An indeterminate amount of time later, someone poked their head out through the parlor door. It was Rani, letting them know that everyone was moving to the dining room. Cole whipped back to part his lips from Gideon's so quickly that his head smacked into the wall.

Without turning his head, Gideon sent a sideways glare at his sister. She tittered and disappeared back into the parlor. Then he stepped back to give Cole a bit of space to breathe and collect himself.

Cole once again found himself redoing a few of his buttons that had somehow come undone, as well as tucking his shirt back into his pants. He had to pause to adjust himself, then frowned down at his hard-on. His pants were pretty tight, so to be safe, he untucked his shirt.

Gideon's fingers ran through his hair, sorting the unruly waves back into some semblance of order. The menace of a man smirked the whole time. Making a mess of Cole and then putting him back together really was one of his favorite things.

There wasn't anything either of them could do about the red marks he'd sucked high on Cole's neck. They pulsed faintly, a comforting ache. Once he caught his breath and his cheeks cooled a bit, he took Gideon's hand and led him back into the parlor.

Everyone was gone.

The only one remaining was a member of the staff, or rather, going by the business name on the woman's polo shirt, a member of the catering company. She gestured through one of the doors that Gideon was already striding toward. He now led Cole instead of the other way around.

The dining room was as bland as the parlor had been. It looked like something out of a magazine. There was a long dining table surrounded by plain walls decorated by low LED lighting. Another chandelier hung over the table, though this one was more modern. It consisted of geometric shapes which matched the black strips shielding the lights along the walls.

Everyone was seated at the table, with the exception of the children and the dog. He and Gideon wove their way through the servers bringing out bright green leafy salads and pouring white wine. As they sat, Cole made a face at the low-hanging chandelier. It looked like a cage had been exploded and then jammed back together. Cold and random.

"You and your mother must have used very different interior designers," he whispered.

Gideon glanced at the chandelier and grimaced. "The same actually. But she had the place redone to get it ready for selling when she left for Italy."

"Oh," Cole leaned away from Gideon to give a server room to deliver their salads, and another their wine.

Thankfully, conversation at the table was in full swing already and nobody paid them much mind. So he could munch on croutons and slivers of parmesan cheese in from the salad in peace. He lent one ear to different conversations taking place around the table and kept his eyes lowered, hoping not to draw attention to himself.

By the time the salads were cleared away and the entrees brought out, he'd gathered that there was something big going down for the family business that everyone was talking around.

And it didn't have to do with the accounting side of things.

It had to do with the ladies at the table complaining about how they could no longer go to their favorite salon because it was on the East Side of Lafayette Street. And it had to do with the men talking about how they refused to change the days they usually played golf, despite an unspoken reason making them feel pressured to.

Some kind of territory dispute? Maybe a falling out with someone they had been on friendly terms with. Something that nobody actually brought up, but everyone seemed aware of.

Cole glanced at Gideon, knowing that he must be deep in the trenches on the front lines of whatever was going on. He thought of him calmly reading that memoir of one of the world wars and felt a little prick in his heart. The decadent entree—some kind of entire roasted bird that was only about the size of his fist—landed on the table in front of him, but his appetite had dried up.

Abruptly, all this seemed so stupid. The stupid chatter and dinner courses and awful chandelier. Why were they even here? It wasn't like they ever actually talked to any of these people. Or, at least, Cole didn't. And nobody was taking an honest interest in anyone else. Not like he imagined a real family would.

These people all did such awful things so they could sit around and not talk about anything and have complexes about people marrying them only for their money. His chest felt a little hot and his fingers cold and he understood exactly why Gideon got so worked up.

It was all a little much. The chatter of strangers who nobody had bothered to introduce him to, the awful pointy chandelier, the little bird drenched in sauce on his plate. The lingerie pressed between his clothes and his skin. His whole perspective of the evening had shifted two inches to the left and he couldn't drag it back to the benign, unaffected way he'd seen it before.

If he was in a scene, he would have safe-worded.

"Everything okay?" Gideon murmured.

Cole looked at the bird on his plate and felt sure he wouldn't be able to stomach a single bite. "What's that?" He pointed to it.

"Quail."

Cole pushed his chair back and stood. "I need to use the restroom," he told Gideon, completely ignoring the rest of the room. He wasn't even sure if anyone noticed his departure as he left through the only door he was familiar with.

It ended up leading him back to the parlor.

There wasn't a helpful catering person to tell him where to go next this time. But he remembered the direction that Jimmy had gone earlier when his mother shooed him away. So he went that way and managed to find a door that led outside.

The air was as thick and muggy as it had been last night. He glanced up at the sky and saw nothing but blue, so it wasn't as if a storm was about to come along and knock down he humidity. They would be stuck with it for a while.

He stood on a stone porch that led down the side of the house to the backyard. Perfect straight mower lines crisscrossed the lawn, creating a pattern of diamonds. There was a wrought iron railing, which he went over to lean against.

More than ever, he wanted to take Gideon back home and shove him in bed and keep him there.

But Gideon liked what he did enough not to get burnt out from it.

He didn't care about money. Beyond the fact that he'd always been wealthy, and probably couldn't conceptualize budgeting or not being able to have whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it.

He clearly didn't care about what his family thought of him. And they did not seem capable of appreciating him. So he was not driven by the need to contribute or prove anything to them.

But something drove him to do all the dirty work for his brother despite how it weighed on him. Habit, or obligation, or something. And it was so wrapped up in his identity of himself, that he couldn't separate from it.

Cole sighed and trudged down the steps to peer around the corner of the house at the rest of the back yard. Two young boys, Jimmy and Henry, romped around in the grass with a golden retriever. There was a patio behind the house, with an outdoor kitchen and fire pit. A woman sat on one of the cushioned seats around the fire pit, fiddling on her phone and occasionally glancing at the boys.

"Cole!" Jimmy cried out, waving to him. "Come and see my dog!"

At least the kids, though they'd struck him as somewhat morose until now, were less claustrophobic to be around. They were certainly not guileless growing up in this family, but they were still children. And their joy at playing with a dog was pure and honest.

Cole bent down to pet the dog's head when it bounded over to greet him. There were bits of grass stuck in the long, fluffy golden retriever hair, but the dog was clearly cared for. Probably professionally groomed. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth as it panted excitedly and submitted to scratches behind the ears.

"What's..." he took a quick peek, "her name?"

"Sunshine!" the younger one, Henry, shrieked.

"Shh," Jimmy scowled. "Don't shout at people."

Cole laughed and pushed Sunshine's tongue away when she tried to lick his mouth. "It's alright to use outside voices when we are outside," he told them.

Henry's eyes glowed and he nodded emphatically in agreement. Then he threw his head back and started howling like a wolf.

Like a little adult, Jimmy put his hands on his hips and scowled at him, then Cole. "Now you've set him off again. He's trying to get Sunny to howl even though I told him she's not a wolf."

Instead of howling along, Sunshine took his howling as her cue to prance around him playfully, taking every opportunity he presented to lick his face. It seemed almost as if she wanted to make him stop. And every time she managed to lick him, he did, dissolving into giggles and pushing her away. Finally though, he threw his arms around her neck and hugged her close. She went still, though her tail still wagged back and forth.

Taking advantage of the momentary calm, Jimmy continued his impression of a mini adult, "Henry, this is Uncle Cole."

"Another uncle?" Henry inquired, peeking through golden fur.

"He married Uncle Gideon."

"Oh," Henry tilted his head back and narrowed his eyes at Cole. "Can you throw a frisbee?"

"Sure," Cole said.

When Gideon finally wandered outside to find him several minutes later, he was in the middle of wrestling the frisbee away from Sunshine. She was well trained and understood the rules of the game fetch, but she was also quite a young puppy still. Cole would guess barely around one. And she found it fun to gnaw on the edges of the frisbee if they didn't immediately pick it up after she dropped it for them. At that point, since they'd abandoned the game, so no longer played by the rules and she refused to give the toy up. Cole figured he shouldn't let her chew the frisbee into an unusable piece of plastic, so he was trying to get her to give it to him.

"This is where you went," Gideon said.

Cole glanced over his shoulder, then let go of the rough plastic lip with a sigh. Sunshine pranced off with her prize, tail high in the air. Sweat dripped down Cole's sides and his face felt hot, even though he'd only been tossing a frisbee.

"Uncle Gideon," Jimmy eyed the adult a bit warily, as if waiting to be told he'd done something wrong. "Did you come to see my dog, too?"

"I came to find Cole, but she looks like a lot of fun," Gideon said. "Does your mom make you take care of her?"

Jimmy nodded. "I help Henry feed her. But the staff lets her in and out of the house. One time I let her track mud everywhere, so now they do it."

Gideon gave a nod of approval, then pointed toward Henry, "Looks like your brother is trying to dig up Nagyi's yard."