by Sam Mariano
“Maybe we should just go home,” I murmur.
“Nope,” Vince says, echoing Adrian’s adamant tone just a minute ago. “We’re here; we’re eating.” Then he gives me a little squeeze, “What’s wrong, babe? You love family dinners. Dressing up, coming to the mansion.”
I roll my eyes as he mocks me. There’s no live audience to perform for, so I don’t.
It’s so strange being here without Mateo. Everything feels different. Wrong. Like something’s missing. Not just a person, but a presence. A mood. I don’t even like the study without him in it.
I climb off Vince’s lap. “If we have to stay, I’m going to help Elise with dinner.”
I’m a little unsure about leaving Adrian and Vince alone in a room with cameras with Vince in the mood he’s in, but I figure the vindictiveness will drain out of him when I’m not present to bring it out in him. Vince and Adrian used to be friends, but since Adrian killed Joey, that has very much not been the case.
God, family dinner is stressful without Mateo here to keep us all in line. The inmates are running the asylum tonight.
When I get to the kitchen, Elise looks up at me. I flash her a brief smile, but she doesn’t return it, she just goes back to food prep.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” I tell her, glancing around, wondering where I should start. “Vince’s fault. I guess it’s just us tonight.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs, not looking at me. “Meg wasn’t feeling well, apparently.”
“I hope everything’s okay,” I remark.
“She seemed to be feeling fine when I saw her.”
My gaze jumps to her and I move closer, wanting information. “You saw Meg?”
Nodding succinctly, she doesn’t offer anything else.
“Well… what happened? Mateo never cancels dinner.”
Elise shakes her head. “Nope. Not getting involved. Never does any good when I do, anyway. You’re both crazy bitches.”
My jaw drops open as Elise drops this assessment, but without another word she goes back to her task, like I’m not even here.
---
Dinner is weird tonight. Really weird. I unthinkingly put dried cranberries on Vince’s salad. Elise smirks at this for some reason, watching as I pick them all off.
My heart nearly stops as I lead Elise out into the dining room. She stops just short of running into me as I come to an abrupt halt in the doorway, staring at Mateo’s seat, no longer empty. My heart starts again, picking up the pace to make up for it, but only for a second.
Because I realize I do recognize those broad shoulders, but they’re not the right ones.
Vince is sitting in Mateo’s chair.
It makes my stomach hurt. It makes me angry.
He doesn’t belong there and Mateo wouldn’t like it.
Clutching the plate a little more angrily, I walk over with our salads and glare at him.
“That’s not your place.”
Vince smirks at me. He doesn’t fill the chair right—which I guess is absurd, because it’s only an ordinary dining room chair, but it’s Mateo’s and it feels excessively wrong for Vince to sit there. Especially knowing what I know. It feels like a threat.
“He’s not coming,” Vince tells me, enjoying the anger in my eyes. “It’s just a chair.”
“It’s not your chair.”
He doesn’t vocalize a response to that, but he smiles at me, a slow smile that makes me feel sick. That reminds me of him trying to have Mateo killed. Of my silence. Of the hatred he still feels so strongly for Mateo. I manage it by staying, but I’m only feeding that anger. That hatred. It’s enough for now that I stay, but will it always be? What if it isn’t enough someday? What do I do then?
“Please move,” I say, forcing myself to be a little more docile. “I want you to sit next to me.”
“Liar,” he says, but not with any fire. He’s amused by my attempt to handle him.
That makes me frown. Usually he doesn’t make me try very hard. It’s enough for him that I do; I don’t need to convince him.
“You’ve made your point, Vince,” Adrian says from the other end of the table. “Why don’t you go back to your seat?”
“Why don’t you fuck off, Adrian?” Vince replies.
My heart plummets. I don’t think I’m going to survive this dinner. I was semi-dreading it to begin with, but now Mateo isn’t even here to steep myself in. Now there’s nothing to distract from the unpleasantness.
“Come here, Mia. Give me a kiss.”
Swallowing down a lump in my throat, I lean in to give him a kiss. He takes hold of my hips, pulling me into his lap in Mateo’s chair, and this is so wrong. Not sexy wrong, but wrong wrong. Like, I’m breaking out in a cold sweat here, terrified that Mateo will surprise all of us by coming down here right now. By seeing this. By unleashing his anger on this whole fucking room. Not because Vince is kissing me, but because he’s in his chair, and I’m in his lap, and it doesn’t look like anyone here is being loyal to him.
Vince kisses me, but it’s not a nice kiss. It’s a punishing kiss, hard and lacking any tenderness. All ownership. I’m his consolation prize, and whether he enjoys it or not, he will damn well take me.
I miss Mateo so much.
It’s only the tiniest glimpse of a life without him, and it makes me miserable.
Vince makes it worse, because now I’m straddling him in Mateo’s chair and the bastard leans in and kisses my neck. It’s a fucking mockery. I don’t even know how he knows Mateo’s kisses my neck—maybe he doesn’t, maybe it’s more coincidence than calculation, but it makes me shudder all the same, and not with pleasure.
“How’s it feel, seeing me in his seat?” he asks lowly, in my ear.
“I’ve never been less attracted to you in my life,” I reply honestly.
Fisting a hand in my hair, he holds onto me and gives me another punishing kiss. “Too bad,” he says.
My eyes grow wide but Vince only smiles as a gun is suddenly pointed at his head. He lets go of my hair and I turn my head to look at Adrian, standing beside the chair with a blank look on his face.
“You wanna run down the list of people I’ve killed in fucking chairs, Vince? You wanna join that list?”
Honestly, I don’t even have it in me to feel worried right now. This is somehow the lowest point I’ve hit with Vince so far, but seeing him in Mateo’s place like this, feeling the way he’s making me feel right now, I don’t even have it in me to simply request Adrian not kill him.
It’s not like he will. Not here in the dining room, not right now. At least, I don’t think.
“Mia, get up,” Adrian commands, still with his gun at Vince’s temple.
I do. I don’t even hesitate a second, climbing off his lap and backing up by my own chair.
“We have two choices here,” Adrian says. “I’m honestly partial to the first one, because it saves me a lot of trouble and makes everyone happier, but I’m gonna let you choose. Option one: I shoot you. Mateo has to get the dining room redecorated. We all move on.” He lifts his eyebrows, nodding a little. “Got option one? Okay. Option two: you chill the fuck out. You go back to your own seat and we all get through this miserable goddamn dinner without killing each other. After it’s over, before the dishes have even been cleared, I walk you out to your car and you leave alone. Mia stays here tonight.” Flicking a glance at me, he says, “You can stay in Francesca’s room.”
I nod obediently. I don’t have the textbooks or notes I need for classes tomorrow, and it doesn’t seem like anyone at the house is especially fond of me tonight, but I feel better about staying here in Francesca’s old room than going home with Vince this time.
“Well, with options like that…” Vince trails off sarcastically, unafraid. I tend not to be afraid of Adrian either, but I didn’t watch him shoot my best friend in the head. I would think Vince would take the threat a little more seriously.
Maybe he does. He just doesn’t care.
Dread moves
through me. I feel like I’m losing control of him, and staying here tonight probably won’t help that. Maybe it would remind him that I could leave him, so he should keep his head on straight to keep me around. But maybe it only makes him more resentful. Typically if there’s a choice between anything else and growing more resentful, Vince chooses the latter option.
But he gets out of Mateo’s chair.
I don’t feel as much relief as I expect to feel. I’ve gone over Vince’s death so many times in my head, and it’s always Mateo who kills him. If Adrian did, and Mateo didn’t even know because he was upstairs and had no idea anything was happening down here, it wouldn’t be his fault.
It would still be mine though.
I’m still the reason he hates Mateo. I’m still an awful girlfriend. Sometimes I take it in my head to stop, to be better, but it never lasts. I can’t maintain it. My heart just isn’t in it, so it’s always a performance, and like all performances, it has to end.
I’m the reason Vince hates Mateo enough to kill him, and I don’t know how to fix that.
Apparently I only know how to make it worse.
Chapter Six
Meg
Lying in Mateo’s arms, naked and at least physically sated, I wait for the hard part to come. The painful part.
I don’t ask for it. I don’t want to. As long as his arms are wrapped around me, giving me the illusion of security, I’m going to hold onto it.
This is a good sign, after all.
Mateo never bails on his family dinners. He loves his family dinners. But he didn’t want to go without me, even though Mia would be there. He didn’t want to leave me upstairs all night, upset, and so he came upstairs with me. Without a single word between us, he swept me up in him, made me forget.
Well, not forget.
But I didn’t think about it for a little while.
Now I’m calmer. Sleepier. More relaxed. I’m not the emotional tornado I was when I stormed out of his study. That’s a far better starting place.
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” he murmurs.
I tilt my head back to look up at him, offering a hint of a smile. “I won’t.”
“We still have to talk,” he states.
“I know,” I reply, calmly. “You can start anytime. I think I’m ready.”
“I don’t want to upset you.”
“Will I be upset?” I ask, recapturing his gaze.
“I’m not sure anymore,” he says, a bit wryly. “I thought I knew. Turns out, no.”
“I promise to be calm and hear you out,” I tell him, since he probably needs to know I’m not going to have a psychotic break on him mid-talk.
Looking a little relieved, he says, “Good.”
But he releases me, like he doesn’t think he should be holding me while we have this discussion. I tug the sheet around me, making a little more space between us on the bed.
“I want to start by assuring you that this has nothing to do with you. With us. I love our life. I am very happy with you. I love you. None of that will change regardless of where we go from here.”
I wish I had some Tums. This conversation is already making my stomach hurt.
“But I also have feelings for Mia. Different feelings, but… feelings. I love you. And I love her.”
I might throw up, but I somehow manage to nod my understanding.
“And I want both of you.”
Holy shit.
“And I want it to be nice. I want a relationship. I don’t want an affair. I don’t want betrayal. I don’t want this to hurt anyone. I want both of you on board. I want your friendship to be exactly the way it has been. You both love each other, you both love me, and I love you both—I think that’s why this can work. We aren’t in a triangle, we’re in a circle. The love doesn’t hit a point and stop. We all love each other.”
My stomach weirdly doesn’t hurt anymore, but my head is spinning. “You want an open relationship?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not open. No one else will ever be involved. Just the three of us. I get something different from each of you, and I think long-term, this works better. Mia could never handle me on her own. You could, but I’d wear on you. I already have. Imagine ten more years. Twenty.”
I don’t know if I necessarily agree with that assessment. I was handling him just fine until last night. Even when he stopped hiding his attraction to Mia, I played it off and kept cool. Maybe that was my mistake. Or maybe my mistake was believing it wouldn’t happen in the first place. Silly me, thinking the man who asked me to marry him might only have eyes for me forever after.
“What if I say no?”
“Then it doesn’t happen,” he responds, easily.
“Does it not happen, or does it happen and you both just lie to me?”
“No,” he says firmly, shaking his head.
Of course, his denial doesn’t necessarily mean he’s telling the truth. But I’m going to choose to believe he is. It wouldn’t be the first time he denied his own desires for me. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s not completely unfathomable.
This is a lot to consider.
I am happy with Mateo—do I really think I’d be happier without him? I don’t even know for sure that’s an option for me anymore. He said the offer was open when I got shot, but how would I even extract myself from him now that we’re having a baby? I don’t want to, but if he had an affair with Mia?
The scarier question—don’t I want him to be happy? Yes, we’re happy together, but if having Mia, too, would make him happier… and it wouldn’t make me any less happy…
Even Mia—I want her to be happy, too. I know she isn’t happy with Vince. I know she wants Mateo.
What if we could both have him? What if we could all be happy? What if we could all be happy together?
“What if she says no?” I ask. “She’s more possessive than I am.”
Rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness of my question, he says, “Don’t worry about Mia. I can convince her to do anything. I can get Mia on board.”
“But even if she said yes, what makes you think she could handle it? Or that I could? Or that any of us could? I’ve certainly never had a relationship like the one you’re proposing.”
“Our relationship doesn’t have to change,” he tells me. “We’ll do whatever you’re comfortable with. I can keep my relationships with each of you separate, if that’s what makes everyone happy.”
“This is fucking crazy,” I tell him, shaking my head a little.
He smiles slightly, a little self-deprecating. “You knew what you were getting into.”
I actually didn’t. I don’t tell him that, because I don’t want to come off as less worldly, too easily duped, but no, I did not.
Maybe I should’ve.
He’s been dropping hints all along.
Sister wives.
My eyes widen and slide back to meet his gaze. “Has this been on your mind since the night you first found us in bed together?”
He shrugs.
Oh, God, I did this. I planted this idea in his head.
“You promise this isn’t going to turn into a harem thing?” I ask, suddenly worried. “If this happens, it’s only me and Mia?”
“Yes,” he says, with confidence. “Trust me, keeping two relationships going will be more than enough work. I don’t need three.”
“So, this isn’t a sex thing? You don’t just want to fuck Mia? We couldn’t have, like, an epic threesome and just purge this whole idea?”
Smirking, he says, “I’m not opposed to the threesome, but no.”
It’s a little weird, but I actually feel a pang of interest when he says that. “How would that work? The sex, I mean? Would we all share a bed? How could we possibly explain that to the kids? Would she just go away during reading stories to the girls? Would you fuck her in front of me? Me in front of her?”
“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. “I wanted you to weigh in on that aspect. Whatever you’re com
fortable with. It can be trial and error; we don’t have to figure it all out tonight.”
“You’re blowing my mind here, Morelli.”
He catches my wrist, bringing it to his mouth and placing a kiss there. It makes me a little weak, the soft brush of his lips against the sensitive skin.
God, I love this man. He may be a human disaster who keeps me on my toes, but I fucking love him.
And he’s right, prior to thinking she was about to steal him from me, I loved Mia. Now that I understand she’s not, the feeling is starting to filter back in. Maybe I could share him with her. Not if she acts like she is now and avoids me, but…
“She doesn’t know about this proposition then, right?”
“Not yet,” he verifies.
I take another couple of minutes to run through all of it in my head. It’s actually not as hard to envision as I expected. Mia and I have a nice set-up when we are together, like Sunday night dinners. We already flank Mateo at the table. She did have him first, and clearly she wasn’t completely honest with me when she assured me she had no feelings left for him, so I was free to be with him. It was either for me or for him—either way, she made a sacrifice for our sake. So she’s probably not going to try to shove me out and replace me. That’s not Mia’s way.
The thing I keep coming back to is the longevity of it. And Mia’s ability to share. I’m not as confident as he is that she’ll be able to swing it, even if she tries. And she will try, if he asks her to. I just don’t know if she’ll be able to, and he isn’t considering that. He isn’t factoring in her baser emotions, like it hasn’t occurred to him those could ever be problematic.
Goddamn logical monster.
Finally I say the other thing that bothers me about this: “I don’t want her to have your babies.”
It takes a few seconds, but then he nods. “Okay.”
“That’s unfair, because I know she wants one,” I point out.
“This is… I think you’re getting a little ahead of things here. Mia’s still young. If this doesn’t work out, she has plenty of time to find someone else who can give her babies.”
That makes me feel about a thousand pounds lighter.
