Irrefutable

by K. A. Berg

  But then the words come back, and my body goes rigid. I offered Alex a threesome and he turned it down. I gave my boyfriend permission to be with another woman and he still said no. Holy shit! He kind of even seemed angry. God, his words.

  There’s only one pussy I want to touch.

  How many guys would turn down a threesome? Not many I can think of. Alex is truly one of the best guys ever. And he loves me. Can I still really deny it…?

  “I’m guessing this stiffness means you’re remembering last night?” Alex’s voice breaks through my revelation.

  My brain wants to continue with its current thought process while my mouth wants to answer Alex. Both win when the words fly past my lips. “I love you.”

  Holy hell! I’ve never said those words out loud to Alex before. Ever. It’s not that I want to take them back, but I would’ve liked a little more time to make nice with them before they left my mouth.

  I do love Alex. Life without him is void and depressing. He lights up a part of me I didn’t even know existed. It exists only for him. With him. He’s been by my side through thick and thin. Never backed down. Never left unless I pushed him. Even with all the things I’ve done to him, he’s still here. With me. Only me.

  The bed jostles as Alex slides out from under me and turns on his side to face me. His hands reach and cradle my head. “Did you mean that?”

  His eyes shift back and forth, reading my eyes for my reaction. A smile overtakes my face and a few tears well in my eyes. The look on Alex’s face in this moment makes my heart swell. My chest looks like the scene from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, exploding from my heart growing three sizes.

  I never wanted to love someone. Never thought it was for me, but then this amazing man barreled into my life and flipped everything upside down. How could I not love him?

  “Yes, I do.”

  Alex pulls my face to his and covers my lips with his. I can feel everything he’s feeling through this kiss. It says so much. “God, I’ve waited forever to hear those words.”

  I laugh because what else can I really do, but then his face turns stern and the laughter dies. “But it doesn’t get you out of talking about the stunt you tried to pull last night.”

  I was right. He is mad about it. “It wasn’t a stunt. I was just trying to do something for you.”

  “All it would’ve done was destroy us,” he argues. “I don’t want anyone but you. If we had done that last night, it would’ve haunted you and ultimately been the death of us.”

  Sitting up, I try to explain, “Alex, I wouldn’t have offered it, drunk or not, if it was something I didn’t think I could handle.”

  “Do you really think you could’ve handled it?” he asks following suit and sitting up. “I’m not so sure.”

  Running my hand through the tangled mess of my hair, I sigh. “I think I could’ve. I never had any trouble with it in the past.”

  “But you never had to deal with it beyond that night in the past,” he interrupts. He runs his hand in circles on the exposed part of my thigh. “You didn’t care about those guys in the past. You didn’t love them. Why would you care about them touching someone else? But with me, it would’ve been a mistake.”

  “How so?” I ask. I’m not mad he turned it down, but I am curious about why.

  “Right now, instead of telling me you love me, you’d be thinking about a moment when I was touching her or her touching me. Who wants those images in their mind, in vivid detail, because you were there? Or I’d do something or touch you in some way in the future that would take you back to last night and me with another woman. I don’t want you to think about those things because there is no other woman I’d ever want to be with.”

  He’s absolutely one hundred percent right. With the way my brain works, last night would’ve come back to haunt me in a hundred different ways. The people I had threesomes with in the past were nothing to me. Just a night of fun. I didn’t have to see them after. There was no fallout.

  “You’re right,” I tell him. “Thank you for seeing that and not taking me up on my offer.”

  Alex pulls me into his side and lays us back down. “I wasn’t kidding. I don’t want to be with anyone else, with you there or alone. But I've got to know, why would you even want to do that?”

  Turning in his arms, I lie on my side and look up at him. “I wasn’t kidding either. I really did just want to make a fantasy a reality for you.”

  He lets out a belly laugh before saying, “And you’re the world’s greatest girlfriend for it, but some fantasies are better just as that.”

  “Huh?”

  He laughs again before explaining, “While the thought of watching you put your mouth on another woman’s pussy is incredibly hot, I don’t want it in real life. In reality, I want your mouth on me and my cock. I want your attention solely on being pleased or on me. Your only thought when my cock is buried inside you is me making you come. I’m a greedy prick like that. I’m not sharing you with anyone.”

  “Well, when you put it like that…” I say cocking a brow at him and rolling onto my back. “I can focus solely on being pleased.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Alex

  “How was your trip, man?” Tanner asks as we head toward the theater room of his house. It’s more of a man cave than theater room but whatever.

  Ash invited us over for dinner since it’s been over a month since we’ve all been in the same state. The hype surrounding our Super Bowl win didn’t die down until mid-March and poor Tanner had appearance after appearance. When he finally got his life back, he didn’t hesitate to grab his girls and head for their home on Lake Tahoe for a few weeks.

  “Pretty damn great,” I answer with an enormous smile. “Yours?”

  “Quiet,” he says as he heads for the fridge in the corner. “Want a beer?”

  “Yeah,” I call out taking a seat on the couch and grab the remote.

  Tanner hands me my beer and takes a seat on the other end of the couch. “What was so great about it?”

  “Well,” I crack open the can of beer. “Quinn told me she loves me and offered me a threesome.”

  Tanner’s eyes widen, and his mouth hangs open, “You had a threesome in Vegas?” Of course, that’s the part he’s choosing to focus on.

  I take a sip of my beer before answering him. “No, I turned down the threesome.”

  “You turned down a threesome?” This is like talking to a three-year-old. “Wait…was it with another dude? Because then I can totally understand.”

  “You’re such a douche,” I bust out in a loud laugh. “And no, it was with another girl.”

  His eyes bug out and his hands fly up, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I ask, “What part of having a threesome with the person you love sounds like a good idea? Would you have a threesome with Ashley?”

  Realization dawns on him and he shakes his head adamantly, “Hell, no!”

  “Exactly,” I say smugly. “Plus, turning it down made her say I love you the next morning. Not that I really wanted to go through with it but saying no did something for Quinn.”

  “She finally admitted it,” he comments bringing his bottle of beer to his lips. “How’d that happen? I always pictured you’d have to drag it out of her.”

  “It was the first thing she said when she woke up,” I say. “I didn’t think she actually meant to say it, but I gave her the chance to take it back and she didn’t.”

  We sit in silence drinking our beers. Unlike our women who are probably gossiping a mile a minute in the other room, we work better with fewer words when discussing our feelings.

  “Pretty big for Quinn,” Tanner says breaking our reflective time. “How did she handle it afterwards?”

  “A lot better than I’d ever expect,” I respond with a warm grin. Her lack of breakdown after saying the best words I’ve ever heard makes me happy. “To be honest, I didn’t make a big deal of them myself. I know they
’re words she doesn’t take lightly. I don’t really need anything more than that. I don’t want her to be uncomfortable saying them.”

  “I can completely understand,” Tanner says, nodding.

  “Plus, I wanted to get to the bottom of the whole threesome thing,” I add.

  “What was up with that?” Tanner asks as he gets up for another round of beers.

  We spend the next twenty debating the definition of threesomes and if all parties have to have sex with each other or if it can be just three people doing sexual things to one another in a room. I say all three people have to have sex with each other, any hole, for it to count, but Tanner insists you can have one where not everyone has to touch.

  We’re so deep in the debate and different scenarios we don’t hear the girls come in to tell us dinner is ready until Quinn says, “Sorry, Superstar. You’re wrong. All three people have to have some form of sex with each other for it to count as a threesome.”

  “No,” Ashley interrupts. “You, me, and Tanner could have a threesome without you ever touching him.”

  Tanner and I laugh before I end the conversation that’s effectively going nowhere. “That’s how you can tell you’ve wound up with the right person. They have the same definition of threesome as you.”

  A chorus of laughter fills the room and it takes me back to a time where there was no drama. A time when four best friends could laugh at the stupidest things. It’s nice to have this back.

  “Let’s go eat,” Ash says, turning and heading through the thick curtains serving as doors for this room.

  “You’re starting to waddle, Ashley,” I call after her. “I missed seeing this up close and personal last time. How much longer do you have now?”

  “Shut up, asshole,” she yells over her shoulder. “I’m not dealing with your smart-ass comments for the next ten weeks.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Alex

  The smell of bleach nearly chokes me as I enter Quinn’s place.

  It’s completely quiet except for a scratching sound coming from the kitchen.

  “Angel?” I call out following the sound.

  There’s no answer, but I do find Quinn in the kitchen. Ear buds are in her ears and she’s on her hands and knees with a large scrub brush in her hand and a bucket next to her.

  I don’t bother calling out to her again since I doubt she’ll hear with the music playing in her ears. Instead, I carefully walk over to her, minding my steps since the floor is wet, and squat down to her level. Quinn is focused on scrubbing the hell out of the section of floor she’s working on, and she doesn’t notice me until I reach out to touch her shoulder.

  Her arms fly out and she yells, “What the… Jesus Christ, Alex, you scared the shit out of me.”

  My lips turn down into a frown as I take in Quinn’s appearance. Her eyes are swollen and red. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a lopsided messy bun. She’s wearing an old Ramapo sweatshirt and sweatpants cut into shorts. Her fingers are pruned and raw and her knees have giant red spots on them as if she’s been down on the floor scrubbing for hours.

  “What’s going on, angel?” I ask, catching the tear slipping down her cheek with my thumb.

  “Nothing,” she lies diverting her eyes back down to the floor. She grips the brush in her hand and starts back scrubbing the spot she was just working on. The floor is beyond clean. We can probably eat off it at this point. Glancing around the kitchen, I notice every surface is spotless and the kitchen smells like an operating room—sterile. She’s been at this for a while.

  Placing my hand over hers as they slide the brush back and forth on the floor, I stop her movements. “This isn’t nothing, Quinn. What’s wrong? You have a cleaning service, so I know damn well nothing in here needs to be cleaned.”

  The dam breaks and Quinn’s head rests on the floor as she doubles over and starts crying.

  “I hate this place. I hate it. I hate it,” she sobs, her whole body shaking.

  I’m not exactly sure what “this place” is, but whatever it is has her very upset.

  “What’s this place, baby?”

  Her body jackknifes up and her arms flail out wide, “This, I hate this.”

  “The kitchen?”

  “No. This entire place. I hate this house!”

  I have no idea what happened today, but whatever it was, it’s big. Quinn loves her home. She even planned on keeping it while married to Jordan so she could come back to it after they dissolved their marriage and got rid of her father.

  “Come on,” I order, reaching for her hand again. Only now, I pull her up and guide her out of the kitchen into the living room.

  Sitting down, I pull her with me and wrap my arms around her body enveloping her. “Where is this coming from?”

  “Fucking Dr. Stein”

  Ah. Quinn must have had an intense session today at therapy. I don’t usually ask much about Quinn’s appointments with the doctor. I know it’s hard enough for her to go to them, and honestly, they’re private. What she talks to her therapist about is between them. She tells me the things she wants to and I’m perfectly okay with that. But given her current state, I need to ask today.

  “What happened?”

  “I was talking about how good it felt to be out from under my father. I was saying how nice it’s been to have a solid six months without him torturing me and he asked if I really thought I was out from under him. One thing led to another and he pointed out I’m still living on his dime and the company I have is because of him,” she explains, stopping every couple of words to shudder a sob.

  “You’re building a bigger, better company with Jordan and you’re more than capable of affording this place on your own. Problem solved,” I point out.

  “No,” she argues. “He’s stained this place for me. The company too. Taylor Ventures won’t exist for much longer, but this place will still be here every day reminding me.”

  Her sadness is dissolving, and anger is rising in its place.

  “He used this place against me,” she says righting herself from my lap. “He paid the lease on this place for the last eight years. I used to love my home and everything about it. The freedom I felt when I moved out here away from the city, away from them, wasn’t actually ever freedom at all. All I see when I look at these walls is him still having control over me.”

  Quinn’s body hunches over, and she hangs her head in her hands.

  “Okay, what would you like to do?” I ask, rubbing my hand up and down her back trying to comfort her. I’m not sure how I can fix this for her. This has been her home for a while, and she’s always loved it, but after today, I don’t think she’ll ever look at it the same. “How can we make this better?”

  Her fingers separate as she lifts her head slightly and her eyes peek out from between them. “I don’t think there is a way to fix this. It’s dirty. It’s all dirty! I spent hours cleaning this place and it still feels tainted as hell.”

  There’s only one solution I can think of and I know the thought has crossed Quinn’s mind. She has to have figured out if she feels this strong of a dislike for her home, there aren’t many options. “How about a new place?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it all day, but I can’t get my mind past thinking if I move, he still wins,” she sighs.

  Ugh… she needs to get past this thought process she has when it comes to her father. I know it’s not going to happen overnight, but he’s been in jail for six months. She needs to stop making all her life decisions based on him.

  “Angel, he’s in jail and you’re not. He won nothing in the whole battle. You have to stop living your life based on him or the things he’s done to you. Do what’s best for you and you alone.”

  Reaching out, I grip Quinn’s shoulder, pull her to me and wrap her up. Her head lands on my chest and her hand fists my shirt. I rest my cheek on her head and breathe her in.

  We’ve had a lot of these embraces lately. While I hate seeing Quinn in any kind of p
ain, I relish the moments like these. The ones where Quinn bares herself to me in the most important ways. The ones where all her walls are down, and she lets me in.

  Sometimes being with her feels like a dream. A dream I never want to wake up from. These small little moments are the ones I’d wanted in the past. Having them now just feels surreal.

  The image of a life that begins and ends with Quinn pops into my mind. In a place that’s not hers and not mine. The words are out of my mouth the instant it all hits me.

  “We could move into a new place together.”

  Quinn’s body stiffens which in turn causes mine to do the same.

  Shit, I shouldn’t have said that.

  While I’m more honest with Quinn now than I would’ve been before, I don’t just blurt things out without trying to think about them first. While I stand behind my offer because I think it’s the best thing to do, I would’ve eased into the conversation instead of just coming right out with it and risked scaring the hell out of Quinn.

  But I guess that’s not the case for her because just as quickly as her body stiffened, it relaxes, and she turns her head up and asks, “You’d want to live with me?”

  With the way she asks it, I know it’s not coming from a place of insecurity. More like curiosity, I think.

  Grinning down at her, I explain, “Absolutely. I love you and I can’t think of anything better than coming home to our place. Not yours. Not mine. Ours.”

  “You don’t think it’s too soon?”

  “Says who?” I ask. “We’re not strangers, Quinn. Our relationship has been going on for close to five years, now. We already know life sucks without the other and neither one of us has intentions of ever going back to that place. So, who’s to say it’s too soon? Who’s not to say it’s long overdue? You’re it for me, angel. There’s no going back.”

  Quinn’s eyes glass over and it looks like I’m looking into the Caribbean Sea. Tears gather in the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over. Her soft voice floats out as she opens her perfect pink lips.