Page 64 of The Bartender Special

He separated from Jack, a full-body cringe sweeping over him as he turned to the new voice who’d just entered the kitchen.

Callum De Carlo had his face tilted up toward the ceiling, but his scowl was easy to see.

“You have a room for that and it’s literally down the hall,” he continued. “It would take you maybe three seconds to get there.”

Benny, still very shirtless, had the renewed urge to hide. Considering Jack was the only thing big enough near him, he became his shield. Benny angled his body to partially hide behind him. His face had gone up in flames.

“Callum, what are you doing here?” Benny couldn’t help but be defensive.

His brother dropped his chin and gaze to normal viewing height. The scowl was even easier to see now.

“You mean in the kitchen of my home?”

“You're supposed to be at work!”

“And you're not supposed to be half-naked and groping men in the kitchen, but look how that turned out!”

Benny lowered his voice, trying to change his panic into some calm.

“My shirt is in the garage, thank you very much,” Benny tried. “It was on me but then so was a spider so I—” He waved his hands around, dramatic but nowhere near what he knew he must have looked like minutes ago.

Callum held up his hand.

“Please, for the love of everything holy, go to your room and take a second to calm down and then we can talk.”

Benny was about to question the calm down part of the statement when he realized that Callum had lightly pointed while saying it.

Down.

Benny could have replaced the actual sun.

Apparently it didn’t take much of Jack to get him…going.

When he tried to tug at Jack during the scurry toward his childhood bedroom, the bartender lightly brushed him off.

“Go ahead,” he said. “And make sure to grab a shirt you can get paint on.”

It wasn’t until he’d found that shirt and was changing into it that Benny decided to take light offense to how unaffected Jack had been.

Not only was he standing tall—and not a bit erect, apparently—he hadn’t run with him. Now Benny was staring at a framed poster of Smallville next to his childhood bed alone.

While Jack was out there talking to his big brother.

Benny groaned.

Callum and he were close, but Benny liked to keep those kind of things private.

Not put them on display in the kitchen.

Had The One Who Said Nothing still been private, this incident would have gotten its own blog post.

Benny’s cheeks cooled.

He shouldn’t have kissed Jack.

No matter how he’d felt in the moment.

Bottom line?