Citywide Read online

  Caleb: :/ No. Oli was possessive of it and afraid of it being hacked or stolen.

  Chris: Yiiikes. The app still up and running?

  Caleb: Yes, those connect to servers that are stored elsewhere.

  Chris: Okay, good. Well . . . I mean, it’s hard to say with just that description, yanno? When did this go down?

  Caleb: We realized the damage . . . now. The last power surge was a few hours ago.

  At six o’clock on a Friday. I’d left work at three today and was usually kept on a tight schedule, so I could imagine that QFindr staff had left already as well.

  Chris: You don’t got any emergency IT dudes to come in?

  Caleb: No. We’re still running with a very small staff, and our IT manager is visiting his mother in Florida. Aiden has been filling in for him, but his skills are limited in this capacity, and we’re frankly panicking.

  Caleb: Aiden mentioned that you’re basically a walking computer so . . . I was hoping I could entice you to save us?

  I reread the sentence several times, but my gaze kept zooming in on Aiden’s name. Given I’d just been moping over him, it was no wonder I was now obsessed with the fact that he had recommended me, even though it literally meant nothing. I was the “IT wizard” he happened to know, and that was all. It didn’t mean this was some sly way to get me in their office so he could woo me. Which was unfortunate. The very idea of seeing that red-stubbled square jaw and his beefy biceps made me feel funny in my pants. And the idea of us camping out with pizza and beer while I tried to put their electronics back together made me want to smile dorkily.

  That was why this was a bad fucking idea. Even after I’d just decided to quit avoiding them and see if something happened, I was already mooning over theoretical hang-out sessions. Not even the sex part of those hang-out sessions. I just wanted to sit with him and chill.

  Caleb: I’ll pay you a hundred an hour for however long it takes.

  Chris: Fuck, dude, I’m not sure that’s a normal amount of money.

  Caleb: That doesn’t matter. What matters is fixing this immediately.

  I gnawed on my lower lip. That was decent money if I wound up stuck in their office for more than a couple of hours, but . . . I wasn’t sure I was prepared to face Aiden just yet. I needed a few beers and an amp-up speech to tell myself I could either keep it platonic or do sex with zero feels, and both seemed impossible.

  Chris: Uh, how about you get back to me if you can’t find anyone else. K?

  Caleb: Okay.

  I instantly felt like shit, but this was self-preservation. I was good at making big statements about keeping my blah life simple and uncomplicated to avoid the hurt feelings that would inevitably come from ménages with poly folk, but things were bound to get nice and complex if I gave in.

  “What’s up?” Raymond asked, nodding at my phone. “You’re making weird faces.”

  “Oh. Nothing.”

  He arched a brow. “So you’re just over there having a stroke?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “All this heat is getting to me.” Ray glared, and I snickered. “Caleb asked if I could swoop by QFindr’s office and save their asses after a heat-induced computer issue. I’d probably make a few hundred easy.”

  Raymond nodded slowly, chewing on a meatball with his brows all bunched together.

  “I’m not doing it,” I added.

  His brows smoothed, and I wasn’t even surprised. I’d asked him to back off on the overprotective stuff after his standoff with Aiden at Christmas, but I knew he was still wary of them. Of all of them, actually. Even Meredith, Ashton, and Charles, who were Stephanie’s new pals. I’d once asked what his deal was, and he’d flatly said he didn’t trust a bunch of rich white people who seemed to be trying to diversify their sex lives with his friends. Honestly? I couldn’t blame him.

  “You sure? The money sounds good,” David said, not catching the hint or maybe not caring. He ignored his boyfriend’s irritated look. “Unless you’re tired of being the go-to IT guy for everyone.”

  Leave it to David to be Mr. Diplomatic. Give me a reason for and against the decision without any personal bias, while ignoring the big elephant in the room. I’d probably hash out the pros and cons with him if Raymond wasn’t glaring at my phone as he stabbed a meatball with his fork.

  “Nah, I’m good.” I looked around the table and pushed my chair back. “I’m gonna grab more bread.”

  It gave me an excuse to avoid their watchful eyes and to get my shit together, because damn, I wasn’t used to being this scrutinized. I wasn’t used to having anything resembling drama. Out of all of us, I was the most low-key person in the squad, and I planned to keep it that way. So, I got the Italian bread and spent the next hour talking UFC, baseball, and food. By the time I left their house to head to my hoopty, I was too full for how hot it was outside and craving a cold beer.

  I yanked the door open, dropped into the ripped leather seat of a Mazda that hadn’t seen any love since the early nineties, and turned the key. What I got in exchange was nada. It didn’t even stutter. Legit made zero sounds.

  I stared at the steering wheel as sweat dripped down the side of my face, adding to my overwhelming feeling of being an overstuffed, overheated mess. A mess with a dead car.

  “Carajo,” I muttered, slamming my fist against the steering wheel. “Always fucking something . . .”

  With my tail between my legs, I returned to the house to let David and Raymond in on my misfortune, got a ride back to my apartment on the Avenue, and then stood in front of it feeling like an asshole. I should have called a tow truck to tow the fucking heap of metal to a junkyard and made a few bucks that way, although one of Tonya’s cousins could probably hook me up with a chop shop that would make me more.

  There was no way I was going to sink money into repairing it. What I needed was money for a down payment on a new ride. Just like I’d been telling myself to save money for a down payment on another apartment. One off the fucking Avenue I’d been walking since childhood.

  With a suck of my teeth and a lot of reluctant rocking on the balls of my feet, I pulled out my phone and called Caleb.

  “Thank you so much for coming.”

  “No prob, man.”

  Caleb locked the glass door behind us as we stepped into the QFindr office, and I had to pick up my jaw from the floor. I always heard stories about how Facebook and Spotify started, the tale of the original founders and how it was once grassroots, and it was hard to believe because now they were mega corporations, but as I looked around QFindr HQ, I believed it.

  The sorta-shitty queer dating app that I’d helped to alpha and beta test had morphed into something used internationally with gleaming glass offices in downtown Manhattan. I’d known it was a big deal when we’d done the photoshoot and my face had wound up on posters on buses and in the subway, but . . . somehow seeing a physical space made it real. When we’d done the photoshoot, they’d still been working out of a smaller rented space uptown.

  “You really made out for yourself,” I said, trailing behind Caleb. He was wearing a three-piece suit, and I had on basketball shorts and sandals. I did a little tap dance as I followed him, ensuring the backs of my sandals slapped against the shiny floor.

  Caleb looked over his shoulder, startled, and laughed. “What are you doing?”

  I shrugged, grinning. “Being dumb.”

  His eyes crinkled at the sides. “You’re adorable.”

  Oh God. That word again. The bane of my entire life. Since junior high, I’d been the adorable one with the cute nose and dimples, the guy a little bit shorter than the rest, who’d been passed over for my giant muscular friends. But I wasn’t trying to fuck Caleb, so I just winked and kept following. I did sneak in a couple of more jigs on the way.

  The main part of their space was open concept except for larger offices at each corner. I looked around, on instinct, and wondered which office was Aiden’s.

  “Here we are,” Caleb said, leading
me to a narrow room.

  It was similar to the space we had at my job, where we stowed the racks of on-site servers. Just a narrow, chilly room with a few hard-core terminals that usually did nothing but exist for the rest of the network to access from everyone’s individual computers. Except, the last time our servers had seen damage, we hadn’t lost anything valuable. Definitely not anything like source code for an app worth millions.

  Caleb hovered behind me. “How long will it take?”

  “I don’t know until I start looking at it all,” I said. “I should be able to recover data with software instead of using a clean room, but—”

  “What’s a clean room?” The worry in Caleb’s brow tripled. “That sounds frightening.”

  “It’s a sterile environment for computer parts to be taken apart and worked on. But, like I said, we won’t need that.”

  It didn’t seem to matter that I was reassuring him. Caleb was balls-deep in meltdown mode. I could see it in the way he gripped the front of his jacket and gnawed on his lower lip. A little shred of panic hit me, because while I knew the dude, I didn’t really know the dude. I wasn’t equipped to prevent a full-on coronary.

  Ugh. I definitely hadn’t counted on him sticking around and flipping out the entire time I worked. I knew what I was doing, but doing my job while an anxiety-ridden millionaire bit his nails and stared at me was a setup for disaster. The only times I made mistakes were when people micromanaged me.

  But how the hell could I ditch him when he was paying me a hundred bucks an hour to save his ass?

  “Uh . . .” I rubbed the back of my head. “So . . .”

  “Chris here yet?”

  Aiden’s voice boomed through the office like he’d spoken through a megaphone. It should have been annoying, especially when each word dripped with the remnants of an old-school Irish American Queens accent that would grate coming from anyone else, but my lips turned up in a smile.

  Aiden had a presence like the sun—warm and bright—and he commanded the attention of everyone who had the pleasure of being close to him. It had the same effect on me that’d been there from the start. Wanting to be close to him, to bask in his personality and big mouth and brawn, while also standing a bit taller to make sure he knew I measured up. I had a big personality too.

  He strode up to us, and I struggled to keep my eyes on his face. Tough, considering his thick muscular thighs were looking more delicious than usual in a pair of dark pinstriped shorts and his biceps were exploding out of a short-sleeved white button-down. He had on fucking boat shoes, and my mouth still watered at the sight of his muscular legs. But I kept my expression the very definition of unaffected as I jerked my chin at him in greeting, even though looking at him from the neck up wasn’t much easier. The last time I’d stood before those big green eyes, broad jaw, and laughing mouth, he’d been gripping the side of my face, ginger stubble rubbing my cheek raw, as he fucked me and Jace played with my dick.

  “’Sup, Red?” I drawled, all no big deal that we were in the same room for the first time in what felt like months. “What it do?”

  Aiden looked me over, a long slow sweep up and down my body, before giving me the same tough-guy head nod. I didn’t know if his nonchalance was for Caleb’s benefit—who was apparently a real stickler for ethics within their company—or for me, since I’d been ignoring his texts for a while now.

  “Shit’s not great with this fucking heat,” Aiden complained. “The power’s been blinking since the temp shot up this past weekend. Thanks for coming.”

  “No sweat,” I said. “Wasn’t doing anything, anyway.”

  “Really?” Aiden slid his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it, still talking. “I figured you’d be going out to the club.”

  Heh. He thought he was so slick. When we’d first met, my Friday night MO had been to go drinking and dancing and spend a couple of hours flirting with pretty girls more for the fun of it rather than to truly try to get some culo. Even during the stretches of time when all we did was bullshit in a group text, Aiden had found a way to ask whether I’d met anyone on those nights out. I’d thought his apparent possessiveness had meant something, but we’d stuck to the same routine of fucking infrequently with no changes at all, so I’d eventually assumed his interest didn’t imply deeper feels.

  I shook my head, not bothering to answer, and Caleb kept fretting over the servers. He was too distressed to chastise his half brother for interrogating the IT kid about his sex life, which meant he needed to take his ass on home before he started making me nervous.

  “Okay, I’ll be real,” I told him. “I have no idea how long this will take, but I’m committed to staying late tonight and coming back tomorrow. You don’t need to stick around and watch.”

  “I don’t mind,” Caleb said. “I’ll just worry the whole time if I go home.”

  Grimacing, I glanced at Aiden. All it took was half a second of eye contact, and he understood. I could tell by the way he clapped a hand on Caleb’s arm to wheel him around, murmuring encouraging nonsense in a steady stream that Caleb was too polite to interrupt.

  I watched their retreating backs, weirded out and a little turned on. I’d fucked Aiden Fairbairn only a few times in the past year, and yet he could read me like he’d been riding shotgun inside my body all along.

  Shaking myself, I turned away from the server room to find something to write on. It was time to get to work and earn my money, not get hung up thinking about sex and two dudes I had no business obsessing over. It was usually easy to shift my brain from the wistful longing of a lonely bastard to nerd mode, and this time was no exception. I came up with a list of everything I’d need to do, and the supplies I might need, because a physical list always did more for me than a mental one.

  It wasn’t until I finished scribbling did I look up to see Aiden leaning against the doorway. He looked like porn with his muscular arms and bedroom eyes, a big lug from the Rockaways who wanted to take care of me real good even though his method bordered on the right side of rough, but I managed to glance past him.

  “Where’s Caleb?”

  “Sent him home to Oli.”

  “Appreciate it,” I said. “I work better alone, and he was on that next level of worried. Would have paced behind me the whole damn time.”

  “He would have.” Aiden extended his arm to flick the bill of my cap. “What are you gonna do to thank me for saving you from that experience?”

  I left my cap skewed sideways and arched my scarred brow at him. If there was one thing to be said about Aiden, it was that he never changed. He knew what he wanted and he’d come at you like a bull to get it.

  “You didn’t sabotage your own company just to set up some weird-ass seduction, did you? Because I’mma tell Caleb, and that poor bastard won’t ever forgive you.”

  Aiden burst out laughing, eyes twinkling, as he yanked me into one of his big bear hugs. I was a strong dude, but he had so much mass on me that I felt dwarfed once he squeezed. I’d been brought up affectionate, so I felt qualified to say that Aiden gave the best hugs. Second maybe only to Nunzio.

  “You always smell so good,” Aiden rumbled in my ear. “I could fucking eat you.”

  I scrambled my way out of his muscular arms and backed away, holding out a wagging finger. It was ridiculous, especially when he began advancing on me like a red-haired panther in his slick biz cas outfit while I slid all over the floor in my chanclas.

  “Calm yourself, Aiden. I’m here to work, not to fuck.”

  “You can do both.”

  Aiden lunged at me. Lunged. Like a cartoon character. Or a horny Batman villain. Laughing incredulously, I spun away from him and took off running through the great purple expanse of QFindr offices.

  “I’m going to spank that round ass of yours when I catch you,” he called after me. “Fucking brat.”

  I skidded to a stop by a strange array of standing desks and workout equipment lined up along a wall of windows. He’d loped behind me, grinni
ng broadly, and clearly enjoying my shenanigans. He always did. They always did. My refusal to act like an adult eighty percent of the time was ninety percent of my charm.

  “We’re not fucking, you big orange bastard.”

  “‘Orange’?” Aiden huffed. “Don’t be a dick.”

  “My bad. We’re not fucking, you big ginger bastard.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “Better?”

  “Much.”

  Aiden crossed the distance between us in two long strides and grabbed the front of my shirt. He was all over me again, barely giving me room to think or breathe or exist without him touching me. His tongue lashed against my mouth with a wet demand for entrance that I instantly acquiesced to. I slanted my mouth, groaning when he slid his hot tongue inside, and slammed my hips against his as he gripped me tight with his huge hands.

  The last time I’d tasted that Aiden flavor of chewing gum and beer had been a couple of months ago at Stephanie’s birthday party. The event had been a strange mix of working class and celebutante, with my boys from the block rubbing elbows with her new friends from the Upper West Side. We’d had a blast partying until dawn at her friend Mere’s fairy-tale mansion, but it had been Aiden and Jace in the spare bedroom with their quick hands that had really blown my mind. While everyone danced and drank and enjoyed each other two floors below, Jace and Aiden had shared my body.

  Aiden pressed his fingers to my lips, trying to shush me, but nothing worked except for him sliding them into my mouth. I sucked messily as my hands shook where they were gripping Jace’s shoulders.

  He was squeezing me so tight, slamming back on my dick relentlessly, and it was almost too much. Between the feel of being encased by his tight muscles and heat, and Aiden inside my own ass, I was losing my mind. The perfect rhythm I’d managed just a moment ago was a disaster, and I could feel my orgasm approaching.

  “More,” Jace pleaded, gripping the metal headboard and rocking backward. “Chris, please. Just use me.”

  Aiden’s hips rutted against me in a particularly violent thrust. His groan was muffled as he released, and I imagined him biting his fist. Once he pulled out of me, I flipped Jace onto his back, pressed his knees back, and fucked him until he was shouting and coming without touching his dick.