AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I wasn’t going to defile the bananas just to get rid of my gag reflex.
Brady was quiet for a few seconds before he turned around and looked at Jude again. “Daddy, he’s keeping the weird neighbor for both of them. And Cashel called him Sir.”
Yep.
We were keeping Bates…our Dom or something.
Jude groaned. “Brady, they slept over at a stranger’s place to talk about spankings and have sex. That’s dangerous.”
“Why?” Gareth was studying them like they were bugs. “You were a stranger who talked to him about Santa, and spankings, and then took him to sleep over at your place.”
Oh.
He had a good point.
“And we’re doing it together so that’s safer. Brady’s mom said so.”
Brady blinked. “I think she said we should go run errands in pairs because that was safer.”
I shrugged. “She said it could apply to a lot of things.”
She’d been kind of upset when we’d lost Gareth in Walmart and had started lecturing us on the buddy system. She hadn’t technically said it didn’t apply to dating, so Gareth might’ve had a point.
“She did…” As his voice trailed off, Brady turned to Jude again. “Daddy, I think it makes sense. They’re using the buddy system and everything. Do they get an apology for an accidental cockblock?”
Yes.
Gareth nodded too. “Yes.”
As Brady and Jude debated who should give us the apology, Gareth turned to me. “Do you want to get dressed and go grab something to bring Bates for lunch? He said we should come back later when everything is fixed up here.”
I wasn’t sure it was going to get fixed since the problem was confusing to begin with, but I liked Gareth’s plan. “I think he’d like a sandwich from that Italian place down the street.”
Bates seemed like a real-food kind of person not a fries or pizza kind of person.
“That’s a good idea.” Gareth headed back toward our bedroom, so I followed him as Brady started telling his Daddy about the merits of hands-on research. “But how do we know which one to pick?”
Hmm, another good question.
“The owners seem as nosy as Bates is. I’m pretty sure we’ll just need to describe him and they’ll know what to make for us.” Gareth’s nod said he thought it was a good idea, but he didn’t get distracted by it.
As we got to our bedroom and he closed the door, Gareth took a deep breath. “That was weird, right?”
“Oh yeah.” I just wasn’t sure I could list out all the wayswhyit’d been weird. “I think they’re just concerned for us, though?”
Maybe?
“But Brady did it too.” Gareth gave the door a confused, slightly concerned look like he was imagining Brady and Jude. “Didn’t he?”
Shrugging, I wasn’t sure what to say. “I think it’s a case of do as I say not as I do? But I don’t know why.”
Gareth finally pulled his focus away from the door and went over to sit down on the twin bed on his side of the room. “Was it wrong for us to have had a sleepover with Bates?”
Before I could even shake my head, he went back to worrying. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. They didn’t fuss at us for dating him together, but do you think that’s—”
“No.” Cutting off whatever he’d been going to say, I went over and sat down beside him, not really sure if I could hug him or not. “Brady doesn’t care about that and Jude just hasn’t figured out how to start worrying about it yet. He’s just a glass-half-empty kind of person.”
I wasn’t sure they realized we were both dating Bates yet, much less dating each other. They’d gotten stuck on one part and hadn’t moved past it. “They seemed kind of distracted on the asking a stranger about spankings part.”
