“You’re fucking killing me.”
He had that stupid older brother smirk I wanted to knock off his face. Austin leaned back, rocking in the chair like some sort of weathered cowboy. “I didn't see them kiss. I was working on installing some new lights in the lobby and Laura ran up, told me I needed to clean up spilled water before an old person busted their ass, and when I got there they were standing apart and blushing. I think Madi caught June before she fell. Maybe they did kiss.”
“Oh,” I whispered. “Right. That makes sense.”
Austin paused his rocking in the chair. “I feel like we're being visited by three ghosts, except the ghosts are polyamory, romance, and broken hearts.”
“I haven’t broken anyone's heart,” I chuffed.
“I was talking about you. You've never been in a single casual relationship that didn't turn you into a pining emo boy after it was over. Do you remember that woman a few years ago? What was her name? Helen?”
“What’s your point?”
“One night stand. You talked about her for two months.”
“Well, I’ve grown a lot since then.”
Austin scoffed. “Sure. I’m just politely pointing out that Madi is leaving in a few weeks.”
“Hey. Levi was supposed to leave and he?—”
“He did leave,” Austin said firmly. “He came back. Thank god, because Mateo and Avery's misery was killing all of us and I truly fucked everything up. But he did leave.”
He was right about that. It'd only been a few weeks, but the fight between Austin and the three of them had shaken us all up. Austin had done a lot of groveling and put in the work to heal those cracks in the foundation of his relationships with them.
One thing that I'd always been able to appreciate about him was that while he was stubborn and jumped to conclusions and sometimes acted like an idiot, he would own up to his mistakes. He also learned from them.
Austin blew out a breath. “I don't know. I don't know Madi very well yet, but I did some Googling.”
“YouGoogledher?” I growled.
He held up his hands. “Listen. Avery didn't even do a deep dive on her before she picked her for the residency. She saw the fancy wordanimatorand got excited. I just wanted to make sure whoever was coming to Whynot was a safe person.”
I couldn't be too mad about that, even though I didn't like it. “Nosy fucker.”
“Born and raised. Anyway, she's from LA. She's an animator. She grew up in?—”
“I don't want you to tell me all of this,” I interrupted. “I want to hear it from her. What are you even getting at?”
“Fine. Her ex is a piece of shit. That's what I'm getting at. There's some stuff online, some posts he's made about her. About being left in LA. About hisfiancéeabandoning him.”
“What? They were never engaged. Unless Madi skipped that part.”
I thought back to our conversation, combing through everything she’d shared with me. She would have told me that. Together for eight years, but not engaged.
Basically the guy was a fucking loser.
“I don’t think they were ever engaged.”
He shrugged. “I don’t either. I just want you to know because maybe acasual relationship involving BDSM would be a bad idea for her too if her ex is that toxic.”
My shoulders deflated. “You have a real long-winded way of getting to the fucking point sometimes, Austin.”
“But am I wrong?”
He probably wasn't. But the thing was, Madi and I were adults. We could make decisions for ourselves, even if those decisions weren't the best ones.
“I know we don’t really talk about our sex lives, but I know you well enough to know you’d never intentionally hurt someone. But BDSM is built on trust. Doing those sorts of things with anyone creates a bond,” Austin added.
