I’m shaking now, my heart racing at a rate that is frightening me. I’m out of control in a way that I’ve never experienced before, and I don’t know how to deal with it. “Things are changing,” I say, my voice shaking.
“I know,” he says, rubbing my back. His voice is gruff with emotion and I cling to him tighter.
“I don’t like it.”
“I know.”
“What do I do?”
Bryan’s face is so serious. I know he doesn’t have any more of a clue than I do, but I need help. “We go inside and clean you up. Then we go and find out what’s going on with Carrie.”
I shake my head vigorously. I can’t face it; all the worry and the distress. It’s clawing at me inside.
“We have to. They need us.”
I don’t want to hear him, but I do. It’s those six words that make me realize how selfish I’m being out here in the lot, wallowing in my own self-pity. I know that just by being there, by showing our concern and keeping vigil, that Carrie’s family will feel supported, and although it’s going to be fucking hard for me to get up and walk back in there, I have to. She’d do the same for me. Bryan kisses my forehead as though he can sense that I’ve changed my mind, then he helps me stand before getting up off the dirt himself. We both brush off our clothes and I pull some tissues from my purse to wipe my face and blow my nose. Just as we’re about to head back into the hospital, Ethan appears. He looks wrecked and my heart sinks to my feet.
I move closer to Bryan. It’s instinctive because my knees feel like they might give out again and I know he’ll catch me if they do.
“She’s stabilized,” Ethan says in a tone that is filled relief. In that moment I understand that he thought she was going to die too. I blink and the tears that were resting in my eyes spill messily down my cheeks. Carrie’s going to be okay. Maybe. I let out a shaky breath and go to give Ethan a hug. It feels strange to hold my friend’s boyfriend tight against me but I know he needs this, because I do too.
“I thought…” he trails off when his voice cracks.
“I know.” I pat his broad shoulder and squeeze him a little tighter.
“I’ve never been that scared before, about anything.”
“I know,” I say again. “I’m sorry…I just…I couldn’t.”
Ethan pulls back and looks down at me gravely. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”
“She’s my best friend.” I say it as though I’m stating a fact that nobody knew and Ethan nods in understanding.
“She’s going to be under observation for days. They were really scared they were going to lose her.”
I shake my head, not wanting to hear how close Carrie came to…I can’t even think the word. “Come on,” Ethan says. “Let’s go back.”
In the waiting room, Carrie’s mom is curled into her husband and Nathan is sitting next to his father. He stands when he sees us and comes to hug me and Bryan as though we are long lost friends, reunited after years. “She’s going to be fine,” I whisper against his chest, and he nods. “She is.” There’s that same tone of relief, or maybe it’s disbelief. I understand what it’s like to face into losing someone you love.
We all sit for a while. Bryan busies himself getting coffee for everyone.
After about an hour, Ethan comes to sit beside me. “When we come in this morning, we were prepared for Carrie and the babies to stay a night and then come home. We’ve got nothing with us and we’re going to need to stay here for tonight at least. We need to be here for her, just in case.”
“Of course,” I say quickly. “You want me to get you some things from home?”
“Would that be okay? I don’t want to ask dad. He needs to be here for Carrie’s mom.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Ethan fishes in his pocket for his house keys and hands them to me. I slip them into my purse and wait for Bryan to return from the restroom. We say our goodbyes and I follow Bryan to his car. It’s only when I’m belted in that I close my eyes and say thank you to whoever answered my prayers. Those babies need a mother and there is no one who would ever be able to replace Carrie in that regard.
Bryan doesn’t start the car immediately. He holds the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are white. “This is fucked up,” he growls. The anger in his voice takes me by surprise because while I was having my moment in the lot, he seemed so calm.
“What?”
“All of this shit. Carrie…she’s so fucking young and she nearly died.”
“I know.” We sit in silence for a few moments longer but I can feel the coiled rage vibrating from Bryan in his posture. “But she’s going to be okay.”
“Yeah,” he says. “She better fucking be. Those boys will be wrecked if anything happened to her. They’d never recover.”
There’s something about the way he says that last part that sounds almost as though he’s speaking for himself.
“Bryan…” I put my hand on his thigh because I feel like I need anchoring and just making contact with his strong body is enough to do that for me. “I…”
He takes hold of my hand before I can say anything else and holds it to his mouth. It’s not a kiss as such but there is so much need and desperation in the contact he makes and the grip of his strong fingers that I start to cry again.
“You’re going to be okay.” He says it like it’s a statement of fact. Like he knows for sure, when really he knows nothing. He says it like he can will it to be so. He says it like it has to be true.
“We should go,” I say, trying to pull my hand back from the softness of his lips. My palm feels damp from his breath. I remember how his lips felt against mine when we kissed in Carrie’s yard and I want to feel that again so much that it hurts. I’m crying too much, though. This is not the time to be doing things that have the power to break my heart.
Bryan lets my hand go and starts the engine. He doesn’t look at me or talk to me the entire way to the small house Carrie, Ethan and Nathan share.
Inside, Bryan heads to the kitchen to check on things. I can see they left in a hurry because there are dishes in the sink. In the bedroom, the bed in unmade and there is a big stain on the under-sheet which I’m hoping is where Carrie’s waters broke. I head to the closet and cry some more when I see Carrie’s little shoes lined up next to the twins’ giant sneakers. It smells of her perfume in here, a scent so strong and familiar that it’s almost as though she’s here with me.
There is a duffle bag on the shelf at the top and I pull it down. I take a pile of lovingly folded t-shirts and a few pairs of jeans and sweats and stuff them in. I reluctantly search out some underwear and socks and pack them too. Back in the bedroom, I decide to strip the bed and remake it so that when Carrie comes home, everything is nice. It doesn’t take long to do and although I wish I had time to do the laundry too, I know Ethan is waiting for these things.
Bryan has loaded the dishwasher and is taking out the trash when I’m back in the kitchen. I peer in the fridge and take a few things that will perish before they’re home and stuff them into the freezer.
“Do you remember when they told us?” Bryan asks when he comes in from the yard.
“What, that they were in a relationship?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
I lean against the counter and study him, wondering where this thought train is heading.
“I was shocked. I mean, we’re talking about Carrie. Ethan and Nathan had one kind of reputation and Carrie another. I never would have put them together that way. I got the feeling she thought they were cute, but a relationship….it would never have crossed my mind.”
Bryan nods, his expression thoughtful.
“I had a feeling they liked her, but they’d never admit it to me. Every time I asked, they’d divert the subject back to you.”
I blush a little, remember back to those early days when I was still prepared to flirt with him, before I began to feel the sting of rejection.<
br />
“Clever tactics,” I say, not wanting to get too drawn into that conversation.
He nods. “I never thought it’d be possible to love two people at once. In the beginning I kept looking to see if I could spot who it was that Carrie liked the best, but I couldn’t. She looked at them both the same, touched them the same.”
“She loves them both,” I say with absolute certainty. Ethan and Nathan might be practically identical but they’re completely different people. Having spent time with them all, I know that they complement each other perfectly, for all their similarities and differences.
“I see that,” he says.
“Why didn’t you ever mention your brothers?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I didn’t know they existed until last summer. They reached out to dad and we went up to New York to meet them.”
“Last summer?” I remember him disappearing for a week. He was quiet when he came back. I’d thought maybe it had been woman trouble.
“Yeah.” Bryan grips the counter, leaning back. “It was hard to meet them. I had a tough time for a while. Not that I didn’t want them in my life. More that I was jealous that they’d had each other growing up and I’d been…”
“Alone.” I can understand that. When dad sends photos of my half-brother and half-sister I feel a connection to them but also resentment that makes me feel horrible inside. Bryan nods his head. “But you’re close now?” I ask, because I’d hate to think I might have disturbed their fledgling relationship.
“Yeah.” He looks at me as though he wants to say something else but then he turns to wash his hands.
“We should go. They’ll be wanting this stuff.” I hand Bryan the bag and we lock up. The journey back to the hospital is tense, but we listen to the radio to fill the silence and I return a few messages from our friends who are just finding out what happened.
At the hospital, the waiting room is busy with people. I go straight to Ethan to give him the bag, then sit next to Carrie’s mom. She doesn’t say anything but puts her hand in mine and squeezes. She has a blanket on her knee. It looks well-loved and I imagine it rested over Carrie’s sleeping form in the past. Maybe even her mom. I can’t wait to see the baby girls wrapped in it too.
“How are the babies? Have you seen them?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “They’re in the NICU. The boys have been but I don’t want to go until Carrie has seen them. A mother shouldn’t be the last to see her own children.”
“She’ll be up and about soon,” I say, and she squeezes my hand again.
“I thought…”
“I know.” I squeeze her hand back to let her know that I understand. We can fear the worst, and even if it doesn’t come to pass, that fear stays with us.
I sit with her for a while, chatting about things that seem silly in the grand scheme; college, plans for the future. It seems that Carrie kept my ‘news’ to herself and I’m grateful. The longer I sit in the hospital, the worse I feel. “I’m gonna go.” I tell her. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Carrie’s mom nods and I rise from my seat, feeling weary. Bryan is deep in conversation. I stand and watch him for a few seconds; his brow is furrowed as he listens to Nathan. He puts his hand on his friend’s shoulder and squeezes it in a manly reassuring way that I know is his way of saying he cares. It’s hard to watch him like this. To know that we could have had something great, and fate, for whatever reason, managed to fuck it all up. When I think back to how carefree I was when I first met him, I almost feel like a different person. I miss that girl with nothing to think about other than boys, dancing and the occasional assignment. I want to slip back into her shoes and shrug off the troubles on my back.
It only takes me a couple of seconds to decide what I need to do next.
I turn and stride out of the hospital with one thing on my mind. If I get just one more night to be carefree Katelin, I’m going to take it in the best way I know.
13
My hands are trembling as I stand at the door of the pool house, psyching myself up to knock. I can hear the chatter of the TV from inside and the twins’ rental car is in the driveway so I know they’re home. I lick my lips and take a deep breath.
I never knew it was possible to vibrate with need. To crave something so much that it becomes a physical and emotional ache. There are so many reasons why I shouldn’t go through with this. I know I’m on the edge and that the decisions I’m making are reckless in a way that I would never usually consider. I feel like an addict. I know what I want isn’t really good for me but I can’t seem to help myself.
I tap on the door lightly. It feels like a noncommittal knock. A tiny part of my sensible self thinks that if they don’t hear me I have the option to walk away. I should be at home, resting before my doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Mom must be worried about me.
No one answers for a while and I take a step back, considering whether to ignore my sensible self and knock again. Then the handle moves and the door opens to reveal Jason, shirtless and sexy as fuck. It’s hot and the skin at the center of his chest is glistening slightly. His green eyes meet mine and I can see him trying to gauge my mood.
“Katelin.” His voice is gruff as though he’s been sleeping. His hand rubs at his shoulder and I can’t take my eyes off the way his muscles flex under his beautiful golden skin. He’s waiting for me to say something but there’re no words in my head, only desire. Desire for him and desire for the oblivion I know he can bring me.
I close the distance between us so quickly that I take him by surprise, hooking my hand behind his neck and pulling him down so I can kiss him. It’s not soft and gentle but fierce and clawing. His hands grab me around the ass and haul me against him until my legs are wrapped around his waist, and my hands clutching at his face.
He groans as I grind against him, stumbling us backwards and slamming the door shut. I’m glad for that. The last thing I need is another run in with Doug. I think that Jason will take us into the bedroom but instead he backs towards the couch and when his legs hit the edge, he flops us down.
“Baby,” he growls, holding my face in his huge palms and looking into my dazed eyes.
“Jase,” I say. “I need…”
“I’ve got you.” He tugs my hips forward until my pussy is pressed tight against him, then he yells for Austin.
I writhe against Jason’s huge stiffening cock, feeling frenzied and desperate. His hands grasp at my ass, squeezing so hard I cry out. Hands tug at my top and for a moment I think they’re Jason’s, then I feel another set of hands on my tits and I know Austin’s behind me. For a moment I’m lost between them. It’s as though I can see myself from above, being handled by these two men, never sure who or what is going to happen next.
Austin’s lips press against the base of my spine, then his tongue, licking in a way that’s both lewd and tender. Jason tugs down the cups of my bra and rolls my nipples, tweaking them so hard I buck. I can smell the clean scent of his sweat and feel the heat radiating from both of them, at my front and my back. I’m cocooned and safe in this crazy place between them.
Austin’s hands slip around to my front and takeover where Jason is caressing. Jason’s hands move to tug my yoga pants over my hips so he can slip his fingers down the front to where I’m aching. God, I need their touch so much. Like this I feel strong and alive, raw and connected. Jason’s fingers are urgent when they find my clit and then slip deeper between my legs. I’m so wet that he gets two big fingers inside me with next to no effort. It feels so good that I ride his hand, knowing that I can come like this if Austin keeps squeezing and tugging at my breasts. I don’t care that it’s selfish. I haven’t yet touched either of them other than to graze Jason’s chest with my fingers. This is about what I need and I can feel that they don’t care in the way they’re focused on me with darkened, hooded eyes.
“That’s it…take what you need,” Austin says, putting a hand on my hip and using it to help me grind down against his brother.
“Oh…” I say as he pushes me faster. “That’s it…that’s…”
I come in the fastest time ever, back arching, hands scrabbling for the fabric of Jason’s pants just to I have something to grip onto. The pleasure is so fast, so surging, that tears spring to my eyes and are squeezed out through my closed lids. Jason keeps moving his hand slowly and Austin kisses the back of my neck, pushing the mess of curls over my shoulder.
I feel Jason’s free hand stroke my tears away, but I can’t look at him. Shut in my dark bubble I feel safe, as though I’m somewhere deep where all the other pressures in my world can’t touch me. Then I hear the noise of the door opening behind us, and my moment of peace is shattered.
For a second no one moves, then I hear Bryan.
“Katelin,” he growls in a voice that is filled with pent up rage.
Jason slips his hand from between my legs and gathers my top from where it’s resting over the back of the sofa. He puts it over my head carefully, and no one says a thing. I’m so grateful that their main focus is on getting me decent so I can face Bryan. My heart is pounding but it isn’t because of any regret I feel. It’s because I can finally hear something else in Bryan’s voice.
Possession.
All this time he’s been almost apologetic about his feelings, but I can sense the difference.
I start to stand and Austin steps back to let me disentangle myself from Jason. When I turn, Bryan is standing with his hands gripping either side of the door frame, like he needs to restrain himself.
“What?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips.
Bryan’s nostrils flare and his jaw ticks angrily. Good, I think. About fucking time he showed some passion.
HUGE X3: A MFMM Menage Stepbrother Romance Page 9