Page 29 of Fall for Him

When he heard about Jake Murphy’s accident, Dylan was genuinely shocked and sad. Now the embarrassment of the entire situation felt like a cinder block in his gut. Did Derek know details about the disastrous date? He couldn’t imagine why Jake would tell anyone about what happened. Unless he’d lied about it?

“Waiting for a text from someone special?” Brooks nudged Derek in a brotherly way. “You’ve been checking your phone like that all day.”

“Oh, uh—no. That wasn’t… um…” Derek cleared his throat. “Yeah, my mom had a family of bats in her attic so I was just checking in to make sure they didn’t come back.”

“What a good guy, amirite?” Anderson gave an encouraging twitch of the head at Dylan. “Checking on his mom.”

“Yeah,” Dylan said because there was nothing else he could say with the Three Icemen of the Apocalypse facing him down. But something in the way Derek answered made Dylan think of that moment when Jake put his phone away.

And it shouldn’t matter anyway if Derek was fielding all the dick pics. Dylan needed to get everything fixed up between the two apartments so he could get back to his life and as far away as possible from Derek Chang. Dylan had been keeping strict boundaries the last few weeks, hoping he would get used to having Derek around and stop feeling intensely attracted to him. Unfortunately, the more he was around Derek, the clearer it was that Derek wasn’t actually an asshole, despite how he first treated Dylan. Every second Dylan spent with him tempted him to make a very stupid decision that would probably end in the kind of heartbreak he’d successfully avoided for the last several years.

Brooks hooked an arm around Derek’s neck. “Any chance you’d want to come to the annual Gallagher Grill-Out Summer Barbeque? It’s in a few weeks, and we’d love to have you.”

Dylan choked on his Gatorade.

Anderson patted him on the back. “You should definitely come, dude.”

“Really?” There it was again. That perfect, unexpected smile on Derek’s face threatening to make Dylan backslide in a way that would probably break him worse than the fall had. “Sure, when is it? I’ll check my work schedule.”

While Anderson, Brooks, and Cal talked over each other to give him the details, Dylan tried to ignore the tightening sensation in his chest.

This was not good.

With everything else going on Dylan hadn’t had a chance to come up with a good excuse for missing it. If Derek was going, he’d have no choice but to go.

But maybe if Derek was there, his brothers would behave. Maybe this Grill-Out would be different.

Maybe.

Chapter 11

DYLAN

FYI—Wal-Mart has the deluxe extra-large giant shower caddies on sale today. I used to not understand how anyone could need a caddy that big. The more you know, I guess.

DEREK

Self-care is important. And snarky attitudes cause wrinkles.

DYLAN

Self-care requires three types of sunscreen? Our bathroom has more tiny bottles than the trash can next to Ozzy Osbourne’s hotel minibar in 1973.

DEREK

So feisty with your super-current cultural references. On the topic of me being high maintenance, did you get a laundry detergent that you find *acceptable*?

DYLAN

Yours smells like chemicals. I can’t sleep with that smell.

DEREK

It smells like “fresh rain mist.”

DYLAN

The type of fresh rain mist that’s made of acid and going to rot our bodies and erode cliffsides.

Source: www.kdbookonline.com