Page 59 of Dad Next Door

The contrast between Quinn and Stone was stark, and I was grinning like a fool when he pulled away.

“What?” he asked, a playful smile on his lips.

“Nothing. I just like kissing you.”

He pressed another quick peck against my mouth. “I like kissing you too.” Reluctantly, he dropped his hands and stepped back. “Night, Doc.”

“Night.”

Half in a daze at everything that had happened in the past few hours, I left Quinn’s and headed home.

Tonight had been a whirlwind. I’d started the night by going on a fake date with my best friend, and now said best friend and I were casually dating.

This was probably a terrible idea that would implode our friendship, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this was exactly what we both needed to break the stranglehold our pasts still had on us.

12

QUINN

“Knock knock.”

I looked up from the blueprints I was bent over to find Jesse standing at my open garage door. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Not much. I was in the neighborhood and took a chance that you were home.” He strode into my garage and looked around. “This is every mechanic’s wet dream.”

He wasn’t wrong. The oversized garage would make an excellent mechanic’s workshop with its high ceilings, bright lights, and gleaming floors.

“You’re off today?”

He nodded and peered over my shoulder at the blueprints spread out on my worktable. “Is that for the job Pops was telling me about?”

“It is.” I ran the tip of my finger over the page. I’d signed a contract for my company’s first job this morning, and it still didn’t feel real.

“Why does your face look like that?” He propped his hip against the table and crossed his arms.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re about to pass out.” Understanding crossed his features. “You’re freaking out.”

“A little.”

“Come on and tell your big bro all about it.” He made a beeline for the chairs next to my fridge.

“You’re younger than me, asshole.”

“I’m not talking about age.” He lowered himself into one of the chairs and grinned at me.

“Shut up.” I pointed to the fridge. “Want a beer?”

Jesse and I had similar builds, but he was an inch taller and had wider shoulders. Until he was seventeen, I’d been the bigger one, but he hit a late growth spurt and shot up almost four inches in a year. He’d also started working out and packed on almost thirty pounds of muscle in that time, and he never let me forget that I was now the smaller brother.

He nodded. “I’m staying for dinner too.”

I pulled two beers out of the fridge. “Am I cooking, or are we ordering?”

“Ordering.” He took the bottle I offered him. “Pops told me you guys signed a lease yesterday too?”

I settled in the chair across from him. “We did. It’s not much, just a small office in the industrial area. Mostly just to have an off-site place to meet with clients and an address for my paperwork.”