“Already?”
“You alright?” Qi asks.
“Yeah, just overslept, sorry,” Marcus mutters out, his arm swinging behind him to shoo me away.
He’d have to dislodge from the door and give us both away if he tried any harder, so I stay put and flit a couple of kisses across his shoulder blades and watch his skin goosebump at my touch.
“Have you seen Qiang? We’re supposed to follow the team bus to the game, but they aren’t answering their door,” Qi asks.
“Qiang?” Marcus asks in a tone that makes it sound like he’s never heard the name before.
He’s overdoing it, and I don’t have to see my brother’s face to know Marcus’s tone is giving us away.
“Can’t say that I have. Maybe they ran off with someone after the trick-or-treat event,” he drones out unconvincingly, while I bury my face in between his shoulder blades and chuckle silently.
The arm he’d been using to shoo me away with before hooks around me and pulls me in tighter, and something deep in my chest purrs with contentment.
“The trick-or-treat event that the four of us came home fromtogether?” Qi asks skeptically, and I can tell he knows.
Marcus is such a terrible liar that there’s no way Qi wouldn’t have seen straight through him.
Marcus clears his throat, but Qi interrupts him before he can say anything.
“I just ask becausewhoeverit is that’s standing behind you is wearing an anklet identical to the one Ihandmadefor Qiang a couple of years ago.”
“Um… well that’s just… er…” and I can’t help the chuckle that escapes me at that.
I lightly push Marcus aside just enough to poke my head out and meet my brother’s amused face.
Qi’s eyes meet mine, and he starts laughing as Marcus hangs his head.
“You’re a terrible liar, Marcus.”
Marcus sighs with relief that I’m not freaking out at our not-so-secret interlude being uncovered so quickly. Not like I really had any intention of hiding it anyway.
“Of all the faults I have, I think I’ll own that one,” Marcus mutters under his breath.
Qi just smiles. “It’s okay, Tristan is a terrible liar too.”
“I resemble that remark,” Tristan hollers from somewhere downstairs, which just cracks Qi and me up more while Marcus rolls his eyes at Tristan’s completely unashamed ownership of being a terrible liar.
Qi gives me what he thinks is a stern look. “Qiang, don’t make him late.”
I roll my eyes at that. “I won’t make you all late for your damned foosball. Just let us take a quick shower, and we’ll be down. Just give us twenty–”
“Forty-five minutes, Qi,” Marcus interrupts shamelessly. “And we’ll be down,” he promises.
Qi’s eyes flit between the two of us before his mouth tilts in a mischievous smile, letting me know he’s about to say something inappropriate.
“Are you going to defile my sibling?” he asks, and if he weren’t the center of my gravity, I might entertain the wish of having strangled him at birth.
“I’m going to damn sure try, but you're cutting into my time here, bro,” Marcus says just as shamelessly, and I realize between the two of them, I’m really and truly cursed.
Maybe Tristan and I can go halfsies on a quiet cabin to run and escape to when these two get to be too much.
Qi snorts at that before Marcus closes the door and gives me a fake put-upon face.
“I was trying to be discreet, and you blew our cover.”
