Brady glanced over his shoulder at the wide-eyed Ken. “You still have time to escape. No one’s spotted you yet.”
Little Sean instantly made him a liar. “Uncle Necky!”
Brady bent down to scoop up the running three-year-old before he could reach Ken’s legs. “Uncle Necky, huh? Don’t I get a hello?”
Sean patted his cheeks with sticky hands and smiled. “’Lo, Brady.” His large brown eyes turned back toward Ken and his hands went to his own shaggy black curls. “Braid,” he demanded.
Stephen appeared beside them, no tie and his sleeves rolled up. Penny’s twin Wes was right behind him, the little blond mimicking every move he made. “There he is. Wes and I are supposed to get him washed up for dinner, but he keeps eluding us, the slippery bugger.”
“He is a slippery bugger,” Wes agreed. Brady winked at him.
Stephen saw Tanaka and showed momentary surprise before recovering with his usual aplomb. He was a natural politician—he knew how to put people at ease. “Hey there, Ken. I didn’t know you were coming to the Finn Again.”
“It was last minute,” Ken responded. “I hope it’s not an imposition.”
Stephen laughed and shook his head. “If you’re brave enough to join this mob, there’s no such thing. Let me get the scamp scrubbed and we can talk more at dinner. I have something I wanted to run by Brady anyway.”
Brady frowned. He did?
Stephen grabbed Little Sean from him and headed toward the bathroom before he could find out more, and he and Brady watched Sean struggling to escape the senator’s grasp, shouting, “Braid! Uncle Necky! Braid!”
“Run by you later, Brady.” Wes threw him the peace sign, then raced after Stephen.
Brady looked at Ken and grinned. “You did say you wanted to come, Uncle Necky. This is on you.”
“I can’t believe he remembers me.” Ken was still staring after Sean. “I haven’t seen him since Tasha’s wedding.”
“You made a big impression.”
“I gave him cake.”
Brady snorted. “Everyone gave him cake. Have you seen him? He’s adorable and he always gets his way. Seamus said he was on a sugar high for the next day and a half.”
Ken put his hand on Brady’s forearm. Just a light touch, but it felt too intimate for the family setting. “Did Stephen say this was a Finnegan?”
“Not Finnegan. Finn. Again. Blame Tasha. She got her way because no one else wanted monthly takeout from Ruby’s.”
Ken was smiling. “I know how she seriously she takes Ruby’s. Why Finn Again?”
“I told you we started doing this every month, all the cousins getting together to eat and catch up?”
Ken nodded. Brady had told him how new it was. With their fathers’ long, silent war, the cousins had rarely spent much time together unless they took it for themselves. Brady’s move to Owen’s house and job with Stephen had given them more of an excuse.
“Well, we’ve actually done it twice a month since Uncle Shawn got out of the hospital. The other meal includes our parents, which, thanks to Solomon the Elder, is awkward, short on interesting details and long on uncomfortable silence. Tasha called this one the Finn Again so we wouldn’t forget which meal was which and whether or not we had to behave. I guess it stuck.”
Ken’s expression was bemused as he took in the chaos around him. “You do this twice a month?”
Brady’s smile faltered. “It’s not mandatory and it’s rarely at the same location, but yeah. More or less.”
Had this been a mistake? Ken was used to a lot of space and a solitary lifestyle outside of the club. Wyatt and Noah’s townhouse wasn’t as small as Rory or Solomon’s place, but with everyone crammed inside, it might as well have been.
He’d only mentioned the dinner because they’d both been tense about tomorrow’s task and he thought Ken might get a kick out of the madness. Now he was worried it was too much. After the last few days, he didn’t want to do anything to push him away.
Brady couldn’t think of another relationship he’d been in where his emotions had been so complicated and intense. One minute, it felt like it was happening so fast that he wasn’t even sure there’d been time to call it a relationship. The next it was—something. Definitely something. With potential for more.
For him it already felt like more. At night he still slipped away and slept across the hall to deal with his nightmares alone, but the rest of the time he was equal parts anxious, aroused and over the damn moon, discovering a side of himself, both in and out of the bedroom, that he’d always been afraid to explore until Tanaka.
Brady had been learning more about him as well. His parents had both been workaholics, despite their financial comfort. He had memories of traveling all over the world, but not that many of family dinners or fun. The details about his time as foster brother to the Wahls made it clear it hadn’t been an easy fit for any of the boys—not just Ken. Dale and Terry had been younger and angry that Ken’s presence caused so much upheaval. They’d had to share a room, their mother had had to get a new job with longer hours and Ken was too caught up in his own grief to be interesting. It set the tone for three years of thinly veiled animosity that Patricia had never seen.