Forbidden: King (The Four 4)

Chapter 2

I woke up around ten the next morning and lingered in bed for a while. My “date” the night before had actually just wanted to talk, which was a first for me. But it had still been a pretty late night, and I’d gotten home at three a.m.

Eventually, I dragged myself out of bed, put on my workout gear, and went downstairs. The house was unusually quiet. George almost always had the TV on, but the family room was empty. I pulled my phone from my pocket and sent Casey a text, which said: Hey. Where is everybody?

My brother replied: George wanted a new shirt for tonight, so I’m wheeling him around a shopping center. Surprisingly, he actually agreed to bring his wheelchair. As for Eden, check out back. He was doing yardwork when we left.

My next question was: Why’d you get picked for the shopping trip and not Eden?

Casey answered: George says I have better fashion sense than Eden does. His message was followed by an emoji with a huge smile. That made me chuckle. My brother had undeniably terrible taste in clothes, so I was sure he’d taunt his best friend with that compliment forever.

I put away my phone and filled a water bottle, then headed to our home gym, which we’d set up in an enclosed porch at the back of the house. It was nothing fancy, just a set of free weights and a few pieces of equipment, but it got the job done.

After I grabbed a towel from the shelf in the corner and tossed it on the weight bench, I paused to look out the windows. Eden wasn’t in the backyard, but I could tell he’d been busy out there because the lawn was mowed and every last leaf was raked up.

The house and that yard had been in pretty bad shape when we’d arrived. Eden was slowly transforming it, and he actually seemed to be enjoying himself. As for George, he’d given us free rein to do whatever we wanted to his home, as long as we left his TV and recliner alone.

I turned my back to the windows and began my warm-up routine. There wasn’t a lot of room, but I made it work.

When we’d moved in, both Casey and I had been pretty broke. In his case, that was because he was paying for nursing school. As for me, it wasn’t like I’d managed to save anything after a string of low-paying jobs in food service. The three of us decided investing in some secondhand equipment would be cheaper in the long run than joining a gym, so we’d cleaned out the sun porch and made it ours.

Even though it was cramped, I actually loved this space. It was the only room in the house that belonged to all three of us equally, and we’d brightened it up by tacking photos, cartoons, and silly little things to the plain white wall opposite the windows.

Eden, Casey, and I were actually very different people, but working out was our common ground. For my brother, and then me a few years later, that dedication had started in high school when we played football. Eden, on the other hand, told us he’d been into running and keeping fit since grade school.

I could not relate. One time when I was eating lunch in about the fourth grade, I took off my sock and used it to wipe my mouth, because I was too lazy to get a napkin from the other end of the table. I thought that pretty much summed up my childhood.

But I wasn’t that kid anymore, and over the next ninety minutes, I pushed myself hard. I was a competitive person by nature, and I was competing with the man I’d been a year, a month, and even a week ago. I continually challenged myself to improve, and it was one of the only times in my life where I could actually see myself making progress. That was probably why working out was so important to me.

By the time I finished, almost every part of me ached. There was a certain satisfaction in that, though. I grabbed my towel and wiped my face as I headed to the kitchen. Since I wasn’t watching where I was going, I almost crashed into Eden.

“Hi,” he said, as he caught me by the shoulders and repositioned us so we were no longer on a collision course. “How was your date last night?”

“Pretty low key. All we did was talk.” Well, he’d talked and I’d listened. That was how it worked when someone was paying for your time.

I hung the towel around my neck, then grabbed a glass and poured myself some orange juice as he asked, “That’s it? It sounded like you were expecting a night of romance.” Since I’d told him I was going out with a huge bag of lube and rubbers, that was obviously his polite way of saying I’d been planning on getting plowed like a corn field.