And Duncan was in Genny as much as he could physically pull that off.
Christ.
Corey had thought it was over after he and Dun graduated from high school and Duncan did the smart thing, the kind thing, and dumped her.
He thought it was totally over.
She was too damned good for him, and Duncan knew that.
She was still too damned good for him. And Duncan still had to know that.
Duncan was a mover, for fuck’s sake.
Corey wasn’t.
Six figures, fresh off an undergrad degree.
Six figures…undergrad.
He bought his first freaking condo—one he still owned and rented out, by the way—six weeks before his twenty-third birthday.
He wasn’t even twenty-freaking-three and he owned property.
And then he’d traded up as a wedding present for Sam.
Did Genny give that first shit about him getting on the property ladder before she’d even graduated from college? Did she give that first shit that he’d offered to take her to Paris for a weekend?
No.
She’d laughed and said, “God, Corey, you’re so funny.”
He hadn’t been joking.
A man could make a woman fall in love with him if he swept her away to Paris and kissed her under the Eiffel Tower.
But no, Corey suggests it, it’s a joke.
Duncan, who doesn’t even own a fucking suit, just stares at her wearing a pretty dress to a wedding like he wants to drag her to the nearest empty room, bend her over a table and fuck her breathless, and she’s panting for it.
So.
Seriously.
The question needed asked.
What the fuck?
“Hey, you need any help out here?”
Corey jolted and turned from where he stood at the grill on their balcony to where Duncan was coming out the door, and swear to fuck, he nearly threw the tongs in his hand at his friend.
All that moving furniture around, Duncan no longer had a high school football player’s body.
He was a powerhouse.
He was fucking Hercules.
“I don’t have to be able to lift a couch by myself to be able to grill some chops without assistance, Duncan,” he sniped.
Dun’s head jerked and he slid the door shut behind him before coming toward Corey.
“What was that about?”
Yeah.
Corey had to get it together.
He turned back to the grill then looked to his view of the building next door.
He’d just bought this one, but he decided he needed a better condo.
He could afford it.
And he was this close to nailing down the investors.
So definitely, he needed a better place to sit them down, entertain, show them he was the man in whom they could put the faith that came in the form of their money.
He was the real deal. The whole package. OS, software, and hardware.
Also, he was the one who could bury himself in the work, come out of that, put on a suit, impress the board, bring on new investors, get more money, create more growth, innovate, more money, more growth, and the cycle repeating unending until he was dead, and everyone was very, very rich.
He was the man who would say, “I’ll be the one making sure you buy your yacht,” and if they already had one, buying the bigger yacht, and when he said that, he not only meant it…he delivered.
He couldn’t do that in this 1200-square-foot condo in Wicker Park.
Wicker Park was the shit. Sam loved the neighborhood.
But it wasn’t Michigan Avenue.
“Corey,” Duncan called.
His friend was now standing beside him.
“You’re not careful, you’re gonna get her pregnant and you barely have insurance, Dun. Your apartment is shit, nowhere to raise a kid. And she wants to be a Broadway star, not a mom at twenty-two.”
Oh yeah.
He got his digs in, for certain.
Corey had been doing that since they took off on his wedding day, Duncan his best man, for fuck’s sake. Dun did his toast, they stayed for a couple of the dances, but Corey and Sam hadn’t even cut their goddamn cake and Genny and Duncan were ghosts.
Since then, inseparable.
Again.
So yeah, he got his digs in.
Genny refused Paris but was in throes of ecstasy wherever Duncan installed her, just as long as his dick was close enough for her to suck.
But he could see his latest comment had taken it too far.
Not in Corey’s estimation.
No, though he could see it was in Dun’s with the look that was in Duncan’s eyes.
Dun was pissed.
The important thing Corey had to determine was, why was he pissed?
Was he pissed that Corey was talking about shit that was none of his business?
Or was he pissed because Corey was right?
“I make that your business, Corey?” he asked.
Okay, it was that it wasn’t his business.
Or was that it?
Corey modulated his tone to caring concern. Best bud to best bud referring to their other best bud, who happened to have a vagina one of them had the rights to eat out—and the other did not.
“You know I’m right, Dun.”
Now it was Duncan looking at his not-so-great view of the building across the street because he absolutely knew Corey was right.