On a Roll by Beth Bolden (free ebook novel .txt) 📗

Ren argued. “You know how convincible he can be.”

Ren was not wrong. Gabriel nodded.

“And,” Ren added, “I think when Sean comes back, he’s either going to want to give you anything you ask for, or he’s going to feel so fucking guilty, he’ll give it up without a fight.”

“I don’t want him to give it up without a fight,” Gabriel argued. “I want . . . well, you know what I want. I want us to share it.”

The sympathetic look on Ren’s face hurt worse than the uncertainty Gabe felt deep down.

“He may not feel the same way about it as you do,” Ren said carefully.

“I know,” Gabriel said. Hesitated. “But keep it on there. I want to serve it. We’ll figure out this whole fucking mess when he comes back.”

“Alright,” Ren said. He tapped the pen against the paper. “What else?”

What else could they serve with the meatballs?

“We should do a spicy cranberry meatball,” Gabriel said. “Like those we used to have out at Christmas, you know? In the crockpot?”

“Like a play on the cocktail weenie,” Ren said with excitement, jotting that idea down.

“Never say the word weenie again, please,” Gabriel said with a laugh punctuating his warning. “I’m begging you.”

Ren laughed too. “Fine. But the idea’s solid.”

“And stroganoff meatballs,” Gabriel said, a world suddenly opening up in his brain, so many ideas suddenly filtering in that he could barely register them all. “We could do them up in a sandwich roll, like the one we already have.”

He listed three other ideas, Ren scribbling and nodding along, and then he paused, realizing something.

“If we do this,” Gabriel said. “We’re going to need to change the name on the truck. The one I picked out, it isn’t going to work anymore.”

“It won’t,” Ren agreed. “What about . . . well, what about Balls and Buns?”

“Oh my god,” Gabriel said, a little shocked. “Lorenzo Moretti!”

But Ren was grinning unrepentantly. “When did you become such a prude?”

“Tony is going to kill us,” Gabriel said.

“Hey, it’s accurate, isn’t it?” Ren said, with a sly smile. “We’ve got meatballs, and we’re still going to have some in buns. The traditional style, of course, and then that banh mi you were just talking about. And the stroganoff. Those are all balls in buns.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s going to convince Tony to like the idea,” Gabriel said. But at the same time, he knew Tony would secretly—or maybe not so secretly—laugh his ass off about it.

“It’s a good thing we’re not really considered a ‘family destination,’” Ren said.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “You might think you’re the prince of dirty talk, but before Tony settled down, he would’ve given you a real run for your money. He hooked up with everyone.”

“Hey, if a guy that looked as good as Lucas was interested, I’d think about it, too,” Ren pointed out.

“Liar,” Gabriel teased.

Ren flashed a smile. “I said I’d think about it, not that I’d actually go for it.”

Chapter Fifteen

Sean had been holding out hope that by the time he made it to the overlook, the special one, the spot where a short hike from the road, you’d get the best view of Cannon Beach, he would know.

But the problem was, he hadn’t really believed it before, and he still didn’t believe it now. Milo was dead and gone. Just because Sean and Lacy had scattered his ashes here didn’t make him any less gone. It didn’t matter that Sean had been standing here when Milo had proposed. Or that they’d gotten married only a half a mile away, at the family’s beach house.

Milo wasn’t here. He couldn’t tell Sean how he felt or what Sean should be feeling.

Sean hugged his arms around his chest, the outside of his windbreaker damp with morning fog combined with the spray from the water hitting the rocks below.

He’d spent the last few days in Cannon Beach avoiding this place, sure that he would feel either wretched or enlightened when he came here. But truthfully, all he felt was very silly.

Collapsing down onto a fallen log, he ignored the cold that seeped through his jeans as he stared out at the sea, still feeling ridiculous.

Of course Milo was not here.

But now that he had come to that inescapable conclusion, there was nothing else to do but face it.

He’d moved on, even if he hadn’t wanted to—and he’d done it the whole time while pretending that it was nothing but sex.

But Sean had known. Why else had his body and his heart and his brain been so adamant that it had to be Gabriel? Why had he been so sure that it could only be him, and nobody else?

If he’d just wanted to get off, all he’d have needed was a guy he had even the barest sexual interest in, and there had been a handful of those over the years. He’d always brushed them off, giving himself the excuse that he wasn’t ready, that he wasn’t looking for something so transient that it’d end in a few hours or a few days.

But that was the very offer he’d made to Gabriel. They’d get naked, and nothing else—even though there had already been so much between them that was fully clothed.

Maybe they’d spent two years bickering, but they’d also spent those two years becoming friends. Even as they both had claimed otherwise.

But looking back? Trying to see things clearly?

Sean scrubbed a hand over his face, his skin numb from the cold and from the epiphanies that kept revealing themselves.

They’d been friends.

The antipathy between them had faded almost immediately into a snarky, sweet, almost flirtatious banter. They’d revolved around each other, even before that inevitable day when Tony had forced them to actually confront the thing between them.

The only thing that had ever truly kept them apart.

And, Sean realized now, the only thing that kept them together, too.

He’d been so upset, Sean thought, as he stood, shaking off the cold and the damp from the log, about everything else, that he hadn’t really