Page 64 of Zero Confusion

“You’re the guest of honor,” Miles said with a smirk. “Brain trauma, broken leg. Very dramatic.”

“At least Zach is here to take half the heat.” Max nodded to the small crowd surrounding a familiar figure. Zach looked dashing in his dark skinny jeans and a well-fitted polo, fresh and vibrant. Even the fake smile glued to his lips didn’t detract from the beauty shining from within.

Max elbowed him. “Stop staring,” he whispered with laughter in his voice. “You can talk to him later, when he doesn’t have half the town hanging off him.”

Miles flushed. He had been staring—pretty shamelessly—but no one had noticed.

“Where do you want to sit?” he asked.

“I don’t want to be in the way.” Max eyed his cast and grimaced. “Let’s go to the back.”

“I suppose we could grab a seat next to Ray.”

Max shot him a look that was half warning, half embarrassment, and Miles rolled his eyes. “What? He seems very concerned about your recovery.”

His brother had barely been alone since coming home from the hospital, and Miles hadn’t had a chance to bring up what they’d learned about each other. Would Max even want to? Extroverted and chatty as he was, he rarely opened up about anything serious.

Case in point—a three-year relationship he’d told no one about. Miles understood not telling his parents, but what about him? Or Mara? Max should have known they’d support him with everything they had.

“Not at the same table,” Max hissed as they approached the edge of the yard, and Miles veered, settling at an empty table nearby.

“It wouldn’t be weird if you sat together, you know,” he said quietly.

Max opened his mouth to reply, but it was too late. The first wave of neighbors was already drifting over, their faces arranged into expressions of sympathy and concern. Miles stepped back as the questions started—How are you feeling? What happened? Did you have brain surgery? Were you really in a coma?—and slipped away before he had to hear Max repeat the same thing a dozen times.

Zach was still surrounded by people. With his dad glued to the grill and his mom making frantic trips to the kitchen, the duties of the gracious host had fallen to Zach—and he’d been mobbed all evening. Whatever dull small talk Miles had to suffer through tonight, Zach’s had to be ten times worse. Most people in town found him endlessly fascinating for his choice of college, unable or unwilling to understand why anyone would ever want to leave Montana.

Miles chuckled, imagining their reactions to learning that Zach wasn’t coming back. That little piece of gossip would get them through many cold winters.

Not sure what to do with himself, Miles made a slow loop past the grill and the folding tables, picking at a scoop of potato salad and nursing a beer someone had pressed into his hand. Conversations rose and fell around him, people laughing, calling his name, pulling him in for a moment before letting him drift again. Through it all, his mind floated somewhere else entirely, flashing back to earlier in the day. He had stopped by to drop off his mom’s baking, not expecting an earthquake that would shake his reality and flip his universe upside down.

His beautiful Zach, glowing in the sun, sweat dripping down the toned muscles of his arms, damp shirt sticking to his slim frame. Miles could have admired him for hours, feasting on the sight of all that lickable skin, but then Zach had ruffled his shaggy hair, moving the long strands just enough to reveal a tattoo.

And that was it.

The world had ground to a halt.

A meteor could have landed a few feet away, and Miles wouldn’t have noticed, wouldn’t have cared, too busy gaping at the familiar shape of a broken horseshoe etched onto the back of Zach’s neck.

Frozen—paralyzed with emotion, fingers clenched around tubs of cornbread—he’d followed Zach’s movements and tried to chuckle along with his teasing, all while every cell in his body soared, flooded with tender, overwhelming joy at the thought of Zach carrying a permanent mark of Miles’s existence on his skin.

The possessive beast inside him had surged to the surface with the primal urge to roar, beat his fists against his chest, claim Zach for himself.

Zach was his. Only his.

Forever.

His mind occupied, Miles didn’t realize he was headed straight for Katie and her mom until it was too late.

“Miles!” Mrs. Schulz grabbed his elbow. “I’m so glad your brother is doing well. And how have you been?”

Katie flashed him a sympathetic look as he answered her mom’s endless questions. Both of them were aware that the question she really wanted to ask was Why haven’t you asked my daughter out yet? For some strange reason, she was convinced that because they’d dated in high school—if you could call an occasional drive to the movie theater and a few awkward kisses dating—they were destined to be together. Neither of them was interested in rekindling their lukewarm relationship, but Mrs. Schulz never bothered with small details like that.

When she moved on from interrogating him about college to town gossip, highlighting every engagement and marriage from the past few years, Miles let his mind wander again.

Zach had been weird last night. Distant. Miles should have told him he loved him, but Zach had interrupted and gotten them sidetracked. Not that Miles minded the delicious distraction. And maybe he could have done it afterward, but…saying I love you for the first time after sex didn’t seem right. He wanted Zach to know he meant it. Really meant it.

He wanted them to be together. Forever. He would find a way to make it happen.