“Wait. What? I had no idea.” I had attributed his military bearing to his dominance, not actual military training.
“I don’t tell most people.”
“Why not?”
Carson shrugged, and I could tell he was getting uncomfortable with the topic. “When people know, they start treating me like I’m some kind of hero and thanking me for my service when in reality, I was just a scared, poor kid with no other options. I saw the army as my only shot at college, so I took it. I never felt like a hero.”
I hugged his arm to my chest as if I could protect him from all the bad things he’d seen and done. “Was it scary?”
The hand in my hair stilled. “You know, no one has ever asked me that before. Yeah, yeah, it was.” His hand resumed its soothing motion. “Every day I spent deployed, I woke up wondering… yeah.”
Silence stretched between us. I had no idea what to say, so I lifted his hand to my mouth and kissed his knuckles.
“After I did come home, everything felt different,” he said, resuming his story. “It took me a while to adjust. I was so used to rules and order and structure, and life here is so… chaotic.”
“I bet your mom was glad to have you back.”
“You would think,” he said, his voice filled with hidden laughter.
Looking up at him, I frowned. “What does that mean?”
Carson laughed. “While I was away, Foster and his dad sort of adopted my mom. He invited her to all their holidays, birthday parties, and Sunday dinners so she wouldn’t be alone.” He had such a sweet smile on his face as he talked about them. I was nice. “Turns out Foster’s dad is a bit of a ladies’ man.”
I sat up and turned to him as he collapsed against the tree in laughter. “Wait! Your mom and Foster’s dad!” I latched on to his shirt to get his attention, but he was still laughing like an idiot. “I need more information.”
“More information. Okay, at the wedding, I was my mom’s man of honor, and Foster was his dad’s best man.”
“No!” I gasped, my mind whirling with all the implications. “But that means Foster is your stepbrother!”
“I mean, technically,” he said as if it meant nothing.
“How come no one knows?” I asked, confident Lee would have mentioned it to me at some point.
Carson shrugged. “We’ve been brothers a lot longer than our parents have been together. Calling him my stepbrother seems like a step backward. I don’t know; it sort of implies we didn’t have a choice. Like, we’re only close because we’re stepbrothers when in reality, we’re stepbrothers because we were so close. And it’s not exactly a secret. Some people at the club know, but it’s just not something we advertise.”
Sighing, I leaned against his chest. “It sounds so romantic.” A single mom whose son was deployed overseas falling for the single dad of her son’s best friend.
I felt his laughter as he wrapped his arms around me. “You’ll have to ask Foster for that story. He was the one who was around to witness it.”
“I will.” Snuggling my face into his chest, I took no notice of the unease in my stomach and broached the subject of the club, i.e., the scary yet intriguing place I’d as of yet ignored. “What about the club? How did that happen?”
Carson shifted against the tree and repositioned me as if settling in for a tale. “Not to get into too much detail, but Foster got into BDSM while I was away. When I returned, I’d just started college, and one night Foster begged me to go with him to his club. I was so sure I wouldn’t be into it that I refused, but he wouldn’t let up. I eventually caved. He took me out to this giant warehouse-looking building out on this couple’s property. Not going to lie, I thought the whole thing was shady as fuck.
I’ve since learned that opening a public, for-profit BDSM club is extremely hard. The city doesn’t want to give permits, banks won’t touch them, and don’t get me started on the insurance companies. Strictly speaking, The Church is a nightclub. That’s why we have very strict rules about nudity in the main room and what kind of play can happen there. The private playrooms are where things get tricky, but you have to be a member to use them, so you’re in essence