“Maybe we thought you could use it,” West said, his tone thick with emotion.
“Whatever you want, you get,” Beck said. “No questions asked.”
They were trying to make up for everything he’d lost. He wished he could comfort them, reassure them, but he’d never even been able to comfort or reassure himself. “For future reference,” he said, “a party isn’t the way to make me happy. I’d rather be alone than surrounded by strangers.”
More guilt from West, sorrow from Beck. Regret from Jase.
“I wanted to move here,” he said. “We’re here. That’s enough.” Six months ago, he’d asked the two to find him a new place to live. Somewhere outside city limits, where the crowds were thinner and the pace slower. West had connections out here, and what he’d described had enthralled Jase. Trees, hills, the closest neighbors miles away. And when the isolated famansion—farm-mansion, as he’d heard it called—suffered a foreclosure a short time later, the two had uprooted their entire lives, unwilling to let him make the move on his own. True, the estate needed a little TLC, but that was something Jase excelled at and was actually enjoying doing.
Beck had lived next to a golf course and West inside a room adjacent to their plush office suite in downtown Oklahoma City. Each place had been purchased soon after they’d created and sold some kind of computer program, hitting it big, and even when they’d made far more money, investing a huge chunk for Jase, they hadn’t bought bigger and better. Change had never been easy for either man. Jase knew that well, hated change himself, but the two had been willing to move here for him.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he would have survived the past nine shudder-inducing years without them or as if he’d have any kind of life now.
“Remember when we first met?” he asked, switching topics. Anything to distract the pair.
West cracked a smile. “The fosters had no idea their request for troubled adolescent boys to guide and nurture would lead to the three of us joining forces.”
Beck snorted. “I believe the mother—what was her name?—told my social worker we were fully capable of building an actual Death Star to destroy the world.”
They’d been eight, and the ten months Jase had spent living with the boys had been the best of his life, an unbreakable bond forming. Even after the system split them up, they’d never lost touch. They’d occasionally attended the same school or lived in the same neighborhood, but at sixteen, when they were able to pool the money they’d earned doing odd jobs, they’d bought a car, and that had been that. It had been the three of them against the world. Still was.
These men were the only people in the world Jase trusted. The only people he would ever trust. They were his family.
“Hey. What’s with the reminiscing?” West asked. “You wouldn’t be trying to avoid the mention of a certain girl...Brook Lynn Dillon?”
Jase rolled his eyes, even as his body quickened with...yearning?
“I’ll take that as a hell, yes,” Beck said, his grin wide and irreverent. “He hoped to avoid.”
“Are you wanting a gossip fest? Why don’t we paint our nails and give each other back massages?” Jase asked.
“Yes,” the two deadpanned in unison.
“I call dibs on the pink polish,” Beck added.
“No fair.” West pretended to pout. “I wanted the pink.”
“You guys aren’t ridiculous and immature at all.”
“But you love us anyway,” Beck said.
He did, and they loved him. “West, go kick everyone out of the house. And if you leave any popcorn crumbs on my sheets, your blood will soon join them. Beck, haul ass to the kitchen and cook your famous morning-after special. I’m starved.”
“On it.” West flew out of the room.
“Can do.” Beck grinned as he passed, even paused to pat Jase on the shoulder. “It’s not morning, but you sure did get screwed, didn’t you.”