“You opened the fridge and then just stood there,” she says, standing up.
I close the door. “Yeah.”
“Do you want help with dinner?”
I shake my head. “No.” I pull the fridge door open again. “I want a beer. You?”
“Sure.”
I grab two bottles and take the caps off before I join her. Dinner can wait.
I set the bottles on the steamer trunk turned coffee table and pick up her foot, now bare, because her only pair of socks are drip drying on a rack in the bathroom. “Are you cold?”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
“I’ve got extra socks. Big manly ones. Wool. You could—”
“Lachlan, what’s wrong?”
“Hugh only bought food for the two of us. Two steaks. Two chicken breasts.”
Her face falls. “Oh.”
“Wherever he is, he planned this.” That’s hard to say. I thought after the last two months we were all in the same place, on the same page, but I’m realizing with bitter distaste that I had no clue what was going on his head.
Not the first time I’ve been blindsided by him, though.
I’m a sucker for thinking this time would be different.
It was different, though. We had Beth.
Have.
We have Beth.
She hasn’t said anything. She’s peeling the label off the beer bottle tiny piece by tiny piece. I take a drink and look at her anew, too.
“This isn’t what you wanted, is it?” God, those words feel clumsy and wrong in my mouth.
She jerks her head up, her eyes wide and alarmed. “No.”
“I think we need to do a better job of saying things.”
She laughs weakly. “Yeah. Probably.”
“What are you thinking?”
She presses her lips together and shakes her head.
I lean forward and brace my forearms on my thighs. “I want you both. Maybe we need to start there. Was that not clear? Is that not okay?”
“It’s more than okay,” she whispers. “But I don’t know how clear it was.”
“Not even after last night?” Or any of the nights that came before it? All my muscles tense and flex as the heat under my collar slides down my spine.
“It was the wedding.” She tips her bottle of beer back and drains it. Then she stands and starts pacing. “We had a conversation while we were dancing. And I didn’t get it at the time…”
“Get what? Damn it, spit it out.”
She holds up her hand, her forehead tight. “Please don’t push. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. Okay? I don’t know your entire history. You two have been super cagey about that. So don’t expect me to hand you the answer on a platter. I don’t have it.”
Shit. I nod. “Right. I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “I freaked out earlier. I’m glad we’re taking turns.” She does another pace of the living room, then stops and gives another small shrug. “Okay. So Hugh told me a little about how you first hooked up. How you’d just broken up with a woman…?”
I nod. Even after all these years, the hot, weird mix of guilt and excitement in my veins is a feeling I’ll always associate with those early days before Hugh kissed me.
“I think he thinks that meant more to him than it did to you.” She says it softly, but the words are fists, fast like lightning.
He’s not wrong.
And he’s completely wrong, but that’s a secret I’ve buried deep, and I thought…
Well, I’d thought wrong. Turns out it’s not that easy to move forward as if the past weren’t ugly.
“And the wedding stirred that up. We may have given him the impression that…” She groans and tips her head back. “Fuck. This is so weird to talk about when we’ve only been dating for a little while.” She looks at me and winces. “Don’t read too much into this, but I’d been thinking about you and me—and Hugh and me, and Hugh and you—yesterday. And he saw that. It was hard to hide.”
There’s a side-note of insecurity that we’re going to have to come back to in a minute. Don’t read too much into it. Jesus. But I want to get to the bottom of this first. “Sure. It’s hard to go to something like that and think, I want that, and it’s out of reach.”
“Do you want that?”
“Yeah, in an abstract way.”
“And with a woman? Or a man?”
I don’t know. “Either, I guess. I mean, until I met you—” The words die on my tongue. Meeting Beth had changed everything. But that had its own ugly tinge, too.
I’ve made a mess of the two relationships that mean the world to me.
She gives me a hopeless look. “I think this conversation is supposed to be a lot happier than this.”
I take a deep breath. “Yeah.”
She moves closer, until her knees brush mine. “He loves you, you know. He loves you so much it hurts him that you don’t notice.”
“I…I don’t notice? I can’t keep my hands off him.”
“He thinks it’s different,” she says softly.
“From what?”
“From how you feel about me.”
It is different. But…not more or less. Just, they’re not the same people.
I reach out and take her hand. She resists for a beat, but then I tug her into my lap. “I love you,” I whisper against her temple. “So much that I’ve fucked everything up.”
She presses her skin against mine. A breath, in and out. “And how do you feel about Hugh?”
A painful hurt unfurls in my chest. “I love him, too.”
“But you haven’t said it to him.” Her voice cracks and she pulls her knees up to her chest, squeezing them tight. I wrap my arms around the ball of her body. “And he needs to hear it.”
“He won’t believe me.”
“We’ll need to convince him, then.” Her voice is sure and confident, and the tension in her body ebbs as she relaxes against me and presses her face into my neck. “I need you both. This is crazy. We’ve just begun, the three of us. We can’t be over yet.”
“I don’t know…”
Her fingers dance over the pulse point by my collarbone, then up the tendons on the side of my neck. Gentle, loving touches. “Can you tell me about your breakup the first time?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. No. Yes. I don’t know. “I left him. That’s the short answer. An opportunity came up, a posting, and I applied for it. I didn’t tell him until I had the job.”
“How did he react?”
“We fought. We fucked, too. That didn’t stop until I left.” And then the night before I left, he finally asked me if he should visit.
“Might be too complicated,” I’d said.
“You sure?”
He’d not only asked, but he’d doubled down on his hope.
And I’d dashed it.
Because we were getting too intense, too much, for two guys fucking around.
It took me another year to admit had been the first man I’d wanted to have a real relationship with, and that had scared me. And by then, the regret had faded to a bittersweet what if level.
“He asked if we could keep seeing each other,” I say faintly. “I shot him down.”
“He told me we’d talk last night. And then we didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t?”
I nod, my insides twisting. “Easier said than done when he had every right to expect me to shut him down again.”
She growls under her breath. “This is not a mature way to break up with people.”
That makes me smile. “He’s not breaking up with us. We won’t let that happen.”
“Promise?”
With every fibre of my being. “Yes.”
“I should tell you something else. He said…how you feel about me—and I guess he sees that as different from how you feel about him—that’s how he felt about you back then.”
That makes my head spin. “No. We had feelings for each other, but it wasn’t like that.”
“
Like what?”
There’s no way I can tell Beth how I felt about her from that first moment I laid eyes on her. It makes me sound like a stalker. But holding back is what got us into this mess in the first place.
“You are my North Star,” I whisper. “Everywhere I am, no matter what I’m doing, I gravitate toward you. You hold still in the swirling chaos so I can find my way to you. You are bright and constant in my sky.”
“Maybe Hugh—”
I kiss her to stave off the questions and doubt. I can’t handle the guesswork any more. We’ll figure this out. We’ll get him back. But I kiss her because she’s my Beth, too.
Our Beth.
Fucking Hugh.
But he’s running scared because I hurt him a long time ago, when he was a brash young man, and maybe we need to start there to fix this.
I can’t do that right now.
But I can kiss her. I can make her dinner and hold her tight, make love to her and show her how much it means to me that she embraces not only me, but my crazy love for another lover, too.
She falls asleep after dinner. We’re talking on the bed, about bears and hiking, and I’m lazily stroking the bare skin of her back under her shirt.
And then all of a sudden, I realize she’s not awake, and she’s so sweetly konked out I don’t even try to rouse her for sex.
We have all the time in the world for sex later, and a good night’s sleep has been in short supply.
I grab a paperback from the living room, then tuck her under the blankets. I turn out all the lights but the small one beside me, and start reading.
Four hours later, I’m almost done the book. My eyes have gone gritty, but the story is compelling, and it’s not that late still. I glance at my phone.
How did it get to be almost one in the morning?
I set my book aside and close my eyes, but despite the tired lids, I’m wide awake. My pulse is jacked up from an emotional couple of days and a thrilling spy book.
And on my shoulder, I can feel Hugh’s mark. He left it and ran.
I try counting backwards, and thinking about the drill for cleaning a pistol, a machine gun. Packing lists for an overnight hiking trip I could take Beth on.
Hugh would be all over that.
My eyelids flutter open.
Fucking hell.
I shove out of bed and grab my phone. Time to try to get ahold of him again. And if he’s still on radio silence, my next text is going to be filled with motherfucking expletives.
40
Hugh
It’s nearly four in the morning and I officially give up on sleep.
The flight back to Ottawa was torturous.
I tried hard to ignore all the tangled-up feelings I’m reluctant—terrified, more like—to name. But there was nothing life or death going on to distract me, and the hole in my heart kept getting bigger and more jagged with each passing hour.
It’s impossible to keep from replaying in my mind how Lachlan and Beth gazed at each other all weekend—like they’re deeply in love.
Then there was the dancing.
It was a fucking mistake to try and make up for not dancing together at the wedding with a private dance at the cabin. That just jabbed a stake in my heart in a different way, reminding me that I’ve re-closeted myself in a whole new way with this relationship.
It’s one thing to want to dance with Lachlan. It’s another to wish the three of us could dance together.
But, there’s nothing that could provide enough cover for any of that.
A real relationship between three people close to the prime minister? That’s a pipe dream. A huge, unnecessary complication.
Lachlan would never hear of it. Because the reality of the world is, three’s an unacceptable crowd as far as marriage and society are concerned. And it’s this truth that erases any reservations I have about my decision to leave.
Even with my emotional turmoil, I can at least admit to myself, marriage is where things are heading for Lachlan and Beth, one way or another.
It’s what they both want, and this weekend underlined that in an undeniable way.
When I finally got home, I hit the sack ridiculously early because I’m heavy in denial and avoidance, and sleep seemed like the best option.
Despite the physical exhaustion from the last twenty-four hours, my mind refuses to rest.
I wander out to the kitchen to make coffee, and I look around my apartment.
It’s fucking stark.
It didn’t bother me before. Probably since I haven’t spent much time here.
I let myself get too comfortable in the fantasy of something else. In the fantasy that this place might be temporary and it didn’t matter if I have a couch or a TV
I should have known better. Should have kept my distance from temptation.
It was all a colossal mistake.
My phone sits on the kitchen counter, right where I tossed it when I got home last night. I eye it like it’s a rattle snake ready to strike, but I can’t put off the inevitable any longer.
I switch the phone from airplane mode and set it back down while I brew a cup of coffee.
Notifications start to pop up everywhere.
Voicemail, missed calls, text messages, E-mail. Hell, if I had a Facebook account, I’m sure that would be screaming at me, too.
The guilt slams back into me like a freight train.
I decide to start with the text messages because I know I can’t handle hearing their voices.
Lachlan: WTF man?
Beth: Are you okay?
Lachlan: Damn it, Hugh. Call me.
Beth: We’re worried about you.
Beth: Please let me know you’re okay.
Lachlan: Hugh. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m going to kick your ass for making Beth cry.
Lachlan: She thinks she did something wrong. You need to fix this.
A rock-hard knot lodges deep in my chest as I stare at Lachlan’s last two texts.
Then my phone vibrates and Lachlan’s ringtone comes through the speaker.
Shit. I’m still not ready to talk to him, but I need to suck it up. We still have to work together.
And it’s the middle of the night there. If he’s calling me at one in the morning, I’m an asshole if I don’t pick up, no matter how much I don’t want to yet.
I take a deep breath and answer before the call has a chance to flip to voicemail. “I’m here.”
“Jesus, Hugh.” I can almost see his hand sliding over his head, his fingers sifting through his hair as he says it.
He sounds more relieved than angry and I’m a little surprised.
There’s silence, and I don’t know what to say, so I continue to gather my thoughts and wait.
“Where are you?”
“Ottawa.”
“You knew you were leaving, didn’t you? It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. It was planned.”
There’s no point in denying that. “Yeah.”
“I don’t get it. How could you spend the night fucking and sucking Beth and me like we are the most important people in your life if you were going to sneak out afterwards?”
I want to be flip. I want to tell him I needed one more fabulous memory for the spank bank. I want to make it easy for them to let go. But they deserve the truth, at least.
“You are the most important people in my life. And I needed to show you that one last time.”
“Damn it, Hugh—”
“Go to bed, Lachlan. I said I needed space, and I meant it.” I end the call. I can’t talk about this yet. Somewhere along the way, I lost control of what I was doing.
I need to find that control again. And when I do, I’m never letting go again.
41
Lachlan
When I return to the cabin, there’s a lamp on and Beth is sitting up in bed. I was sure she was sleeping when I got up. How much did she overhear?
“Well?” she asks, her eyes bright with hope.
&n
bsp; Fuck. I’d hoped to have some time to calm down and process that call. My heart is pounding and I don’t want Beth to pick up on my agitation.
“You should be asleep,” I say, gently.
“So should you.” She pats my side of the bed. “Right here.”
And Hugh should be on the other side of her.
There are so many other things that he should be right now.
My chest squeezes tight and I just nod as I try to swallow the lump in my throat.
Crossing the floor, I keep my breathing slow and steady in an effort to calm my heart rate before climbing in beside Beth.
She snuggles in close, and as I pull her into my arms, she twirls a finger in my chest hair. “What did he say?” she asks.
Jesus. I can’t tell her what she wants to hear and she’s already cried an ocean of tears.
“He’s in Ottawa. And he needs space.”
Her finger stops moving. “He isn’t coming back.”
“No, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything for when we get home,” I say, trying to sound more optimistic than I feel.
“We could go to him now.”
If only it were that simple. “Not yet. I can’t see either of us being able to stay away from him while we’re all in Ottawa—even for just a few days. It’ll be easier for us to give him what he thinks he needs from here.”
She lets out a long sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”
Hugging her tighter, I lean down and kiss the top of her head.
“We should try and get some sleep,” I tell her.
She doesn’t respond. Instead, she slips her hand behind my neck and pulls me down for a kiss.
A gentle brush at first, then more insistent. I open and she teases her way in, her tongue gliding against mine as she slips her leg over me and grinds herself against my thigh.
I groan into her mouth and roll us over until I’m on top of her.
She spreads her legs wider. The invitation is clear. She’s wet, and I’m hard.
There’s no foreplay this time.
We’re both swirling in a maelstrom of hurt and confusion and sometimes a good hard fuck is all there is to keep your head above water.
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