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“No. If he’s not leaving until morning, he needs to spend tonight getting prepped.”
“Oh…”
“I’m sorry. You should just go to bed, okay? One of us should get some rest.”
I glance toward the hall where Carter’s room is. I have a feeling Travis didn’t come out while I was asleep, which means he’s still in there. Fuck my life. “Maison, Travis is—he’s not in his room.”
“What? Then where…” He shakes his head slowly in confusion before going still. For a moment, his expression is nothing short of devastation. Just a flash before he covers it with anger. The devastation can still be heard in his voice though when he whispers, “He’s gonna do it all over again. He’s gonna break my brother, Nolan.”
Before I can think of what to say, he tears off in the direction of Carter’s bedroom. I hesitate before hurrying after him. I know it’d be stupid to try to stop him, but letting him go off on his own feels wrong somehow, like I’m abandoning him. Sure, on the outside he’s angry, but on the inside he’s bleeding. I seem to be the only one able to see that.
I hang back as he lets himself into Carter’s room without even knocking, hoping Travis and Carter are at least sleeping and not in the middle of sex. Maison must really be pissed if he was willing to risk it.
The two minutes it takes for Maison to do whatever he does in there—quietly, at least—feel like they take forever. Then he’s finally appearing through the doorway, a half-naked, half-asleep Travis stumbling behind him. I sink through the open doorway of one of the empty rooms a few down from them, peeking around the doorframe to spy on them.
At first, I’m too far away to really hear what they’re saying. I tell myself that’s fine—I’m here for support, not to eavesdrop—but the gossip in me is a little perturbed. I can’t decide if I want to wince or do a little happy dance when their voices rise enough to carry.
“Don’t go back in there, Travis. Seriously. Go get dressed and leave.”
Travis releases a laugh that makes my skin crawl with recognition. Master is angry. Fix it, fix it, fix it.
My knees try to buckle with muscle memory. I fight it, keeping my gaze focused on Maison to ground myself as Travis yells about his earlier rant at the dinner table and Maison not having a say in what he does. “You can fuck right the fuck off, alright?” he finishes.
“You know what?” Maison’s hands flex at his sides, knuckles so red and swollen I can see them from here. “This is such bullshit. What—he can’t even look at me, let alone forgive me, but he can forgive you? He can fuck you? Seriously?”
Travis shakes his head. “He hasn’t forgiven me, Maison.”
“You know the best conversation I’ve had with him since the day we told him the truth? It was the morning I told him you were gone to chase Mica. He actually spoke in complete sentences. He asked me questions. He fucking engaged.” Maison shakes his head, hands curled into fists. “All because he wanted to know about you. Why is that, huh? Why do you get my brother and I don’t? Why is it you he cares about?”
Maison sounds fucking agonized.
Travis sounds the same when he responds with, “I don’t know.”
The funny thing? I don’t think either of them hears the agony in each other. I think all they’re seeing is the anger.
Travis keeps going, his voice trembling as he speaks. “But whatever he wants, he gets. He’s fucking earned that. So, yeah, I slept with him. And I’ll do it again if he wants me to, no matter how much it hurts me to do it.”
“And what about the damage you’re doing to him? Maybe this is what he wants, but it’s not what he needs, Travis. We both know that.”
God, so much agony. So much fear. They’re terrified of the same thing. They want the same thing—Carter safe and happy. If only they could understand the only person who can get him there is Carter himself.
“Hey—” another voice says, interrupting Travis’s next argument and drawing both their attention. I recognize who it is before I see him, of course. I’d know Master Benny—Jake, Jake, Jake—anywhere. Travis, as Master Roarke, may have been the big boss and the man who I convinced myself I loved, but it was Jake, as Master Benny, who was an everyday fixture in my life. From breakfast to lights out, it was him managing us, him checking on us, him caring for us.
“Hi,” Jake says sarcastically. “Hello. Message from the sleeping world—shut the fuck up.”
I can’t hear Travis and Maison’s responses, but their body language screams of apologies. Jake rubs at his face as he asks something. Maison gestures to Travis, then down the hall. His eyes pause when they land on me, his lips twitching upward, before he turns back to Travis with a raised eyebrow. Travis’s eyes linger on Carter’s door before he takes a step away from it.
Seems Maison won.
Jake glances over his shoulder into his bedroom before saying something else and disappearing. I sink back into the empty room as Travis and Maison turn to walk back down the hall, finding myself nearly sitting on the bed. I hear the rumble of Maison’s voice saying something I can’t make out before Travis’s body passes the open door. A moment later, Maison’s broad frame is filling the space, his shoulder leaning against the doorframe. All I can see are shadows and outlines and a pair of blue eyes that somehow defy the odds with how bright they still are.
“What are you doing in here?” he asks, his voice soft and amused.
“Um.” I give the surrounding area a glance, wondering if there’s a chance I can come up with something believable. But I don’t want to lie to him, so I end up just shrugging. “I didn’t want you to have to do that alone.”
The amusement softens into something else. Something impossibly intense that I can feel radiating warmth inside my chest. “Really?”
“Really.” I slowly approach him, not entirely sure where the two of us stand. It feels like something is shifting between us. Like we’re going from two men who can’t sleep, keeping each other company, to two men who… care about each other? Trust each other? It feels like we’re at a place where I could reach forward and take his hand. But the change is slow, like tectonic plates shifting. If I rush things, there’s a chance of an earthquake.
