“I have a bed,” he says, his words clipped. “Want to bend over it?”
I ignore the jab and wave at a cardboard box in the corner. “You haven’t unpacked.”
“I haven’t spent much time here. And it doesn’t really matter—this place might be temporary.”
I give him an incredulous stare. “Temporary? You already have one foot out of the city?”
“Can you blame me?”
“You can’t fucking leave.”
“Why the hell not?”
I’m yelling now. I can’t dial it back. “Because we need you.”
“You have each other.”
I storm towards him, stopping myself just before I slam into him. “Is this the wedding bullshit again?”
“It’s not bullshit. You have no idea what it was like to watch you longing for her. And her right back at you. You have no idea what was going through my mind as I realized I was just a…means to an end.”
Oh, he’s got it so fucking wrong. I bump up against his chest. “Is that so? Is that what was going through your mind at a wedding between two people who love each other? That I must be using you?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“That’s what I hear.” I lick my lips. “What the hell do you think was going through my mind at the wedding?”
He shoves back against my chest. “I don’t need to guess. It was written all over your face. You love Beth.”
“Yeah. With my whole heart. But that doesn’t crowd you out. I love you, too.”
Hugh shakes his head. “It’s not the same.”
I nod. “No, you’re right. It’s not exactly the same. You complete me in different ways.”
“We can’t share you.”
“You don’t…it’s not like that.” I rub my hand against my chest. Why does this fucking hurt so much? This is supposed to be the happy, easy part. I’d decided to come and confess just how much I want him, how much we want him. But now the conversation's twisted.
His jaw flexes and his eyes glint. Hard and unyielding. “A lot has changed in the last ten years. I’ve changed. I’m more experienced now, but smarter, too. And I know what I want.” He shakes his head. “And what I don’t want.”
No. “Don’t try and pretend you don’t want us.”
“Maybe you have no clue what I want. Or what I wanted back then.”
“You were never shy about making that known.”
“I wanted you.”
I know what he means and it makes me shake. “You wanted—” Sex. An affair. Excitement.
Not me without all of that.
Except that’s exactly what he means.
He gives me a wounded look. “I wanted you. And you left me.”
My mouth is dry and my heart is pounding so fast it might just explode. “I’m not leaving you now. I’m asking you to come back. I’m asking you to give me a chance.”
“I did. I gave you a chance.”
He can’t dig his heels in like this. It’s not fair. “Ten years ago? Fuck you. I didn’t know who I was then. And we didn’t have Beth.”
“Does she need to be a part of us, for there to be an us?”
I stare at him, dumbstruck. I don’t know how to answer that. “Do you not want…” No, I can’t finish that thought.
His face twists. “Of course I do. But you still can’t imagine just being with me. Even if it’s only hypothetical.”
It’s not until he stalks out, slamming the door behind him, that I realize I never got a chance to tell him that I was thinking the same shit as he was during Gavin’s wedding ceremony.
Fuck.
No, this isn’t how this ends. And I’m sure as shit not waiting for him in this sad, depressing shell of an apartment. I grab my keys and head after him.
48
Hugh
I don’t know where I’m going. I get as far as the alley behind my building before the adrenaline crash slams into me and I stop.
I just…stop.
Footsteps race up behind me, then slow.
“Don’t run away,” Lachlan says, his voice cracking.
I can’t turn around.
But I’m not running.
“I love you.”
I’m really not running now. Stupid hope. I straighten my back.
“Talk to me.” He’s close now. Almost right behind me. “Tell me what’s going through your head. Help me understand what’s got you scared.”
“I’m not scared.” It’s a knee-jerk lie that takes me right back to high school.
I pace into the alley, then turn around.
He spreads his arms wide, his hands turned up. “What can I say?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. I’m fucked up. There. That’s the truth of it. Happy now? I’m so broken inside it doesn’t matter what you say, because the words get garbled in my head. There will always be a piece of me that is primed for flight.”
“Sure, okay. So now that we know that, we can cope.” His lips twist into an almost-smile. “Beth can practice her rope skills and tie you down.”
“It’s not funny. I…Something inside me…”
“You’re a hard-ass man now, for a very good reason. I should have seen it sooner.” He exhales roughly, then turns and leans his back against the brick wall behind him.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable.”
“In an alley.”
He looks around, lazily, like this is no big deal. “This is where you led me. Next time, freak out in the direction of a park.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“Sure there will. And maybe I’ll lose my cool sometime, and Beth might snap at us for getting food on the couch. “
“What are you doing?”
“You already asked me that.” His voice is smooth, and I suddenly realize what’s going on.
He’s interrogating me. Good cop. If I don’t give him the information he wants, he’ll try the bad cop. Get in my face. Get loud.
I laugh, because what the fuck else can I do?
And the twisted thing is, I like this good cop, bad cop routine. It gets under my skin, gets me going.
It’s hot.
I’m so fucked up.
“I can’t tell you that there would be an us without Beth,” he says quietly. “Because I refuse to consider that possibility. But I can tell you that not once in the last week did we consider the possibility that we—” He gestures in the general direction of wherever he thinks Beth is. “Could be an us without you. This whole time, we’ve been giving you space, not that it looks like you’ve used that wisely to do any thinking.”
I can’t think. I’m stuck in survival mode. I didn’t even see it coming.
“Beth told me about Sunday afternoon.” He gives me a hard look. “That was a dick move.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s fine, by the way. But I think you made her cry again, and I told you not to do that.”
Fuck. “Is she pissed at me?”
“What do you think?”
There are a lot of ways I can justify what I did. She invited me over, I made sure it was good for her. But the truth is, she deserved better. “She ought to be.”
“She should cane your ass. But that doesn’t seem to be in her nature. She’s been extraordinarily understanding, in fact. She seems to be under the impression you have a deep-seated fear of rejection.”
I jerk as if he’d just poked me with a live wire.
He grimaces. “So I need to apologize for my part in that.” He steps away from the wall and moves towards me, slow and steady. “I pushed you away ten years ago. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I wanted you, too. In every way. I loved you, then, and I love you now. I never stopped loving you, and I’m so fucking sorry I hid that from you.”
It’s everything I’ve secretly wanted to hear. My mouth runs dry. If I let my guard down here, if I let him in, I’m never going to be able to let him go. “It took a long time to ge
t over you.”
“For me, too. Get over you. I’m not sure I ever did.”
“I love Beth, too.”
He smiles. “I know. Come on. She’s waiting for us.”
My heart stutters in my chest. “Where?”
“Home.”
49
Beth
I’m three trays of cookies into stress baking when Lachlan texts that he’s bringing Hugh back to his place.
Lachlan: Got him to listen. Told him I love him. Bringing him home.
The relief that washes over me is strong enough to buckle my knees. Heart thumping, I lean against the granite countertop and take a deep breath.
When Lachlan told me he was going to see Hugh, I packed enough clothes to stay here for a week. If it worked, I wouldn’t want to be away from them. And if it didn’t, I knew we’d need to cling to each other to deal.
Lachlan’s key in the front door jump starts my anxiety again. Before I can coordinate moving my feet, Hugh’s in the kitchen doorway, then across the room.
I sink into his embrace. His lips brush my cheek, my temple, then press into my hair as I squeeze him tight.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until he’s easing me up onto the counter and wiping my face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I shake my head. “We didn’t notice you pulling away.”
“I’ve learned to hide my feelings pretty well.” He grimaces, and I touch his face. He’s so tough. Too tough.
“Do you want a cookie?” I ask, my voice catching.
He nods roughly and I pull him close again, wrapping my arms around his neck this time.
“I made peanut butter chocolate chip, and regular chocolate chip, and I’ve got a batch of oatmeal raisin if you want to pretend to be healthy.”
“Gimme a chocolate one.”
Lachlan’s beside us, cookies on a small plate, before I can even move. Hugh takes one, and I shift my hug to Lachlan.
He runs his hand up and down my back soothingly. “May I have a cookie as well?” he teases.
I laugh. “Maybe we should make some coffee to have with them instead of just gobbling them here at the counter.”
Hugh winks at me mid-bite. “Watch out for crumbs.”
I swipe the rest of his cookie and shove it in my mouth.
He gasps and I raise one eyebrow in challenge. What are you going to do about that?
Lifting his hand slowly, he reaches up and brushes the corner of my mouth with the pad of his thumb. “Crumbs,” he whispers, and leans in.
Then he licks me.
A big, wet, cheeky swipe of his tongue on my face.
I shove him in the chest, and he doesn’t move an inch. By now I’m laughing so hard my sides hurt, and he’s leaning in to do it again.
“Uncle, uncle!” I cry.
“Uncle by marriage and we meet the day after your eighteenth birthday. The marriage is a sham and when I see you it’s love at first sight?”
“Gross,” I whisper, but I let him kiss me anyway. I’ve missed his dirty ways.
“Or are you begging for mercy?” he asks silkily. “I’m generally not a fan, but I’d make an exception for you.”
He’s such a liar. A soft-hearted, sensitive soul trapped in an alpha male’s body.
And as much as I can’t wait to get dirty and teasing and raunchy with him…I want to find out more about that secret side of Hugh he managed to keep hidden from us while distracting us with sex.
“I’m calling a timeout on welcome back sex,” I say with a sigh, patting his delightfully hard chest through his shirt. “Just a short one. So we can have milk and cookies and talk.”
He rolls his head to the side and gives Lachlan a pained look. “She wants to talk.”
Lachlan gives me an indulgent smile as he moves to the coffee maker and pulls out three mugs from the cupboard. “She’s smart that way.”
I scoot off the counter and plate up some of the cookies, and put the rest in a resealable container for later.
Hugh watches me work for a minute or two, then crosses his arms and shrugs his shoulders. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know exactly. I guess I want to know why you ran, and what we can do to ensure you won’t feel pushed to that again in the future.”
He groans. “Because I’m an idiot? And I won’t?”
Not good enough. “You aren’t, and you might. Any of us could get cold feet about this relationship. Regular relationships fail all the time for stupid reasons, and they don’t have the pressure of not being able to…talk to their friends, for example.”
He frowns at me. “You could talk to your friends about us. We trust your friends. Don’t we? Do you need better friends?”
“I’m not looking to confide in anyone about you guys, so that’s not really the point. I’m just saying, two hot heads and a bossy woman…we’re liable to run into conflict again. I want us to agree that we talk stuff out, even if it’s uncomfortable.”
More talking. I’m not surprised that suggestion is met with uncomfortable silence—from both of them.
I turn my attention to Lachlan, and he shrugs. “You’re not wrong. But maybe Hugh needed some time to process, too? It’s all worked out in the end, hasn’t it?”
I want to point out that’s incredibly naive, but I don’t know that Lachlan’s wrong. I think he is, but time will tell.
He hands me a cup of coffee and gives me a soft kiss. “We’ll figure it out. What we know for sure is that we’re all in this, right? We’re a…couple. A triad. We are in a relationship, the three of us.”
Right. “We love each other,” I say, turning to Hugh.
The look on his face is everything. Happiness and disbelief and eagerness all rolled up together. “I’m yours,” he says, his voice full of desire. “Completely.”
I take a cookie and hold it out. “Okay. Talking part of the evening is now concluded. Come here and be mine.”
50
Hugh
It’s back to regular hockey with the PM on the Sunday after Canada Day, and for the first time, I’m invited along. They haven’t played in over a month due to the aftermath of the tornado and the prime minister’s wedding.
The PM’s not-so-secret pick-up team has become a thing of national pride. And when I joined the security detail, Lachlan made it clear without saying a word that it was a closed hockey team, no new members needed.
Especially not someone who had a hard time not causing trouble.
But he’s finally come around to loving my brand of trouble, and I’ve promised to be on my best behaviour.
“You still play in goal?” he asks as I toss my hockey bag in the back of his vehicle.
“That a problem?”
“You might need to play up today.” His mouth turns up at the corners, an unconscious half-smile. “But we could use a back-up goalie.”
“Who’s your regular?”
“My former partner.” His eyes twinkle as I rear back in jealousy. “Work partner. Have you met Corinne Smith yet? She’s our goalie.”
“Maybe. She works at RCMP HQ?”
“Yeah.”
“No worries. I’m flexible.” I wink. “As you know.”
We get in the car, and he turns on the radio, but after getting on the highway, he turns it off again. “You’ll understand why I didn’t invite you sooner once you meet the rest of the team. Actually, I owe you an apology for not filling you in sooner.”
“About what?”
He gives me a rueful, goofy look. “The entire team is kinky. It’s a long story, but Gavin needed a safe space when he met Ellie. He asked me to pull together a hockey game or two. I couldn’t ask him if he needed more than an actual game, so I put together a safe community for him. Other than the one time I was with him and Ellie, they haven’t yet utilized it, but…”
“You created a private kink space for the PM. Just in case he’d need it.”
He shrugs. “Yeah.”
/> “How many favours did that take?”
“Not many. I needed to tap some professional guys to get enough players on the team.”
“Like Tate Nilsson.”
Lachlan laughs. “Exactly.”
“Who else knows?”
“It’s a pretty tight secret. The guy you replaced, Tim, he knew, because he swapped off with me for being Gavin’s point man during the whole Ellie thing. When Tim left to work at the National Childhood Exploitation Coordination Centre, it wasn’t necessary to loop anyone else in immediately because 24 Sussex is pretty locked down and officially vanilla these days.”
“Unofficially?”
“There might be a time when the PM and his wife-to-be want to play discreetly. And it’ll be our job to protect their right to do that.”
“Understood.”
“I’d have told you eventually.”
I know he would have. But we’ve arrived at the rink, so we don’t need to re-hash the hostility of my return to his life and how that sent him into a tailspin.
What matters is he pulled up, hard, and now we’re here. In more ways than one.
I haven’t played since leaving Toronto and it feels like it.
It’s not like I’m out of shape. I still managed to work out regularly in that time, but my stick handling isn’t as elegant as I’d like to believe it usually is.
Lachlan, on the other hand, doesn’t look like he’s skipped a game ever.
I spend a little too long watching his sexy legs glide down the ice and I miss an easy pass.
Fortunately, Tate manages to snag the puck and race toward the other team’s goal. The goalie blocks the shot, but Gavin scores on the rebound.
My error didn’t hurt us, but I spend the rest of the game trying to keep my eye on the puck instead of my lover. Mostly, I succeed.
At the end of the game, I skate up to Lachlan and jerk my head towards the stands where Ellie and Violet are packing up ready to leave. “Maybe Beth should come to the next game,” I tell him.
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