Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
He exhaled softly, tension bleeding from his shoulders. “Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.” I nodded, only noticing at the last minute just how close our faces had gotten.
This was not getting us back on track.
I pulled back slightly. “Uh. Good job with the… with the honesty.” I waved a hand at the dips. “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
“Right. Yeah.” To my surprise, Bear dunked another pita triangle in the lava sauce and popped it in his mouth like a champ. Because I was hyperaware of him, I noticed his hairline had begun to dampen with sweat, but I couldn’t tell if that was from the dip or the temperature in the room… or because of our proximity and our questions.
I was overly warm, too, for all the same reasons.
And I only got warmer when Bear tilted his head and said, “My turn to ask. You and your brotherhood… What secret are the five of you hiding?”
Shit. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to answer—I trusted Ryan Galloway implicitly—but my brothers and I had a rule. No one outside of our friend group was to know about our billion-dollar windfall, except for Kenji and our life partners. Revealing the truth for one of us would reveal it for all of us, and it wasn’t my place to do that.
I sighed. “Dip me.”
Bear laughed like he hadn’t expected any different and loaded up another pita with a huge gob of orange dip.
“Oh, god. The first dunk of that one almost killed me. I’m definitely going to die now. Remember me fondly,” I said as I put the bite in my mouth.
Bear snorted. “Baby.”
He said the word as a tease. Obviously. He was saying Zane, you’re acting like an infant. I understood that. But hearing the word on his lips had me imagining all kinds of other ways he could say it, and that made me suck in a gasp at the same moment the horseradish hit my tongue.
I stared at him as I began to choke. The dip clung to my throat like an abusive esophageal koala.
Way to get things back on track, I warned myself.
“Shit,” Bear said. “Here. Take a sip of your beer. Good. Now, breathe… there you go.”
Once I regained my equanimity several sips later—though I could still feel the dip leaving fiery traces down the inside of my chest—Bear sat back, folded his arms in front of him, and stroked his lower lip with his thumb.
“Wow. That was unexpectedly dramatic. Now I’m a little hesitant to ask my next question.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him in a croak.
His lips twitched up in a smile. “Of course you are. Okay, then, Mr. Fine, tell me why, aside from adding onto your gran’s house, you haven’t showered your family in lavish gifts. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you should,” he added quickly. “Not at all. But knowing how generous you are and how hard it is for you to say no to them, it’s surprising that your aunt still drives an old minivan and your cousin doesn’t simply ask you for money outright rather than asking you to invest in his businesses.”
I watched Bear steadily for a moment. The answer to this question was actually related to the last, though Bear couldn’t possibly know that. I wasn’t sure what the penalty was for dodging two questions in a row, though, and I wasn’t sure my digestive system could handle it. More than that, I found I wanted to tell Bear. I wanted him to understand.
“When I first… got money,” I said carefully, “I planned to share it with my family, exactly like you said. But someone else I knew—another Yalie—had a… a sort of similar experience to me. He came into a lot of money all at once, also. And he bought his brother a sports car.” I remembered Dev’s pride in being able to take care of his little brother that way. “Unfortunately, my friend’s brother was a reckless, irresponsible idiot. Not unlike my cousin JK.”
Bear winced. “Didn’t go well?”
“Went tragically,” I corrected. “He crashed the car and died instantly.”
“Fuck,” Bear said softly.
I nodded. “My friend’s parents blamed him and his money for his brother’s death. So I decided instead of giving away cash and fancy cars, I wanted to give my family opportunities to make something of their own. I wanted to truly help them rather than throw cash at them.”
Bear shook his head. “Smart. I like that, Z.”
I sucked in a breath and girded my loins, trying not to enjoy the way that nickname sounded coming from him. Unlike the earlier baby, I knew this one was meant exactly the way I heard it, and that warmed me all the way through even more than the horseradish had. It was the first time Z had ever sounded like a shortened version of my own name instead of a reference to someone completely separate, my rock star alter ego.