“Oh, fuck,” Essie muttered, then giggled. “Guess life will get even more interesting.”
* * * *
Essie waddled on back home after Sean and Max arrived home from work and she gave them a detailed report from notes she’d taken on her phone. Once the three of them were alone, the men changed clothes to get dinner ready.
Right now, Cali wasn’t even allowed to pack orders to ship from their store. She could answer e-mails, post to social media…and that was about it. It was something else the men had put their feet down about. They also took care of Baxter’s litter pan before they went to work—and Max went to go do it again before cooking dinner—because that was one thing Essie was forbidden to do, since she was pregnant. Just a precaution.
Cali chafed to resume her normal routine, whatever that was.
Independence.
Something she’d never take for granted again. She was lucky they’d been able to go in and flush the bacteria out of her finger, one and done. It was healing, but it could have been so much worse and required multiple procedures, or more involved surgery.
Their friends had shown such a great outpouring of support and help, too. She could have had several people around the clock with her, if she’d asked. But she didn’t want that. She was hard-pressed to accept Essie’s help, and the only reason she did that was her men—and Essie—forced her to, and Essie lived a short walking distance away.
About to be even shorter.
“Did you get the paint sorted out today?” Sean asked.
“Yeah. She’s all set. By next week they’ll be able to start moving in.”
“This is going to be fun,” Sean said. “Imagine the parties we can have!”
“You and Essie are on the same page. She wants to put a gate in the fence.”
The men exchanged a look. “That’s a great idea,” Max said. “Not like we’re ever moving.”
“Thank god,” Cali said. “I don’t want to move. I love this house.”
They finished prepping dinner and carried Cali’s out to the couch for her, where they were all going to eat.
They’d even cut her damn meat for her.
“So,” Max said, exchanging a look with Sean. “We have something to discuss with you.”
“What?”
Sean’s turn. “Max and I have made a decision, and we aren’t backing down, either.”
“What kind of decision?”
It was like table tennis. Service: Max. “You’re going to marry one of us.”
“What?”
“You heard us,” Sean said, a hard and Domly edge to his voice that she’d never heard from him before, not even in his most toppy of Top modes.
“This is not negotiable,” Max added. “Our insurance and paychecks are pretty much identical. We don’t care which one it is, because we’re both changing our last names. So either you pick, or if you can’t pick, we’ll pick. But it’s going to happen.”
She blinked, stunned, trying to process it. “You can’t be serious.”
“We are. We never got married before we met you because gay marriage wasn’t legal.”
“You aren’t gay,” she stupidly said before she even realized it was out of her mouth.
Both men gave her nearly identical “looks.”
Well, Sean’s was missing part of an eyebrow.
“You know what we mean,” Sean said. “This will happen.”
“How am I supposed to choose?”
“You don’t have to,” Max said. “We’re happy choosing.”
They waited for her to respond. She took a few moments trying to mentally chew that over. “What if I say no?”
They both arched an eyebrow at her.
Or, in Sean’s case, half an eyebrow.
“Do you really want to try us, sweetheart?” Max asked. “You said you would do anything to make this up to us.”
“But…but we have all the paperwork and everything.”
“Yeah,” Sean said, “but we ran the numbers. You get on either my insurance or his, and you’ll get far better insurance for way less money. Won’t help us with this incident, but anything in the future, yes.”
“And we’ll get a slight income tax break,” Max said.
“This isn’t fair. I want to marry both of you.”
“Yeah,” Sean said, “but we know we’re not going anywhere, we know you love both of us, and we’re done screwing around. We thought your insurance was better than it was. We didn’t realize you were putting your fucking life at risk with that shit. What would we have done if you’d died on us, huh?”
His eyes went too bright and he started blinking back tears, but he wasn’t done. “How do you think we felt racing to the ER when we got Essie’s call, thinking you were going to die before we could tell you we love you? That we might lose you?”
“It gutted us,” Max added, his voice suddenly choked. “So we are not doing this again. With our insurance, you have low deductibles, low copays, and free preventative care. If you’d had one of our insurance plans, this”—he pointed at her hand—“wouldn’t have fucking happened, because you would have gone to the doctor on Sunday. How long’s it been since you had a pap smear?”
“Couple of years,” she mumbled.
“Okay, see?”
Sean reached over and stroked her hair. “We love you. You are our life. With one goddamned piece of paper that won’t change how we feel about you or each other, we can make your life easier, and put our minds at ease.”
She couldn’t help tearing up herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“We know, sweetheart.” Max leaned in, his head resting against hers. “But we would be remiss in our jobs as the men who love you if we didn’t take this stand. So…pick an option. You choose, and we’ll give you a week, or we’ll pick, and tell you tomorrow.”
“I…I need time to pick an option.”
The men exchanged a glance. “Monday,” Max said. “You’re not going to stall us on this, sweetheart. On Monday, either you pick the option to choose, and you get a week to make the choice, or you ask us to pick, and we’ll already have it settled.”
“How do I know you two won’t kill each other trying to choose?”
“How do you know we haven’t already chosen?” Sean asked.
She stared at him. There was nothing joking or kidding in his question. He was serious Sean, the side of him she rarely saw, because they usually only needed him for income tax time or serious business decisions they had to make. “You have?”
“Not telling you,” Max said. “But after our time together, and what we’ve built together, any excuses you use to stall is just fear talking. You know we love you, and you know we love each other. It’s a piece of paper. That’s all.”
He nodded toward her left hand. “You’ve been wearing our ring for years now, just like we’re wearing them.” He held up his left hand. “We’ve been married. You call us your husbands and we call you our wife. We call each other husband.”
Sean held up his left hand, his matching band on his ring finger. “We made this choice already, sweetheart. It’s a done deal for us. Filing a piece of paper is nothing, seriously.”
“What if I don’t choose who you guys chose?”
Sean set his plate on the coffee table, turned to face her, and cupped her face in his hands. “Close your eyes. Keep them closed.”
She did.
He kissed her, long and slow, sweetly, tenderness and love in every bit of it.
He released her, but immediately, Max did the same thing.
“Who do you belong to?” Sean asked.
“Both of you,” she whispered.
“That’s right,” Max said. “To us. The way we belong to you, and each other. Eyes open.”
She did.
“Do you really think a piece of paper will change how we feel?”
The men closed the discussion so they could eat while their food was warm.
Bu
t later that night, as she lay snugly between them, she stared at the ceiling. It was just a piece of paper. They already had pieces of paper to define things like their wills, powers of attorney, all of that.
I can let them choose, then I know their feelings won’t be hurt if I choose the other one.
But how could I ever choose one of them over the other?
The answer, she knew, was that she couldn’t.
Peace slowly filtered in.
Letting go to them and letting them choose would make them happy.
She loved making them happy—they loved making her happy.
Wasn’t that the important thing?
Then that’s what I’ll do.
As she closed her eyes, certainty settled within her. Life was too short to claim a hill to die on just for an emotional argument that honestly didn’t matter.
She couldn’t legally marry both men.
But marrying one of them would make both men happy.
And, in the end, she’d be happy with both men.
She couldn’t ask for anything better than that.
THE END
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