d ever taken in my life.
The searing hot water was, unfortunately, not enough to wash away my shame, but I scrubbed extra hard in case the shower wanted to prove me wrong. In the end, I gave up, drying off a body that was far too pink and raw on account of all the scrubbing I’d done. With some sense of self-preservation, I’d ignored my dick. I was the kind of man who loved a good shower wank. Even if I’d just gotten off in the bedroom or the living room or the hallway, there was something so welcoming about the warm confines of a shower that made it impossible for me to not want to get myself off.
But this time, I knew better.
I needed to stay on track…get dressed, get out of the house, get some paint, and come home. Riggs and Smith would be here—oh, I needed to get us lunch also—and the two of them would help me paint over the pink in my office and everything would be normal again.
After finding clean clothes and forcing my aching limbs into the proper holes, I grabbed my keys and my wallet and headed to the garage. I was halfway there when I made the decision to turn back for my phone. It was barely past twenty percent when I yanked it off the charger, which was somehow too much and not enough at the same time. I ignored the work emails, knowing there wasn’t anything that wouldn’t keep until the next day.
I worked in finance, not neurosurgery.
“Thank you for this,” I muttered to myself, hard pressing my thumb onto the only photo album on my phone with a solid black thumbnail image instead of a photo placeholder. That had been deliberate, because if someone got into my phone, the album with the cover of red lips stretched wide around a thick cock would have been like a tractor beam. I’d hidden the album for protection, not realizing I’d protected myself in the process.
“Just do it.”
I pulled both of my lips between my teeth and stared down at the pop-up menu on the screen asking me what action I wanted to take.
