by Amber Bardan
“No, I mean do you love him, love him?” A cold wave of fear moves through me. He hadn’t wanted another woman between them. “Is that why you arranged all this?”
“No, not like that. Gabby, I missed him so much. Penny was so possessive...” His frown goes so deep and grave. “I didn’t want to be an issue in his marriage, but I suffered every day I stayed away.” He taps his chest, his voice so thick. “Wanted my family. And then she was gone, and all he could talk about was you. So I moved back to Toronto and I just needed a minute. Just to stall things a minute.”
My hands travel into my hair and I squeeze from my scalp. Stall me and Abel from getting together. Hurt wraps around my heart.
He’d known how Abel felt, but I hadn’t. If I had maybe everything might be different right now. A deep and terrible grief contracts my lungs. Grief for the life I’d wanted and might’ve had with Abel, and grief for the imagined loss of this life with Dean. Antithetical and yet coexisting horrors.
I look at him and release my hair, but I’m frozen in place. Don’t know which way to move. Yes, I’d been in love with Abel, but when I fell for Dean, I did so honestly, without motive other than the belief that he was the one for me.
The one who wanted me enough to act on it. Who saw me thoroughly. Loved me completely, messed up as I might be.
“Then we met, and I never expected that the girl my brother wanted would be the woman I’ve always dreamed of.” He takes my shoulders. “I thought it’d be okay, that we’d make it work. Not that he’d run to Hunter Mountain because he couldn’t stand to see us together.”
Nausea rolls through me. I want to collapse at his feet. Nothing I’ve believed about us is true.
I pry myself away. “I don’t know what to think right now.”
He lets me go. “Think that I adore you.”
“I just don’t know,” I repeat.
And I don’t.
Don’t know what to believe.
Or feel.
Or think.
“Don’t run away.” His whisper is the softest sound I’ve ever heard from him. “Talk to me. Let us talk to you.”
But talking has never been a thing I do well. My lifetime’s quota has been met already in one day. I feel myself clamping tight.
Shutting down.
I never trusted anyone until these two men, and now...
My lips press together as I gulp down the pain. “I need some space.”
Just a little space.
Dean
“I can’t believe you let her leave.” Abel paces the rug, his whole body held tight, fists working open and closed.
I lower a log into the flames, then poke the embers. “She needs to process.”
Abel pauses. “Process, how can she process when she only has half the truth?”
I brush my hands on my pants and stand. “Do you trust me, Abe?”
He stares at me, hurt in his eyes.
There was a time when we trusted only each other in the world. In the last month we’d tested that trust like never before.
When I’d showed up here with Gabby’s latest scene in hand, finally forced to face the truth of how it has to be, my admissions earned me a punch to the eye.
“Remember, it took you awhile to come to terms with this.”
His expression slumps.
I’d taken the hit willingly from Abel, who I’d never seen possess a single aggressive inclination. He’s a carer not a fighter.
“You said we’d do the scene how she wanted and then...” He gulps, and shakes his head.
I grab his shoulder. Pain flares in my chest. I never intended to cause him more hurt. I’d known playing a scene would be difficult for him when he was so desperate for her in real life and he’d never done anything like this before.
“Wait, just wait, Abe.” I squeeze him tighter. “You’ll see.”
He nods. “I want it. I want this to work so much.”
I sigh. Fucking so do I.
There’d been a time when we’d shared everything. A perfect time that fit just right.
Family. After we’d both lost so much. He’d worked so hard to take care of me. Put up with the little shit of a teen I’d been, with nothing but compassion.
I let him go. “It will.”
We’d fucked up so many times. First Abel, allowing Penny to take over. Then me when I let myself be pushed out. Abe when he failed to stop me moving in on Gabby. Me for going through with it. Abel again when he moved away.
Not this time. The cycle will end as soon as we are all honest.
“I want to go get her.” His words are a deep groan.
She’d written the scene and we’d created the setup. But when he’d seen her as planned at the waterfall, naked, he’d just about lost his mind. Couldn’t wait. Wanted to fuck her in the forest. Demanded we break into her cabin and do the scene there.
“I told you last time, Abe, just wait, she’ll come to us.”
“It’s killing me.” His head bows. I feel his need like my own. This is how it should’ve always been.
The three of us.
My mind flashes to when Gabby straddled Abel, her gorgeous pink pussy stretched wide to accept him, about to take me in her ass.
Lust grips my guts.
He meets my gaze. His is heavy and smoky. He remembers too.
I exhale. The lust washes out, because it’s never been only about that. “It kills me too.”
The effort of carrying all our hope strikes me at once. I’m crushed by the weight of being the strong one, the one in charge, the wrong one, the guilty one, the one trying to fix it all.
He sees my pain. As he hasn’t since I was a boy, he offers me a hug. “It’ll be okay.”
It will. I know so, because last time we gave her only what she’d asked for, but when she comes back, we’ll all get what we need.
Chapter Ten
Pippa’s deep guttural bark pulls me out of smothering sleep. I roll over, and bury my face between the pillows of my cold empty bed. Bitch. Doesn’t she know the last thing I want to do is play?
Her bark snaps again.
I groan, roll to the edge and crack an eye. She sits, poised beside the bed, tail thumping the floorboards.
“Whatchya want, Pip?” I let my arm flop out and scratch the top of her head.
Her tail thumps louder, and she wiggles her chin up onto the bed near my belly.
“You’re not supposed to drool on my bed.” I curl into her a little, and stroke down her neck. Who am I kidding? She’d spent the night up here, drool face pressed into the small of my back while I cried myself to sleep in this cabin at the bottom of my husband’s and brother-in-law’s property.
I take a deep breath. She probably wants Dean. He’d be taking her for a walk right about this time of day if I’d left her with him. I’d do the same if my limbs weren’t drunk on sadness.
A night alone hasn’t cleared my head. I still don’t know what to think.
What does this mean for us? For any of us—the three of us?
She drops back and barks.
“Okay, Pip, okay, I’m getting up.” I drag my aching body out of bed. Tender places throb all over my skin. They’ve put brands on me. Their two hands leaving passion prints at my knees, hips and tits. Standing on my feet is the worst, because I remember them most between my legs—in the strain of my inner thighs and the sting in my cunt from the brutal way they took me.
Both of them.
I want it again. Again, and again. Every day. Bittersweet longing fills me up. I pull a jacket over my pajamas.
I’m a wicked woman. This fantasy should never have been explored. I don’t know how we go back. How we undo all this now that we all know everything.
I fol
low Pippa to the door and let her out.
Bright white catches my eye. I bend to collect the envelope from the mat. My name is scrawled across the front in perfectly penned blue script.
My heart gives a shiver of delight, a learned feeling my system can’t resist.
I stuff the envelope into my jacket pocket and collect some more wood from the shed for the fire, and stoke it back up to blazing.
Pippa curls up at my feet.
My heart moves to my throat as I tear the seal.
His words spread the page. Familiar instructions, just like when he’d been gone. When he’d read my last scene and abruptly left.
Go outside, walk the dog, eat something, his instructions demand—take care of yourself.
But something inside me has broken. The need to obey cracked. Because I know now what I’d been missing so deeply that I’d needed to fill it with something else like these commands.
I set the page into the fire and watch it burn.
There’s no going back.
Pippa’s ears twitch at the trees in front of me. She barks and pulls on her leash. I stare in the direction she strains in.
My pulse leaps.
I know they’re calling her with the whistle.
Summoning me.
I jerk her on the lead, pulling her back into line. This time I know what’s going on. My breath speeds up. This time I can resist.
Her bark blasts through the trees. The lead burns my hand. I can picture them both in the lodge their parents left to them.
Have they been arguing?
Over me. My eyes burn. I need to face them. Been working up to it all day.
But what do I say?
“Hey husband, do you actually really love me? If so, what are your feelings on polyamory?”
No, I’d never ask for something so selfish. I wipe my nose on a tissue. Still, he deserves to know what I’m feeling, even if I’ve never been brave enough before.
Pippa starts forward. The lead pulls tight, jerking my arm straight, and I look through the trees, then swallow and let go.
Pippa darts off, disappearing into the forest to her master.
I stare ahead, breath making clouds in front of my face, then run.
* * *
I ring the bell twice. My heart seems to beat in my esophagus, every pound pulsing my throat.
My knees bounce.
The door flies open.
Abel. His gaze tracks me from top to bottom. I swell with heat. I run a hand over my carelessly thrown-up ponytail.
Why didn’t I go to the cabin and change?
Brush my hair, maybe.
He takes a breath and releases it through his nose, then throws the door wide.
“Not talking to me again?” I follow him inside.
He glances over his massive shoulder. “I’ve been instructed not to.”
Dean told him not to talk to me? My chest throbs. This is bad.
So bad.
Abel’s obeying. Of course he is. Maybe Abel was the one who raised Dean, maybe Abel is the hulking one, but it’s Dean who’s in charge now.
I follow Abel to the kitchen.
My ribs tighten together. It’s impossible not to love them both. They’re yin and yang. Light and dark. Abel nurturing. Dean protective. All the ingredients that make up the family I never had. I pause at the kitchen entrance. Abel continues to the counter.
Dean glances up. He’s shaved his face clean and groomed his fair hair to perfection, even if it still could use a trim. He smiles. My heart flips at the sexy groove in his cheek. Without whiskers, I’m thrown as always by how such a forceful, masculine man can possess such boyish charm.
It’s deceptive.
That expression right there deceived me. Made me think he was a sweet guy. I step down into the kitchen. Maybe he is but he’s a filthy, dominant, sweet guy. And the most exciting thing about it is that nobody else could ever guess. Not with a smile like that.
“Hey,” I whisper as I approach the counter.
Dean looks me over. Not like Abel did, my husband’s looking for clues to how I am. Trying to take care of me like he always has. “Have you eaten?”
I swallow. If you count the remainder of the family-sized yogurt tub as a meal, yes. By his standards it’d be a no. And I haven’t had anything else aside from the few mouthfuls they fed me yesterday.
“I came to talk.”
Abel slows beside Dean, setting vegetables on a chopping board.
“Not until you’ve been fed.” He nods to the stool. “Sit your sweet ass down.”
He takes his filleting knife to a gray scaled fish. Abel works on chopping onion.
“Is there anything I can do?” I shuffle on the stool.
Abel slides across a colander of green beans and an empty pot. I settle back, snap the stalk off a bean and string it. Memory wiggles inside me. For a moment I feel like a little girl again. Like when I’d stayed with a nice older couple, and my foster mother would give me simple tasks like shelling peas, so I’d feel like part of things.
I set the bean in the pot and reach for another. That’s what Dean and Abel are doing now. But will they, like that nice older couple I’d thought were the ones, find me too difficult to keep?
I snap another bean. And I had been difficult then, a proper bed wetter, just as I am difficult now in less obvious ways.
“You okay, Gabs?” Abel’s low tone pulls me from the feeling.
Dean shoots him a silencing look. “She’s hungry.”
Abel sighs and goes back to the onion. He really has been banned from talking to me about things. He minces a garlic clove with only the broad side of a knife, making it into paste.
My mouth waters. Abel is a fucking excellent cook. Penny used to brag about that. He’d done all the cooking. Working as an architect from home, she’d come from work to meat that spent half a day getting so tender it’d fall apart when it touched your tongue. Friday nights at her place were more about the food than the cocktails promised.
My tongue feels thick again. I’d been so jealous of her life. Really, truly, envious. Not in spiteful ways but just in pure longing. I finish with the beans and stare at the empty colander.
Yet another reason I’ve never let Abel know how I feel. I’d wanted her life and then she died. As though my jealousy wished it on her. I pick out a bean and chew it raw. We’d never stop missing Penny. She might not have been perfect but she was special.
Vibrant.
The kind of person that makes a room feel extra quiet when she leaves it. I shoot a look at Abel. How can he be interested in me if he’s into sparkly girls like Penny?
He catches my eye, and gives me a wink. My belly flutters. Not a wink like Dean winks—mischievous—Abel has a reassuring wink that crinkles his eye and seems to say “everything is okay.”
A wink that reminds me of the secret conversations the two of us would have while Penny entertained during their dinner parties. Like when he’d told me how she didn’t want babies, but what did I think she’d say about fostering kids? My heart had clenched tight with affection, but I’d given the most genuine advice I could, hoping she wouldn’t refuse him. Even though I knew she would.
Just like the wink he’d shot me across the table when someone asked about my parents, and I’d only been able to answer dead, and not overdosed.
Abel who was the one I know full well was behind the invitations to every special occasion so I wouldn’t spend them alone.
Dean takes the fish to the stove.
Kind of like how Dean always insists on such over-the-top festivities. Occasions with all the trimmings. All the decoration. All the effort. Like he tries to make up for all those times I never had any of those things.
These two men.
A mist films my vision. My god, these two men. They’re so different, but the same where it counts. Good to the people they love. They taught each other that. I’m so lucky to have had either of them in my life for any length of time.
I just pray I don’t lose them both now.
Abel hands me a stack of plates.
I set the table.
Dean brings the food and Abel pours wine into my glass.
“Thanks.” I take a sip of Pinot Gris that gets my palate watering for the fish.
Dean loads my plate with twice as much as he knows I’ll eat.
I take a bite of fish, and hum in delight. It’s so fresh. How do these boys achieve this level of culinary mastery? “Is this from the river?”
“Abe got up early.” Dean fills his fork.
“They practically jumped in the bucket.” Abel gestures to the kitchen. “The freezer’s stocked.”
“Venison, too, caught just the other day. Was thinking of stewing some in red wine.” Dean swallows, and looks at Abel.
“Sure, but we’re still making sausage, eh?”
“Of-fucking-course we are.” Dean shoves more fish on his fork. “But we’re keeping it simple this time, Abe. Plain sausage, then we can use it how we want.”
Abel points his fork at Dean, a rare glimpse into the days when he was in charge. “Told you, I’m trying it with fucking sage.”
“Fine, man, fine.” Dean returns his gaze to his plate. “We’ll go hunting, bag another one, then you can do all the fancy shit you like with it.”
“Good.” Abel smirks. “Because I’ve got some sun-dried tomatoes...”
A smile floods my face as I watch their banter. It’s wonderful. They really are brothers, blood or not.
And this could be us.
This could be our life.
Every day. This could be us.
Abel returns his attention to me. “I was thinking of grilling some whole fish like that time on your birthday?” His fork makes a swirl. “With the Sichuan sauce, remember, and Penny teased how you couldn’t take it, but you had three helpings?”
I laugh. “Yeah, I remember. How could I forget the best meal I ever had?”
