: Chapter 52

“Thank fuck you’re home. Where the hell have you been?” Xander asks, his brow furrowed.

Same place I always am lately, but he doesn’t need to know that. “What’s up?” Shrugging off my coat, I scan the entryway. Why haven’t the dogs come to greet me? “Where’s West?”

“In his office. I’ve never seen him like this, Z.” I follow him down the hallway to West’s office. We stop outside the closed door, and Xander lowers his voice. “Something happened today.” He scrubs a hand through his thick hair. “With Lily. He started drinking as soon as he got home.” He shoots me a worried look. “Whatever happened, it was bad. He’s had almost an entire bottle of Scotch.”

I push the door open. He’s slumped over his desk, muttering incoherently to himself, the two dogs sitting at his feet. I give them both an appreciative pat on the head and pick up the almost empty bottle of fifty-year-old Macallan. “You couldn’t drink yourself into a stupor with the cheap stuff? You had to take my twenty-five-thousand-dollar bottle of Scotch?”

He lifts his head, his red eyes swimming with tears. His tie hangs loose around his neck. “We broke her.”

I perch on the corner of his desk. “I know.”

“We fucking broke her, Zeke. We ruined her life.” A heaving sob wracks his body.

I glance over at Xander who’s gaping at the broken man before us. “He’ll be fine,” I assure him.

“No.” West shakes his head. “I … we fucking broke her … and she was perfect. She was …” His head drops back down on the desk.

I place my hand on the back of his neck and squeeze. “Then we’ll fix her, West.”

He sniffs loudly. “We can’t.”

“Z?” Xander says, his lip trembling.

“He’ll be fine,” I assure him again. “Help me get him to bed.”

Together, Xander and I lift a grumbling, sobbing West up from the chair. Each taking one arm, we drag him out of his office to the nearest bedroom, which happens to be mine. He rambles incoherently the entire time and is still going when we lie him down on the bed.

Turning, I put my hand on Xander’s shoulder and kiss his forehead. “Go get some sleep. I’ll take care of him.”

His blue eyes swim with tears. “I’ll help.”

“You know I’m good at taking care of people.” Knowing I’m right, he gives me a faint smile. “Go get some sleep, baby. No point in both of us being awake all night.”

He glances between me and West, who’s now passed out.

“Go. Take care of the dogs.”

Xander’s head drops in defeat, and I wrap my arms around him, pressing his face into my neck. His tears scald my skin. “He said he’d fix it, Z.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I nod. “I know.”

“What if he can’t?”

I squeeze him tighter but don’t respond. I don’t do false promises.

After finally persuading Xander to go to bed, I strip West down to his boxers, then kick off my shoes and climb into bed next to him. Sitting up with my back against the headboard, I pull him into my arms, resting his head on my chest. He grumbles a drunken protest, but he’s too wasted to offer any kind of resistance.

I brush his damp hair back from his head and cradle him in my arms. “Shut up, you drunk fucker.”

His pathetic glare almost makes me laugh. Seconds later, he passes back out.

I’ve only ever seen him cry once before in my entire life, and that was when Xander almost died from appendicitis. We might have broken her, but she broke us too. We’ve been living in a void since she left. No, not living, existing. Barely. Every spare hour I have is spent on her. Looking into her past, checking in on her. I’ve become her stalker, obsessed with all things Lily.

That’s how I knew she saw West today. I watched her leave our building, and she looked destroyed. Xander was working from home, so it could have only been West who put that look of torment on her face.

Maybe it’s time I stop watching her from the shadows. Time for me to fix this. For her, for Xander and West. For me.

West groans and rolls onto his side, waking me up. I stayed up watching him like a hawk until the sun came up before I finally fell asleep. Rolling onto his back, he throws his arm over his eyes.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” he snaps.

I lean up on my elbow and study his face. “Well, you downed almost a whole bottle of Scotch.”

“That’s not why I feel like shit, Z.”

“No?”

His Adam’s apple bobs. “Not the only reason, anyway.”

I trace my fingertips over his chest. “You’re not the reason she left.”

He shakes his head. “So, why do I feel like I am? I should have listened to Xander. I should’ve—”

“We both should have.”

He turns his head and looks at me. “You think I don’t know that you just go along with whatever I want to keep me happy, Z? You always have.”

I shrug. “I thought she betrayed us too. It’s not all on you.”

He runs a hand through my hair and tugs my head back. “Thank you for looking after my drunken ass.”

I wave off his thanks.

“What the fuck did I do to deserve you?” It’s not one of those rhetorical questions people who love each other ask. He’s genuinely looking for an answer. And I suddenly understand why he’s always telling me that I’m too hard on myself. Always trying to keep me out of a self-loathing spiral. He never lets me forget how loved I am, by both him and Xander.

I trail kisses across his chest, and he groans, his fingers still threaded through my hair. When I move lower, teeth and tongue swirling over his hard abs, he hisses out a breath.

I rub my palm over his cock, and it grows harder at my touch.

“Zeke,” he warns, but I don’t stop. Moving lower, I shove his boxers down and grip his shaft. I lick a path from the center of his stomach all the way to the base of his dick.

His fingers dig into my scalp. I tug on his thick cock and precum beads on the slit. Darting out my tongue, I lick it off, letting the taste of him fill my mouth.

“Zeke, don’t.”

“Why? Because you think you don’t deserve this?”

“No,” he grits out. “Because you don’t do this.”

He’s right. But why don’t I? He and Fitch are two of the three people I’ve ever truly loved. Why should the prick who fucked me up be the only man I’ve done this with? “I would do anything for you.”

I wrap my lips around the end of his cock. It’s been over twenty years since I gave a blowjob, but I’ve had enough of them to know what to do.

“Motherfucker!”

Suppressing a smile, I take him to the back of my throat.

“Oh, that feels so fucking good.” He loosens his grip on my hair. I know how desperate he must be to hold my head still and fuck my mouth the way he does with Xander and Lily.

I shift my weight until I’m lying between his thighs and swirl my tongue across the crown of his cock, moving down his shaft and back again. His free hand fists in the sheets. Reaching up, I push a finger into his mouth, and he sucks, coating it with his saliva. I love that he knows me so well. When I slip that finger into his ass a few seconds later and press it against his G-spot, he grunts my name and comes down my throat. I swallow every fucking drop he gives me.