"Nice to see you without the cuffs on, Laz," I said, and he smiled at me. He was a somewhat serious kind of man. Seeing him smile was almost off-putting.
"Cuffs?" Cyrus perked up, brows raised. "Angel, did you cuff this man and have your dirty way with him?"
I was in the process of laughing when Renny's voice cut me off. "Just so we're clear- when we have an old lady, that means we don't fucking share. Mina is mine. Look at her all you want. Can't fucking blame you and it's a compliment to me seeing as I'm the one she crawls into bed with at night. But keep your hands off and don't insinuate she is anything but loyal."
Chastened, Cyrus slumped just ever so slightly. He wasn't used to a firm male presence which probably had a lot to do with losing his father young. "Got it," he said, his voice having lost a little of its levity.
"It's nice to meet you Cyrus," I offered, making my voice a little softer, a little sweeter than usual. "Don't mind Renny. He's a neanderthal," I offered, figuring it would be good to create a different dynamic with the guys than Renny had. If he was a boss, a man to take orders from, someone who maybe couldn't take a joke because it said he wasn't being authoritative, then I could be the one who made fun of that. Because as an old lady, that was in my power. And maybe it would make the guys, especially Cyrus, flock to me and open up to me. "I hear you play guitar."
"Picked it up because it seemed like all the musicians got all the pussy," he offered, smirking.
"He is leaving off the fact that he first picked up a guitar at eleven," Reeve added, smiling slightly.
"What can I say? I was an early bloomer in the ladykiller department. Don't get your dick all bent out of shape because I always get all the chicks." He tempered the comment with a wink that would have been ridiculous on anyone else, but he managed to pull it off.
"And Reeve, you're..."
"An electrician. While some of us were singing fucking John Mayer songs, the rest of us were doing actual work."
"I played a John Mayer song once. Fucking once," Cyrus defended. "And it was a request. 'Your Body is a Wonderland'," he explained to me. "And, well, her body was a mother fucking wonderland which I got to experience because I sang that song, you fuck."
"You still knew that fucking song, man," Reeve said, shaking his head.
They were close.
If I was right, they likely moved out together when they were old enough. Reeve, being the more responsible and serious one, got a job that would make up for the fact that his brother was a bit of a slacker.
Really, none of this was groundbreaking. And all of it could have been ascertained by Renny and Renny alone. He knew what he was doing. I wasn't needed there.
"Got a four inch scar across his throat," Renny said, only loud enough for me to hear.
"What? Who?"
"Reeve," he offered and I turned back to Reeve, squinting a little and sure enough, there it was. I had completely missed that.
A scar across his throat?
"Suicide?" I asked, barely letting my lips move.
"Not a chance," he answered back, reaching up to pull me so my head was on his shoulder.
"How do you know that?" I shot back, trying my best to not nuzzle in. He smelled good. How had I never realized that before? It was something clean and unobtrusive. So not likely cologne. Maybe it was just his soap.
"Just do," he said, his hand moving absentmindedly down my arm, making the skin goosebump in a delicious way.
"So what is he hiding?" I mumbled.
"Exactly," he agreed, leaning over and planting a kiss to my forehead. And it was so unexpected and so sweet that my belly did a weird little flip flop.
"And if he is hiding something, so is Cyrus."
"Yep. See?" he asked, reaching up to boop my nose, "we make a good team."
As I sat there and listened half-heartedly to the guys talk, knowing Reign was paying me an obnoxious sum to give them my full attention, I couldn't help but, for the first time in my career, start to doubt myself. I missed Laz's knuckles. I missed Reeve's throat. Granted, I never claimed to be hyper-observant; my specialty was figuring out what was being said between the actual lines of dialogue, what motivated people, what made them who they are. But still, those were some pretty huge things for me to have completely missed.
"Sugar lips," Renny said, his voice amused.
Sugar lips?
He was just screwing with me.
"Yeah?" I asked anyway, tilting my head up to look at him.
"Asked if would whip us up something to eat," he said, clearly enjoying himself.