The city sky was dull at night. Light pollution drowned out all but the brightest stars. Aaron observed it through the windshield as he took the overpass, one arm folded on the ledge of the door, the other on the wheel. He felt every bit as empty as the murky night sky.

There were thoughts he still needed to process and feelings he needed to address. As cowardly as running made him feel, he knew it was the right choice. He wanted to try to work things out with Gage, but until he got a handle on the situation, it was better that he kept his distance. Some time apart would do them good.

If only Aaron could convince his heart it was true.

Traffic was quiet. The world passed by in the gaps between streetlights. Aaron paid attention to the road, turned the radio on, and did his best to forget. Today’s wounds would hurt less tomorrow. If Caleb couldn’t suture his injuries, he could at least distract Aaron from them.

Aaron drove until traffic clogged the city streets and suburban households gave way to staggering high-rises. Then, destination reached, he turned off the street and down the steep ramp leading into an underground parking facility. Too-bright overhead lights flooded the space and lit the way.

He parked in the first available spot, locked the car, and headed to the elevator entrance. On the way up, he made a call.

“Caleb?” Aaron asked once the call connected. “I’m on my way up. The gray Lincoln in spot C5 is mine. Call it in.”

“Jesus, Aaron,” Caleb grumbled. “Now?”

“Now,” Aaron said. He closed his eyes. “I’m in the elevator. I’ll see you in a second.”

Caleb snorted. “You better hope your cabin stops on a few floors on the way up, or you’re going to be seeing way more of me than you bargained for.”

By the time the elevator let out on Caleb’s floor and Aaron made his way down the hall, the door to Caleb’s condo opened. A young man that Aaron didn’t recognize stumbled out. He tugged a baggy sweater down over his bare chest, his head still trapped within the garment. With a few frantic tugs, his head popped through. When he spotted Aaron, he jumped.

“What the fuck?” The young man gaped. “Caleb?”

“I’m afraid not,” Aaron replied with a sympathetic smile. “I’m the good twin.”

With nothing more to say, he bypassed the stunned stranger and entered the open door. It swung shut behind him. Caleb stood in the space behind the door, his lips drawn and his brows flattened in annoyance.

“Now?” Caleb asked again. “I was having fun with one of Everett’s best friends. Do you know how long it took me to drag him into bed? And now, you in your…” Caleb glanced down at Aaron’s choice of dress reproachfully. “… polar bear pajama pants have cockblocked me for at least another week. What the hell?”

“If you did it once, you can do it again.” Aaron hesitated, and in that suspended moment, his facade broke. A sob rattled his lungs, and he hung his head to try to hold it back.

His efforts were wasted.

Caleb knew. Caleb always knew.

“Hey, whoa, Air, what’s going on?” Caleb squeezed his shoulder, and when Aaron found the strength of will to look up again, he found his brother’s eyes were shaded with concern. “Fuck. You didn’t tell me it was bad… I just thought you were being a jackass. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Aaron had had an entire drive to think about what he wanted to say, and how best to explain the situation, but he found himself unprepared. He looked into Caleb’s dark eyes, identical to his own in everything but temperament, and broke down.

“Hey! Hey, you’re okay. Whatever’s wrong is going to be okay.” Caleb gripped his shoulders, bracing him, but Aaron found no comfort in the touch. The future he’d envisioned was gone, and he wasn’t sure he could ever bring it back. “Come into the living room, okay? Sit on the couch. Do you want a t-shirt?”

“Yes,” Aaron said hoarsely. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Please.”

“Dweeb,” Caleb said affectionately. He steered Aaron into the living room, planted him on the couch, then turned and headed for the bedroom door. Aaron blinked away the haze of tears in his eyes and watched Caleb go. “Don’t sob all over the leather, okay? It’s bad enough you stink of sex. I’m going to have to have it detailed.”

Aaron laughed dryly. He wiped his tears from his eyes with his forearm and shook his head. It was his first time meeting up with Caleb since he’d come home from Munich, but it was like no time had passed at all. Caleb was the same as he always was—it was Aaron who’d changed. He wasn’t sure what to think of that.

A few seconds later, Caleb returned from his bedroom. He tossed a folded t-shirt at Aaron’s head. Despite Aaron’s addled state of mind, he snagged it before impact and shook it out. There was a stylized dick on the front, drawn mid-ejaculation. Cartoon cum spilled across the shoulder.

Aaron looked at the shirt, then looked up at Caleb incredulously. Caleb shrugged. “You want it, or…?”

Aaron rolled his eyes. He pulled the shirt over his head and tugged it down his chest. “Yes, I want it.”

“Then don’t complain.” Caleb smirked. He settled on the armchair opposite the couch and set his elbows on his thighs, crossing his hands loosely in the space between his legs. “Are you feeling okay enough that you can tell me what’s going on?”

“Yeah.” Aaron glanced at the white screen-printed droplets on his shoulder. “The dick helped.”

“A good dicking always does.” Caleb changed positions, stretching his arms over his head and leaning back in his chair. He yawned silently, then craned his neck from side to side before offering Aaron his full attention again. “So, you wanna tell me why you interrupted the very good dicking I was about to give? Because I can find it in my heart to forgive you, but only if I have details.”

For a moment, Aaron was silent. He poked and prodded at his thoughts, trying to get them to behave, then decided that it was worthless. “It’s Gage,” he said in a small voice. “I have reason to believe that he’s been cheating on me.”

Caleb laughed, choked on his saliva, and sputtered. He cupped both hands over his mouth, but not even his temporary tracheal distress was enough to curb his amusement. “F-Fuck, Air, you might as well have come in here and told me that you have reason to believe that Gage is actually a dinosaur.” He wiped a tear from his eye and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know you’re upset, but that’s so absurd that I have a hard time believing it.” Caleb cleared his throat. “So… what’s going on?”

It didn’t surprise Aaron that Caleb didn’t believe him. Anyone in their group of friends would have laughed him off. Aaron wished he could have laughed it off, too. “We were in bed, and he asked me to get his phone.”

“Okay.” Caleb paused. “Gross, but okay. Continue.”

“I went to get it. He was worried because…” Aaron trailed off. He’d checked Gage’s phone because he was worried that Mal was trying to get in touch with them about Bo, but no one knew about Bo just yet. Gage had wanted to wait until Bo had settled into life at the new house and opened up to Aaron before they told anyone else. Caleb didn’t know. “… because there was a message both of us were waiting on, and when his phone buzzed in my hand, I figured it’d be okay if I looked at the preview to see if it was the message we were waiting for.”

“And I take it that it wasn’t.” Caleb stretched, then yawned silently again. He curled his legs beneath him and lounged in the armchair. “Who was it?”

“It was some… some asshole who was saved in Gage’s phone as KnotMyProblem.”

“Oh.” Caleb didn’t sound impressed.

“Knot with a K,” Aaron clarified.

“Oh. Oh. Oh, fuck.” Caleb planted his elbow on the arm of the chair and rested his chin on it, examining Aaron with great curiosity. Intrigue animated his dark eyes. “You said that he was an asshole. How do you know that for sure?”

Aaron frowned. He plucked at the bottom hem of the dick t-shirt. “It was easy to tell from the way he wrote. The preview message basically said that he knew I was back in town, but…”

“But what?” Caleb leaned forward. “I’m not pissed that you cockblocked me anymore, by the way. This is some interesting shit.”

Aaron glared at him, and Caleb shrugged apologetically.

“That’s where the preview ended.”

With a little hum, Caleb lifted a brow. “But since you called him an asshole, that’s not where you stopped reading, I’m assuming. I want to know what else happened. Give me all the dirt.”

Although they were identical twins, Aaron considered himself very different from his brother. Caleb’s sense of humor and attitude toward life was more reminiscent of their omega father, while Aaron’s practical, hardworking nature was more closely aligned with their alpha father. In moments like this, he saw the divide between them more than ever. Most times, Aaron was glad that Caleb didn’t look at life in the same way he did—it helped to keep him balanced when he was knocked off-course. But right now, Caleb’s dismissive and lighthearted attitude wasn’t appreciated. A huge part of Aaron’s identity had been ripped from him, and Caleb was acting like he’d been through something delectably zany that wasn’t all that big a deal.

“This is serious,” Aaron reminded him. “Caleb, I’m in love with Gage.”

“Love comes and goes,” Caleb said casually. “We’re older and—arguably—at a point in our lives where we might want to think about settling down… but Gage is a baby. If he was anyone else but himself, I’d honestly be shocked if he made his way through college without cheating on you.”

Aaron opened his mouth to protest, but he found himself too stunned to speak. Was Caleb even thinking about the words that came out of his mouth, or was he just letting them happen, intent be damned?

If Caleb knew that he’d crossed a line, he didn’t acknowledge it. He continued with his line of thought. “He was eighteen when he started college, right? Gage is… not my type, but I see the appeal. Conventionally, he’s very attractive. Pretty. A cute little kitten that anyone with a knot would want to pin in bed and fuck silly.” Caleb twisted around so his legs were hanging over the arm of the chair. “And then to add to that, when you left to do your… science stuff,” Caleb waved his hand, “he’d just moved out of his parents’ house for the first time. All alone in the city, attractive and vulnerable…”

“Stop.” Aaron was a few seconds away from boiling over. Caleb didn’t know what he was talking about—he didn’t know the sacrifices that Gage had made for their future. And he couldn’t know. Not if Bo was going to stay a secret. “It’s not like that.”

“I’m not saying that it is like that. I laughed in your face when you said you had reason to believe that Gage cheated on you, after all.” Caleb waved him off, nowhere near the level of tension that Aaron was. “But I’m saying that it wouldn’t have surprised me if it happened. Or, I guess, that it did happen. Tell me why you thought he cheated? What did that message say?”

The memory of it was every bit as draining as experiencing it for the first time had been. Aaron dropped his head, staring at the hardwood floor between his thighs. He angled his feet inward so that the toes of his shoes met at an angle. “The message said that even though I was back in his life, this KnotMyProblem guy would still marry him if that was what Gage wanted. He offered to keep it secret and be discreet about it, so I would never have to find out.”

“Shit.” It was Caleb’s turn to frown. Some of the humor disappeared from his eyes. “That… that’s really strange. Gage doesn’t seem like the type of guy who’d do that. Are you sure you were reading it right?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Aaron had looked back up at his brother to judge his reaction, but he found himself lowering his gaze again, ashamed of what he’d done, even though it had seemed so necessary in the moment. “When I read the message, I replied, and I fought with the guy Gage had been messaging.”

Caleb rubbed his eyes and issued an exasperated sigh. “Fuck, Aaron.”

“I couldn’t let it go,” Aaron stressed. “All I wanted was to come home and have a life with Gage. I was going to propose. I don’t understand how this could have happened, or why he would have hidden something like this from me. All I want is for us to be happy.”

“Want?” Caleb sat forward, eyebrows furrowing. “After all that, you still want him back?”

Caleb wasn’t done. He squirmed until he was in an upright position, then moved from the armchair to a finely constructed wooden cabinet against the wall. He opened its doors to reveal a carefully arranged row of liquor bottles and selected one that was almost empty—Aaron didn’t recognize the label. As he divided its contents between two crystal shot glasses, he spoke. “If you have such conclusive evidence that he cheated on you—that it went as far as marriage, which is pretty fucking far, if you ask me—then stop hurting yourself. He’s not the one for you. Let me find you someone to rebound with and let’s get you back in the game.”

“No.” Aaron’s heart would never allow that. No matter what Gage did to him, he would always love him, and he would always be there for their family. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Caleb set one of the shot glasses on the coffee table in front of Aaron, but Aaron didn’t reach for it.

He could tell Caleb the truth and hope that he’d understand what Aaron was going through, or he could continue to speak in vague terms and hope that Caleb could forgive him for it later. But lies and deceptions were behind why he was visiting Caleb late at night, wearing nothing more than his shoes and his polar bear pajama pants. Gage had kept a truth from him, and it had torn him apart.

How could he do the same to Caleb? To the rest of his family?

Aaron loved Gage, but there was room in his heart for those nearest him, too. His brother, his fathers, his honorary cousins…

A decision was made. He lifted his gaze and looked Caleb in the eyes, managing to speak clearly and factually before his sorrow got the best of him and he succumbed to it again. “There are other factors at play now… more people involved in my relationship with Gage than just him and me.” Tears rushed down Aaron’s cheeks. When he spoke again, his voice broke. “Gage made me a father close to four years ago, Caleb, and while I don’t know that little boy very well, I know that I’d do anything for him. Anything at all. I don’t want to leave. I can’t. I need to be there for my son.”