And none of my business, but now he was right in front of me, questions burned a path to my tongue.
I swallowed them down and opened my beer. Cool, hoppy fizz hit my tongue, and I realised it was the first booze I’d drunk since we’d played out this exact scene yesterday. Huh. Maybe I was ill.
Or perhaps I was so abstracted by Gus’s sex life that I’d forgotten to blunt my senses.
I drank the beer. All of it, while Gus watched, sipping at his own. My shoulder ached. I rubbed at it, absently kneading the muscles.
“Can I ask you something?” Gus’s gentle voice broke the silence.
“If you like.”
“What did Keane mean when he said prison? I’ve never heard that about you before, and Luke’s never mentioned it.”
I didn’t want to think about what hehadheard about me, but Keane’s rhetoric had been so wildly off base, I couldn’t help but smile. “Honestly?”
“No, lie to me, dude. I live for it.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“What does?”
I didn’t want to think about that either. I slumped forward and dumped my elbows on the kitchen counter. “He was talking shit. I got arrested for thumping his son—”
“Shane?”
“Yeah, that’s the knobhead, but they never charged me because they had him on camera hitting me first, and he was the one with an ounce of weed in his pocket.”
“Your weed?”
“Maybe.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “Okay, forget I asked. I was just checking I wasn’t missing something super important.”
“Would it have made a difference to you if I had been inside?”
“As in, would I have let you stay in my house? Course I would. You’re family.”
Family. Wow. I guess we were if we counted our siblings cohabiting as legally binding, which made the obsession I was developing with his damn-fucking forearms all the more weird. “Then why does it matter?”
“Because I like to have my facts in order before I run my mouth.”
“We’re very different people.”
Gus gifted me another grin. “Trust me, mate. I know.”