Better Together: Boys of Talbert Hall #3

by Ward, Quinn

  I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat. Something I felt like everything I'd wanted for the past three years was within my reach. And here was Colin, offering to be the man who untethered me, so I had the strength to step out of my comfort zone. “And what about you?”

  “What about me?” He’d asked the same question last night, and it was even more infuriating in the light of day.

  “No one is selfless enough to help two guys get their heads out of their asses just to walk away,” I protested.

  “It’s not like I wouldn’t get anything out of it,” he pointed out. “Listen, I’m not willing to insert myself in between the two of you in some sort of fairy tale where we’ll all ride off into the sunset together, but that doesn’t mean I’m not up for as many orgasms as we can share before the two of you realize you’re ready to close things between you down.”

  “That’s still a huge stretch.” I could not get my hopes up that anything would come of this. It was probably even more likely that Zach would punch one of us as soon as he knew what we’d been talking about, and I’d wind up having to switch roommates for the rest of the year.

  “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I’m doing you a favor here.” He sat up a bit straighter. “If the two of you don’t fuck to relieve the sexual tension between the two of you, someone’s going to explode.”

  I didn’t respond. Couldn’t, because there wasn’t much to say. We sipped our coffee in uncomfortable silence.

  “What do you have planned for today?” Colin finally asked, asking acting as if we hadn't just been having one of the most bizarre conversations of my life.

  I appreciated that about him. He wasn't the type to push too hard. He knew when to back off.

  It should be easy to tell him where I was heading, but no one was ever happy with a simple answer. They wanted to know my motivations. I pressed my hands to my cheeks, hating the way I got embarrassed whenever I talked to someone who didn't know about my background. It was embarrassing to admit that my family was beyond poor. Most of the kids around here came from upper-middle-class families and they tended to look down on the kid they convinced themselves was only here as a charity case. And yeah, maybe I did get into Annandale on the financial need scholarship, but I busted my ass to earn every single grade I received.

  Colin's hand slid higher on my thigh. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I'm not going to judge you.” I didn't doubt that for a second. Colin was quickly coming to equal safety in my mind. He knew my deepest secrets but hadn’t told anyone. He didn’t chastise me.

  “Most Saturdays, I go downtown to help with some housing projects,” I admitted.

  “You mean, like, as in a shelter?”

  I shook my head. I did help at a couple of shelters in the winter, but as long as the weather was nice, I preferred to put my size to good use.

  “It's a sort of like Habitat for Humanity,” I told him. “But it's all locally run. I found out about it from one of my professors freshman year and I've been helping ever since.”

  “That’s cool as hell.” He stared at me as if he was trying to figure out a puzzle and I squirmed. “Why would that be something to be embarrassed about?”

  “It's not, I suppose,” I conceded.

  Colin leaned closer to me. “Then why did you blush and close yourself off when I asked you where you were going?”

  “Most people want to know why I do it,” I admitted. “And that leads to a whole bunch of other questions I don't feel like answering. It's not that I don't trust you, it's just there's shit about me that isn't easy to talk about.”

  “Don't all of us have shit like that? I don't know of anybody who doesn't have at least one skeleton in their closet. Hell, you already know most of my drama,” he pointed out. He slid closer to me, taking my hand in his. “When people meet me, they’re convinced that I’m lying to them.”

  “About what?” I’d never heard Chase say anything bad about his brother. Last spring, he’d been concerned by Colin’s standoffishness and the behavior issues his parents swore he had, but now I was starting to realize he was screaming for a bit of freedom. Now that he was able to be his authentic self, he was a straight-shooter and a damned hard worker.

  “Any number of things, I suppose.” He shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee. “If it's someone who knows my family, they don't believe that were not in some sort of crazy cult. And the ones who didn’t think that, liked to tell me how lucky I was to have parents who loved me.”

  I pursed my lips, not wanting to offend him by admitting that was precisely what most of us thought when Chase started explaining about his childhood. But for us, it wasn’t one or the other, it was a mix of the two assumptions.

  “And, yeah, we were lucky. It wasn’t anything religious but with all of my mom’s crazy rules, most people didn’t believe us. The rest thought, rightly, that she was overprotective to a fault because of how much she loves us. Still, it wasn’t easy.” When he curled his legs beneath his body on the couch, he looked small, almost vulnerable. It was disconcerting to say the least. “But seriously, Daniel, helping those less fortunate than you is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  He had no clue I went to help others because I had been where they were, and if I could help another single mom get into a safer home for her kids, I would wake up at the ass crack of dawn every single weekend. It was literally the least I could do.

  “Are you the only one who goes?”

  “Zach will go with me sometimes,” I admitted. “Don’t tell him I told you, but he likes going. We come from similar backgrounds and both of us like helping others have a better life.”

  I realized too late that I’d tipped my hand. I held my breath, waiting for him to ask the inevitable questions. They never came.

  “Is he going today?” He seemed as casual as could be.

  “Not sure. I'll try waking him up when I go into get ready. He knows the drill. If he's ready to go by the time I leave, he can come with. Otherwise, he'll stay home.”

  Colin’s smile faded. “Oh.”

  “Why? Were you hoping for an invitation?”

  “I meant what I said earlier, Daniel. I don't want to push myself on you. Feel free to call me out when I’m overstepping. I really don’t want to be the annoying little brother who invites himself along.” He dipped his chin and rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, I don't know what came over me last night.”

  “I do,” I teased. I slid closer to him, leaning over to set my coffee on the couch cushion. His eyes went wide as I kneeled before him. “If I had to guess, I'd say last night was a combination of the shots you were making and the fact you can't resist me. As for the little brother comment, I’m going to ignore that. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing brotherly about the things you want to do to me.”

  “Pretty damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?” His pupils were dilated, and his breathing grew shallow as I leaned in closer.

  “Am I wrong?” I wasn't giving Colin a chance to back out, now that he offered me a way to have everything I dreamed of and more.

  “No. You're not wrong.” I barely heard his response over the rapid beating of my heart. A door slammed on the other side of the suite and Colin jumped away from me. When I tried to retreat, he snagged my hand in his.

  “It's not that I expect you to be a dirty little secret,” he assured me. “But maybe we need to figure out what's going on before we tell anybody else. And I’d rather not have someone give us a hard time when everything’s still up in the air. Like you said, Zach’s not going to be easy to convince, and you know damn well the guys will spook him.”

  “Yeah. Of course.” If I'd been thinking clearly, I would have insisted on the same. Too much was at stake here.

  “Now, why don't you go wake up Zach and tell him to get his ass ready. If he's out here in the next five minutes, tell him breakfast is on me.” He settled into the corner of the couch and picked up his coffee. Unlike me, he was dressed for the day in jeans and
a tee.

  “You really want to come with me today?”

  “It won’t be an issue if I tag along?”

  “Don't answer my question with a question,” I warned him.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I don't want you feeling like I was pushing you into anything.”

  “You're not,” I promised him. “Believe it or not, I am more than willing and able to resist you if I wanted,” I teased. The problem was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to resist him.

  “Then it's a damn good thing you want me,” he quipped, his gaze drifting to the bulge in my pants. He leaned forward, inhaling deeply. His entire body shuddered as his eyes drifted closed. And why in the hell was that so damn sexy?

  “Fuck, you smell good. I can't wait to get a taste of you later.” To torture me, his tongue poked out between his lips so he could oh so slowly lick them. Now I was thinking about what it would be like to feel him licking me like that.

  “You can't say shit like that,” I warned him. “Remember, Zach is easily weirded out by guys flirting with each other.”

  “Well, he’d better get used to it,” Colin mused. “Because there's gonna be a hell of a lot more than flirting going on when we get back tonight.”

  “Remember what I said,” I whispered as footsteps approached. “If you push him too far, too fast, you'll scare him.”

  “Don't worry, baby, I know exactly what I’m doing,” he teased. I wasn’t a fan of mushy endearments, but I’d be damned if I didn’t want to hear Colin use them.

  Great. Now my dick was stiff again. If Colin knew how he affected me, I had no doubt he’d go out of his way to keep me needy all damn day. I groaned softly and he lightly swatted my ass. Sometime, I was going to beg him to bend me over and do it for real, just so I could see if spankings were as sexy as Matt and Chase made them out to be.

  “You’re wasting time,” Colin pointed out.

  I didn't wait for Colin to say anything a third time.

  Just for today, I reminded myself as I slipped into the bedroom where Zach was still passed the hell out. I watched him for a moment, wondering how he could sleep so soundly when everything was changing.

  Of course he could. He was sleeping the sleep of the completely oblivious.

  “It’s creepy as hell when you watch me sleep.”

  I shrieked, tripping over a pair of Zach's shoes as I raced to my closet, pretending like I had no clue what he was talking about.

  “Are you heading out this morning?” It wasn’t until he rolled over that I noticed his freshly shaven face and damp hair. But why in the hell would he pretend to be sleeping?

  “Yeah, and Colin said that if were ready to go within the next few minutes, we can stop, and he’ll buy breakfast.”

  “Why?” Zach asked, skepticism thick in that single word. If I wasn't used to people doing things for me, Zach was a million times worse. He always questioned everybody's motives. And I was the asshole who wasn't about to tell him that Colin had a master plan.

  “Maybe because he likes us,” I teased, unable to bring myself to flat out lie to my best friend.

  “He's good shit,” Zach mused as he hopped out of his bed and pulled a t-shirt out of the dirty clothes hamper.

  “You’re seriously going to wear that today?”

  Zach lifted the fabric to his nose and took a quick sniff. He shrugged. “Yeah. Why the hell not? Not like I’m going to wear my Sunday best to go get dirty. Why, you know something I don't?”

  I turned away from him so he couldn't see the guilt in my eyes. “No man, nothing like that.”

  “Do you know how thin walls are here?” A pit formed in my stomach as the meaning of his observation hit me.

  He knew. He’d heard. I held my breath, waiting for him to lash out and remind me for the millionth time that he wasn’t queer. It was his default, and now that Colin pointed it out, I realized he did hammer that point home a bit too often for there to not at least be some curiosity.

  “So, you want to try again without feeding me a line of shit?” Zach tugged on his shirt and flopped onto the futon beneath his loft bed. “Why is Colin buying breakfast? More importantly, what in the hell kind of plans do the two of you have that you thought you would spring on me?”

  I worried my bottom lip between my fingers, observing him for any sign that he was pissed. He doubled over, fisting his hair between his fingers.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” I promised. Now that the spell I felt like I’d been under, when Colin was basically offering me everything I’d never dared to hope for was wearing off, I felt like shit for thinking about Zach as anything other than a buddy. “Colin has it in his head that there’s some sort of sexual tension between us.”

  “Do you like him?” Zach asked, carefully ignoring the comment about him and me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know him that well, but yeah.”

  “Maybe it would be better if just the two of you go. No reason to keep a third wheel around.” The change in Zack's expression was slightly impossible to miss when you knew him as well as I did.

  Fuck. Maybe Colin was onto something here. Now, I had no clue what I was supposed to do. I still wasn't sure how I felt about Colin’s offer to play matchmaker and the go-between for the two of us. Even if I was finally able to see something that I had never thought possible right in front of me, I didn’t want to lead Colin on. What I felt for the two of them wasn’t anywhere close to the same level. Colin was hot and I’d love to see how far he’d push me out of my comfort zone, but I’d been infatuated with Zach since the moment we’d met.

  “If you were in here eavesdropping, then you know that's not what we were talking about,” I argued. “I think he likes you, too. We both do.”

  Admitting that was terrifying. I held my breath while I waited for him to tell me to fuck off.

  “How in the hell is that supposed to work?” Zach tipped his head to the side and furrowed his brow. Oh, how I’d love to know what he was imagining. “It works when it’s us with a chick, but there are too many dicks if it’s three dudes. And what if the two of you fall stupidly in love like everyone else around this fucking place?”

  That was the second time he had an opportunity to remind me he wasn't into men, and the second time he deflected instead.

  “No one's proposing marriage here, Zach,” I reminded him. “But you don't have to think about that or do anything right now.”

  I dug through the bottom of my closet, tossing my work boots into the center of the room. I didn't bother hiding as I changed into my work clothes. If Zach had an issue with me getting dressed, he could leave the room.

  But he didn't. As I hitched my thumbs into the waistband of my shorts, I felt Zack's gaze on my ass. And maybe I did strip just a bit slower than I usually would have, putting on a show for him. Zach groaned when I glanced over my shoulder and caught him staring at my ass. Just to be a tease, I flexed, knowing the thin material of my underwear wouldn’t hide what he was drooling over.

  Our eyes met, and it was like neither of us were willing to be the first to look away.

  I took a step closer. “Why did you freak out when I accidentally touched you that one time?”

  Now that we were here, I needed him to clear up my confusion. Zach shook his head. Following the lead Colin had taken earlier with me, I took another step toward Zach.

  “Tell me,” I insisted. And another step. I was all too aware of the growing erection tenting my underwear. “Were you freaked out?”

  Zach glared at me, his nostrils flaring, and his lips pursed tightly.

  “That's it, isn't it?” I took the final step across the room, so my chest was pressed against the front of Zack's bed. I leaned back and ducked down so I could see him. His cheeks burned bright red when our eyes met again. He realized I'd caught him staring at the barely concealed bulge in my drawers. “You're turned on right now, aren't you?”

  At this rate, I was going to miss out on build day for the first t
ime since sophomore year when I was down with the flu. It'd be worth it.

  “Don't lie to me, Zach,” I warned him.

  “Yes,” Zach whispered. He twisted his hair in his fist hard enough he winced. “I lost my shit that night because no one’s ever made me feel as good as you did with just a touch. I wanted to beg you to do it again, but I couldn’t because you’re the only person I trust around here. And ever since then, I can barely get it up without thinking about you. Jesus, are you fucking happy now?”

  “Far from it,” I admitted dropping to my knees in front of Zach. “Why didn't you say something sooner?”

  “Why the hell didn't you?” he shot back. “It's not exactly like you were jumping out of the closet, either. Seems to me, both of us have been keeping some shit bottled up.”

  “That may be, but one of us ever lied about it.” Calling him out might destroy everything, but he had to know that if anything was going to happen, whether it was just between the two of us or if Colin was with us, I wasn't going to stand by and listen to him spew his toxic masculinity bullshit. He didn't need to sign us up for a float in the pride parade or anything like that, but he wouldn’t lie about whatever was going on, either.

  “I guess I deserve that.” Zach slumped back on his futon. I rested my hands on his knees. “Everyone's going to hate me when they find out.”

  He looked so distressed. I wanted to climb into his lap and hug him while I promised him it would all be okay. But I couldn't guarantee that. And whatever troubles he faced, he’d brought on himself.

  “Everyone's going to hate me,” he repeated, his voice cracking with anguish. “But I guaran-damn-tee nobody will hate me as much as I hate myself. I know it’s wrong. I’m a coward and a liar.”

  My heart shattered when I noticed a tear streaking down his face. Zach was always so damn stoic, still refusing to show any emotion he thought made him seem weak. But he couldn’t fight it any longer. I reached up, wiping the tear away with my thumb. He leaned into my touch and I cupped his jaw, brushing my thumb back and forth over his cheek.