by Layla Reyne
“I already saw him at the cemetery.” She laid a hand on Trevor’s forearm, then slid it down, curling her fingers over Trevor’s white-knuckled fist. The tension in his frame eased a measure under her touch, but his expression remained furious.
Sean regretted his decisions. So many of them. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
“You loved them too,” Charlie said, her accent the same as Trevor’s. “And you’re not the one responsible for today’s damage,” she added, letting him off the hook for today’s pain at least. “And fuck flowers. If you’re here to pay your respects, you better have brought a bottle of scotch. The stronger the better. I don’t want to feel anything.”
She turned on her heel and strolled out of sight, disappearing around the corner of the house. Trevor held Sean’s gaze as if he were trying to determine how much more pain Sean was likely to cause Charlie.
Sean raised his hands, palms out. “It’s your call, Trev.”
“Not really.” He pushed off the pillar and turned to follow Charlie. Then stopped and glared over his shoulder. “Though let me be clear. If you hurt her and are dumb enough to come back here again, I won’t be so deferential.” Meaning he’d beat the shit out of him, like he wanted to do now, just as Sean suspected. Trevor didn’t wait for his response. He continued in the direction Charlie had left, his flip-flops smacking the deck, the tread achingly familiar.
Sean was as powerless to resist the pull now as he had been when they’d first been roommates on campus at HU. As he still was in his dreams. He circled to the back of the car, popped the trunk, and grabbed the bottle of Ardbeg from where he’d wrapped it in his discarded tie and suit coat. Bottle under his arm, he climbed the exterior stairs that ran up the side of the house, his fingers coasting along the wide, flat railing, over the dates and initials carved into the weathered wood. Memorials of important occasions in the lives of its inhabitants.
Alice and Mitch’s wedding date.
Charlie and Cal’s birth date, then five years later, Annie’s.
High school graduation dates.
The date, their junior year at HU, when he, Cal, and Trevor had won the College World Series.
Two steps from the top, Sean’s gait faltered at the last carving, one he’d never laid eyes on before.
The date he, Charlie, and Cal had graduated from the police academy.
The same day he’d proposed to Charlie and Trevor.
The Saturday that had started amazing then turned awful with one phone call and one wrong decision that had altered the course of his life, that had put him on a path away from his heart.
He’d never seen the carved initials and date because he hadn’t come home that night or any night since. He’d left Charlie and Trevor waiting in a house packed with friends and family for a celebration that was never to be. That had been the worst day of his life. Before today. Standing on the outskirts of the cemetery crowd, fighting everything in him that screamed to go to Charlie and Trevor, had been a special kind of hell. Not one he’d ever experienced.
He’d been a fool to throw them away. Honor and obligation, duty and loyalty, fear and worry had gotten all mixed up in his twentysomething head. He’d been lucky to be a part of their lives at all, lucky to somehow fit with them. That sort of luck—that sort of love—came along once in a lifetime, maybe twice if you were supremely lucky. For him, nothing had come close in the decade since.
The clink of glasses inside filtered through an open window and jolted Sean out of his memories and up the final steps. Turning the corner and walking along the back deck, he shifted his gaze away from the too-painful sight of moving boxes inside to the expanse of sand dunes and beach just beyond the house. The ocean was calm, its waves breaking gently against the shore, the setting sun giving way to the rising moon’s reflection on the rippling water.
Roughly bumping his side, Trevor yanked the bottle from under his arm and hopped up on the wide deck rail. He leaned back against the corner pillar and examined the label. “You always did like the peaty stuff.”
“They were out of Blue,” he replied, referring to Trevor’s favorite.
“Well,” Charlie drawled as she appeared at the door, “seeing as that’s the only alcohol in the house, beggars can’t be choosers.”
She set three glasses on the round metal table between two rockers and snagged the bottle from Trevor. She filled the glasses, handed them their drinks, then claimed the chair closest to Trevor, rocking back and propping her feet on the railing near his thigh. Sensing she needed the reprieve and that Trevor would deck him if he interrupted it, Sean followed her lead, toeing off his socks and shoes, settling in the other rocker, and lifting his bare feet to the railing. He stared out at the ocean and sipped his drink, drowning under the weight of the silent, mounting tension among them. There were things that needed to be said, but more than anything, he just wanted to hear their voices again, to be part of a conversation with the two people who’d mattered most to him at one time. That still did.
So, when Charlie dropped her feet and angled to refill her glass, Sean moved, catching her wrist halfway to the bottle. Trevor shifted, and Sean lifted a hand, wordlessly pleading for the chance to say his piece. Trevor held his gaze a long, assessing moment, then resumed his position against the pillar. A single deep breath later, Sean removed the empty tumbler from Charlie’s grasp and set it on the table next to his.
“I need to—”
His long overdue apology was cut short by the last thing he expected Charlie to say. “I caused today’s damage. They’re dead because of me.”
Surprised, Sean tightened his fingers around her wrist. He brought to mind the details of the police report, plus the details Officer Sylvan had shared, and he couldn’t recall a single scrap of evidence that suggested Charlie was involved with or at fault in Mitch’s and Cal’s deaths. “How can that be?”
Given his sigh and pinched expression, Trevor agreed with Sean. “Charlie, we’ve been through this.”
She glanced away from both of them but not before Sean saw the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “Week before the raid, family dinner at Dad’s house. I was giving him shit for becoming a desk jockey in his old age.”
Trevor rotated toward them, both legs dangling off the rail. “Charlie, you can’t—”
“He was in dispatch when the call came in—from me—requesting backup. Dad took it, Cal was covering him, neither came back alive.” She shrugged, her voice barely above a whisper. “My fault.”
“You”—Sean grasped her hands—“did not tip off Hector Salazar that the cops were on their way. You did not put automatic weapons into his drug dealers’ hands. You did not fire Kevlar-piercing bullets into Cal’s and Mitch’s vests.”
Her eyes widened. “You get all that from your FBI contacts?”
And so did his. “You knew?”
“Of course we knew,” Trevor said as he hopped off the railing. His next words were for Charlie, though. “And Sean is right. This isn’t your fault.”
The detective remained focused on Sean. “Were you keeping tabs on me?” Her gaze flicked to Trevor. “On us?” She withdrew her hands and scooted back, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms defensively around her shins. “Is that how you knew about Dad and Cal?”
“I check on both of you from time to time,” he admitted. Moments of weakness overcame him occasionally, but being an ocean away had kept him from acting on them. “But in this case, Annie called me.”
Charlie’s tears instantly returned, and she angled her face away, angrily swiping at the wetness on her cheeks. “Annie was there that night. She heard what I said to Dad. She blames me. Aside from the funeral today, she won’t let me near her. She’s inconsolable, and all I want to do is help, to grieve with my sister, but I just make it worse. I had to leave her at Dad’s house with Jaylen.”
She buried her face in her knees, and Sean glanced at Trevor standing beside her chair. “Jaylen?”
“Jayl
en Sims. Another officer with the department,” he answered. “They’ve been dating a few months, under the radar until today.”
Charlie lifted her tear-streaked face. “He’s the—” Her voice cracked. “He’s the only one who’s been able to calm her while we…”
While she and Abel made sure everyone responsible for Mitch’s and Cal’s deaths was behind bars. Sean slipped out of his chair and knelt in front of Charlie. He clasped her flailing hand in his and gently squeezed. “Charlotte, you are not to blame for this.”
Trevor steadied her chair. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her.” His smirk was small and sad. “She’s not much better at listening than Annie.”
Charlie swatted at him with her free hand, and Trevor caught it, holding tight. Sean continued to hold the other as she struggled to choke down a sob, but otherwise she made no reply, keeping her gaze focused on the ocean’s inky black water. They sat like that for several long minutes, the three of them connected yet never further apart.
Trying to feel nothing and feeling everything.
“When do you leave?” Charlie asked after an eternity.
“Tomorrow.” Sean peeked around Charlie and Trevor at the boxes inside the house. “When’s the big move?”
“Later this summer,” she answered. “Washington.”
Sean’s heart skipped a beat, a flame of hope igniting. “DC?”
“Georgetown, technically,” Trevor said, his smile a little truer, a little wider. “I got a tenured professorship in the English department there.”
“I thought you were tenure-track at HU?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but Charlie beat him to it. “We needed a change.”
Sean’s heart skipped another few beats, the flame burning brighter. “You’re moving there together?”
“I only decided to go last week,” she said. “After…”
Beside her, Trevor’s smile dimmed, and Sean’s hope darkened with it. They were moving to DC as friends, then, nothing more. The two of them fleeing Hanover. Fleeing home. Did they have any idea they were running toward him? Sean didn’t think so, and now didn’t seem the time to tell them. “That the reason you’re selling the house?” he asked instead.
Twin tears raced down her face, and Sean’s heart more than skipped, fearing the worst. It only began to beat again when she mumbled, “Yes.”
He reached out and brushed away her tears. “You sure you want to do that?”
She nuzzled his palm, her warm breath caressing his skin and igniting a flame of need instead. Her next words doused it, and ice replaced the warmth. “I need to move on.”
“We both do,” Trevor added.
A freezer-sharp burn seared Sean’s soul and his own eyes filled with tears. When he was able to speak again, he asked the one question that would put his mind, if not his heart, at ease. “You’ll be there for each other?”
Charlie opened her eyes and stared directly into his. “Always.”
Trevor echoed the response, his unspoken unlike you loud enough for Sean to hear over the waves of sorrow crashing around inside him, louder even than the tide lapping at the shore. They didn’t need him any longer, no matter how much he would always need them. He wouldn’t bother them in DC.
“Good.” He gave Charlie’s cheek a final swipe, then grabbed his socks and shoes and stood. Charlie rose with him, and Trevor shifted to stand beside her. Stepping close, Sean gave in to the urge to trail his fingers down Trevor’s arm, needing to touch him too, one last time. Goose bumps rose along the tan skin, and Trevor’s shiver rolled through Sean too.
Fighting the lump in his throat, Sean said the words the two most important people to have ever entered his world needed to hear… to move on. “I’m sorry. More than you’ll ever know, but if the two of you are happy or on your way to being happy, then I’m happy too. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for both of you.”
Trevor’s body trembled, Charlie’s breath hitched, and the salty smell of tears, from one or both of them, tickled Sean’s nose. Enticed him to stay. But he didn’t dare linger. If he did, he’d surely fall to his knees and confess all his sins for another shot at a future with them. A future that was the opposite of moving on. So instead, he swiftly turned and headed for the stairs.
He made it as far as the corner before his world imploded.
“Sean!” Charlie called at the same time Trevor shouted, “Wait!”
All they had to do was call his name, ask him to stay, and Sean was undone.
His socks and shoes hit the deck and he erased the distance between them. At Trevor’s nudge, Charlie lunged forward first, and Sean wound an arm around her waist, plunged a hand into her hair, and hauled her body close, hungrily reclaiming her mouth. It was all better than he remembered—the smokiness of the scotch mixed with the taste that was uniquely Charlie, the weight of her thick, silky hair gliding through his fingers, the way her warm, soft body fit perfectly against his.
The way the other hot, hard body fit perfectly along his backside. Trevor’s hands landed on his hips, the grip bruising in its intensity, all of that earlier anger channeled into his grip, but the flash of pain was nothing compared to the spike of pleasure as Trevor notched his erection against Sean’s ass, yanked aside his collar, and licked a stripe up his neck. The lust that had always sizzled between them winning out and fueling the romantic.
Deprived hands roaming, Sean aimed one south, squeezing Charlie’s firm, denim-clad ass and pressing her hips against his. The other he reached behind him, weaving his fingers into Trevor’s hair, holding Trevor’s mouth to the crook of his neck, and moaning as Trevor kissed and nipped the tendon there. Sean rocked his hips, and Charlie and Trevor countered, friction from both sides ratcheting his need higher. And higher still when Trevor kissed a path up his neck and over his jaw. He lured Sean’s mouth from Charlie’s and claimed a kiss with the same intense hunger that had always threatened to drown Sean.
He lost himself in rough kisses, in Charlie’s featherlight touch as she unbuttoned his shirt and ran her hands over his chest, in the tangle of arms and legs as they wound around and thrust against each other. Fuck, he wanted them, had always wanted them, more than any others who’d ever shot him an interested look. He was back where he belonged, between the only two people he’d ever loved. But he was leaving tomorrow, and they were moving on, together but separate, each hoping to find a new path that would make them happy. He didn’t want to cause them more pain. Didn’t want to damage the fragile hope they were hanging on to. This wasn’t moving on.
Tearing his mouth from Trevor’s, Sean forestalled Charlie’s advance with a hand to her shoulder and eased Trevor back with the fingers still in his hair. He gulped for air and struggled for control. “What are we doing?”
Charlie stared at him, a stormy mix of lust and despair churning in her bottomless black eyes. “Saying goodbye.”
A single tear escaped her eye and raced down her cheek, only to be intercepted by Trevor’s thumb as he gently held her face. There was a second of hesitation, two deer caught in the headlights of the unexpected, and then they lunged, mouths colliding, their bodies sighing and melting into each other.
Sean’s stomach clenched with the undeniable confirmation that his hope for them had been lost until that moment. That it would be lost again—forever—after this night was over. They hadn’t been together after he’d left, and they wouldn’t be together again after tonight. But if Sean could give them this goodbye, this resolution they all needed, then at least maybe he would’ve done something right by them. Would’ve healed a little of the pain he’d inflicted.
He circled behind Trevor, used his nose to push aside his hair, and kissed his nape. He wrapped an arm around his front, a hand slicing between him and Charlie, and snuck his fingers under the hem of Trevor’s tee. He splayed a hand against his tight abs, and Trevor shivered in his arms enough to draw back from the kiss with Charlie.
Sean met her gaze over Trevor’s shoulder and nod
ded. She shifted her attention to Trevor, and hand in his, tugged him forward. With her hair tousled, her pale skin flushed, and her full lips swollen, she was as good as any siren from the sea. There was no denying her; there never had been. Trevor followed her into the house, Sean on his heels, unable to tear his hands from Trevor’s body, stripping Trevor to nothing as they stumbled after the woman they loved.
In the bedroom, the tables were turned. Trevor claimed Sean’s mouth once more and Charlie stripped him from behind. She dragged his dress shirt down and off his arms, unbuckled his belt, and shoved his pants and boxers to the floor. Sean kicked them aside and used the momentary distance to draw Charlie back around to his front. He grabbed the hem of her tank and yanked it up and off, exposing smooth skin and more black lace. Mouth to her neck, he groaned when he discovered her skin still smelled and tasted of cocoa butter and the salty air that coated everything here. Pure heaven, pure Charlie.
He kissed the swells of her breasts and traced the bralette’s cups with his tongue, dipping inside each to swipe across her stiff nipples while Trevor worked the clasp behind her back. Once undone, she freed her arms from the straps and the delicate fabric fluttered to the floor. Trevor slipped his arms around her waist, holding her gently, as Sean lifted one perfect breast to his mouth. He sucked deep, causing her to moan, to rock her hips back into Trevor’s and draw a deep, delicious rumble from him. Smiling, Sean took her other breast in his hand and gave it equal attention, his fingers rolling and tugging, just the way he remembered she liked it.
Her hands fisted in his hair, holding him to her. “More. Fuck, more.”
He continued to worship her breasts as Trevor sank a hand inside her shorts. She thrust into the touch, arching her back and offering more to Sean as well. He drank of her, of them, of their moans and thrusts until he was drunk. Unable to hold himself up, he sank to his knees, taking her shorts and underwear with him. With her legs spread, Sean buried his nose in the patch of dark hair between her thighs. He flicked out his tongue, licking a path from her opening to where Trevor was torturing her clit. Then he took Trevor’s fingers into his mouth and sucked hard, the taste of them both on his tongue almost enough to make Sean blow.