Bleeding Dawn can be found here!
The 2022 Road to Rocktoberfest Collection can be found here!
“I’m
still trying to figure out how you guys managed to beat us here?” Tavis asked.
“Decided to have two cigarettes
instead of just one,” Winter said. “By the time we were finishing the second
one, we’d already seen three cops race past, so we mapped out a different route
and took the local road that ran parallel to the highway. It took us to within
a mile of the rest stop. Gave us a chance to smoke a few while we waited, too.
“Well, Riley rolled some left-handed
cigarettes, figured you guys will need a few of those too,” Tavis remarked, lighting
one of the two Riley had left on the table and passing it to Winter, who
gratefully accepted.
“You figured right,” Winter wheezed,
blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. “God that’s good.”
There were a dozen things Tripp
wanted to ask, but he took his clues from Tavis and waited for Winter to begin
talking on his own, which he did only after enjoying several long tokes.
“Can I preface this whole
conversation by saying that I was set up?” Winter asked.
“I suppose you were bamboozled and
run amok too,” Tavis quipped, prompting Winter to flash a ghost of a smile his
way.
“No, just set up,” Winter explained.
“Wouldn’t have said fuck-all if the bastard had admitted to being a reporter.
Wouldn’t have taken him to bed either.”
There was a sudden tick at the corner
of Tavis’s jaw, and his eyes darkened in that way Tripp had come to recognize
meant he was pissed about something. He plucked the joint from Winter’s fingers
and inhaled deeply, scowling when Winter reached to try and get it back from
him.
“I’m sorry,” Winter said. “I was
drinking, I needed someone to talk to and…”
“You talk to me!” Tavis snapped,
scowling, inhaling, and allowing the smoke to remain deep in his lungs for
several seconds before exhaling a stream of smoke. “Wasn’t that what we agreed
on? You don’t ghost me just ‘cause….”
“I know!” Winter snapped, while Tripp
felt like he was inching closer to learning what had gone wrong between them.
“I panicked. It was shitty of me. I know I fucked up and I know you’re pissed.”
“Try again,” Tavis growled.
Blinking, Winter met his gaze, and
only then did Tavis pass him the joint back.
“You really hurt me,” Tavis said. “I’d
rather be angry with you. I wanted to be. But in the end, I kept on asking
myself what the hell I’d done to have you turn your back on me that way.”
“Nothing.”
When Winter didn’t elaborate, Tavis
raised a skeptical eyebrow at him.
“It wasn’t…”
“Me? Anything I did? Let me guess, it
was you and I shouldn’t feel bad about what happened,” Tavis remarked, sarcasm
dripping from his tone.
“Well, it’s true,” Winter groused. “I
panicked. It was the most intense night of my life, and I didn’t know how to
take that. I’d been looking for something that would make me truly feel
something for so long, that when it happened, I didn’t know how to handle it.
Especially when it came with someone I’d known as long as I’ve known you. To
think that it’s been right there, all this time, and I was too scared to cross
the line and go after it.”
“Until you weren’t.”
“More like until we weren’t alone,”
Winter admitted. “Would never have had the guts to go for it if it hadn’t been
for Tish.”
“It shouldn’t have taken a third
person in the bed for you to accept what we both wanted.”
It was like watching a ping pong ball
bounce back and forth across the table, and there was no longer any doubt in Tripp’s
mind what they were talking about.
“I just want to be clear on one thing
before you two keep going,” Tripp interjected during a pause where they passed
the joint back and forth, short double puffs spaced between each handoff. “Is
the reason Winter doesn’t know if he’s the father of Tish’s kid or not because
there is a chance you might be?”
“Pretty much,” Tavis replied.
Glancing from one to the other, the
one thing that was impossible for Tripp to miss was that they appeared
completely at peace with the situation.
“But that’s not what you’re fighting
about,” Tripp said, trying to clear things up before they started going back
and forth again.
“We were never fighting,” Tavis
explained. “He started ignoring me after we fucked each other stupid.”
Scowling at his brother, Tripp
struggled to wrap his mind around what he’d just heard. “O-kay, umm…I didn’t
think…I mean…”
Biting his lower lip, Tripp tried to
map out what he wanted to say before he said it, so he didn’t come off as
invasive or insensitive, while Tavis just chuckled.
“If it’s any consolation, it shocked
me too,” Tavis admitted. “I figured Winter was too shameless to ever let
anything throw him, at least, not in the bedroom.”
Snorting, Winter flipped them both
off.
“I wouldn’t mind a round three,” Tavis
shot back, and holy shit, his brother blushed a little. Before tonight, Tripp
wouldn’t have thought that possible, considering all the debauchery Winter got
up to. Then his brother spoke, and Tripp went from shocked to stupefied.
“I wouldn’t mind more than just
another round.”
Had Winter actually said that?
Judging from the way Tavis was staring at him, mouth hanging open, eyes wide,
he didn’t seem to know what to make of Winter’s words either. It was like
everything was moving in slow motion as Winter locked a hand behind Tavis’s
head and tugged him into a rough, possessive kiss that left no doubt about his
intentions.
Tripp just sat there, dumbfounded at
the display until they finally came up for air. Even then, they had eyes only
for each other, Tavis crushing Winter’s jacket in both fists, holding him in
place so they were nose to nose.
“Ignoring me is a dealbreaker,” Tavis
said. “You’ve had your one and done, got it?”
At first, Winter just nodded, but a
heartbeat later he leaned in. “It won’t happen again,” he breathed, before
kissing Tavis as savagely as he had the first time.
Tripp started to edge away, intending
to give them their privacy, when they broke apart, bumped foreheads, and slowly
let each other go.
No comments:
Post a Comment