“Well, I don’t know that I’d say I live this way on purpose, but yes.” For once in his life, Caleb seemed ashamed of his lifestyle. He started sweeping up his clothes and shoving them into the black plastic bag in one corner that served as his dresser and laundry hamper all in one. “Sorry it’s such a mess. Spencer has all the closet space.”

Considering that Caleb had the kitchen cupboards and the coat closet, this wasn’t even a little bit true, but Spencer wasn’t going to squabble. He was going to go to his room and leave these two to their business. He might have allowed Caleb to pick up Ruby as a client, but that was where all affiliations stopped. The dog training had nothing to do with him. He was just Caleb’s roommate, an unfortunate bystander, a—

“What happens if one of you crosses over?” Ruby turned in a circle, her movements slow and deliberate. “Do you immediately implode or something?”

“Ask Spencer,” Caleb said. “He was in the middle of his payment when you pulled up. Speaking of, I think you still owe me about thirty push-ups.”

Against his better judgment, Spencer allowed himself to be pulled into the conversation. If he left Caleb to tell the story unchecked, there was a good chance Ruby would dislike him even more than she already did.

Which, to be fair, was his own fault, but what else could he do? Instead of accepting Ruby’s payment and getting to work like a normal human being, Caleb had insisted that the dogs needed half an hour alone in the backyard to get to know each other—and then invited her in for a drink. Spencer had enough of a handle on himself to accept Ruby as a client of Caleb’s, to catch the occasional glimpse of them putting Wheezy through his paces in the backyard, but he could not, would not, dare not be drawn into more than that.

He wasn’t going to be part of some twisted triangle involving his brother. He already knew how that story would end.

“Our system is basically a monetary one,” Spencer explained. “Anyone who crosses over the line has to pay the other one off, kind of like putting money in a swear jar. Except we have the option to do physical tasks instead of payouts.”

“Physical tasks? You mean like push-ups? That’s what you were doing out there? Payout push-ups?”

Spencer felt himself starting to grow hot around the ears. When put into words like that—or at all—it sounded ridiculous, but they had to have some kind of system in place. Otherwise, his brother would take over everything.