by Gemma Snow
“I’m thinking they’re getting through the fence right around here,” Ryder said, breaking Dec’s concentration and throwing him right back into the deep end of why having feelings for Lily was such a bad idea. Not that he did. Because he didn’t have feelings for her. This was all just sex and friendship, no love.
Ha, he couldn’t even lie the words to himself properly, because it was so freaking obvious by the way she made him melt, just a little, when she walked into a room. He thought of her more than he thought of Aubrey and, given that Aubrey had pretty much haunted him since the day he’d driven all the way back from North Dakota, Dec had to take that to mean something.
Fine, whether he was admitting to having the feelings or not, if he did want something more from her than whatever they had now, Christian and Ryder were reason enough to back the fuck off. Because they did just about anything Maddy asked of them. If Maddy didn’t think Dec and Micah were good enough for her sister, then they were gone, simple as.
They? Right, that was another added complicated to the already way too much what the fuckery that was going on. So, Dec turned to where Ryder was standing, scanning the ground with a small handheld machine… Why am I doing that? Oh, yeah. Dec really needed to focus his attention back to the matter at hand. Not that either Ryder or Christian could pretend they didn’t know what had happened the minute before their trio had arrived at the ranch, because, God, it had been so fucking obvious. But if they weren’t going to acknowledge it then he sure as shit wasn’t about to broach the subject.
“You call the fence company out?” Micah asked. “They could probably give you some better info on keeping the right wildlife out.”
Ah, yes, they had been talking about the Triple Diamond coyote problem, hadn’t they? That was, without a doubt, a safer topic of conversation than the way Lily felt wrapping her mouth around his cock and sucking hard.
“They said they’d send a guy from Helena,” Christian replied, a scowl on his face. “Which means at least a week till we get an appointment, so we just thought we’d check with you guys, unless you’re not as good at this whole tracking thing”—he held up his fingers in air quotes—“as you want everyone to think you are.”
Dec just laughed. “Green isn’t your color, Harlow,” he said, “but we could probably squeeze you into one of our beginner classes, if you’re not scared.”
Christian flipped him off, using his other hand to push his hair out of his face. It wasn’t nearly as long as Micah’s, whose current ponytail reached halfway down his back, but long hair or not, no one was going to fuck with either man. Damn, that was some pretty terrible word choice if he’d heard any, since it sent his mind spiraling right back to the way Lily felt, wrapped around him, to the expression she made when she came, hard and shuddering around his cock, to…
“I know it’s not coyote piss that’s putting that expression on your face.” Ryder clapped him on the back and shrugged his shoulders. “Not much we can do here until the fence guys come, right?”
“Pretty much,” Micah said. Before he could add any more though, Ryder squeezed Dec’s shoulder tight and got all big and puffy, like the human race hadn’t sustained thousands of years of evolution since the blowfish.
“You didn’t bring us out here to look at the fence.” The statement was simple, but, come on, Dec could pretty much feel the guys’ radiating heat and he just sighed. They’d both known this was coming. After all, Ryder and Christian were ass over boots in love with Lily’s sister and they’d do anything they could to make Maddy, and by extension her family, happy.
“Obviously not,” Christian said on a low, guttural laugh. “So do you want to go first or should we get right down to it?”
“We’re sleeping with Maddy’s sister.” Dec got to the point, though when he phrased it like that, it felt crude and rough and…somehow wrong, against his lips. Because it wasn’t just that and it hadn’t been just that since the day she had walked through the door and upended at the very least his life but probably Micah’s too.
“And what are you going to do about it?” Ryder put in. It was kind of fun, watching Ryder Dean and Christian Harlow play the overprotective—brother?—role. They’d been the kids everyone’s parents had warned them away from back in high school. Troublemakers and Casanovas. Though, of course, Dec knew a thing or two about being labeled at first glance.
“She’s leaving in a week,” Micah replied, folding his arms and making himself big. He was big, bigger than the three of them and they all cleared the six-foot mark. Yeah, Dec was happy to have Micah on his side in a fight. “There’s nothing for us to do about it. She’s not going to magically decide to stay on the ranch her mysterious uncle left her in his will.” Which was exactly how things had gone down with Madison Hollis and why Christian and Ryder had this overprotective air around them they’d never had before.
“What if she does?” Ryder challenged. “What if she’s here more often than you think? You guys have been busting our balls for years over sharing lovers, but this is new ground and I just want you both to know the rules. Will you both keep dating her, or are you going to make her pick?”
The words were a punch in the gut and Dec winced. Obviously it was in the hypothetical, since Lily had been adamant since the get-go about needing to return to her shop and her home. But what if she did visit a lot? After all, her sister lived here now and there was something to be said for escaping city life. Confusion swamped his already stretched emotions and he looked at Micah, who suddenly didn’t appear as big or as solid as he had a moment ago. There was no doubt about it, Lily Hollis had definitely thrown a sexy-as-sin wrench into the works of their lives.
“You guys need to figure that out,” Christian said, his voice firm. “We’re telling you because we know and you know it ’cause you’re the ones who broke up the fight where we nearly beat the shit out of each other for both wanting Maddy to ourselves. Well, it doesn’t always work that way. In the end, you have to remember who you’re doing it all for.”
Then, to Dec’s surprise, he stuck out his hand. “You’re good men,” he said. “Both of you. And we’re obviously not going to pass judgment on the type of relationship you decide. But you do have to be open and communicative or someone will get hurt. And if Lily gets hurt, well, you know we have to kick your ass.”
“You can try,” Dec said, but he accepted first Christian’s then Ryder’s handshake. Micah did the same then the other two men took off down the hill, giving them a little bit of privacy under the cool, cloudy skies. Rain was in the air and electricity crackled in the far-off mountains.
“Shit.” Micah’s voice sounded like the thunder coming their direction and Dec sighed, nodding his head.
“What are we doing here, Micah?” he asked. “I mean, yeah, she’s taking off, but she’ll be back and…it’s just a big old clusterfuck right now. Obviously, they’re right, I don’t want anything to happen to her, but we can’t keep this up.”
Micah just sighed and looked up at the clouds. “You want to make her choose,” he said, his tone without judgment. “That won’t be an easy conversation to have, Dec. It’s going to suck, no matter what happens. I don’t know how we can expect that to work.”
“I don’t know how we can expect this to work,” Dec replied in exasperation, not at Micah so much as the crazy confusion of things going on around them. “I mean, how can they do it, really?” He jerked his chin in the direction Ryder and Christian had gone. “How can they share the love of their lives with each other and not struggle every single day, wondering and doubting?”
“Is Lily the love of your life?” Micah asked, his tone softening just a little. This question was no punch in the gut but a flame that started at his toes and burned him up, consuming and demanding reprieve. Because, of course, hadn’t he been asking himself something similar since the moment he’d lain eyes on her?
“Not yet,” he admitted. It was the truth. “But I’m terrified that she could be.” Terrified becau
se this was all mired in their shared relationship with one woman, terrified because he had survived the leaving of first his mother then Aubrey and if Lily walked out of his life it would rip him apart worse than either of those two absences ever had. “What about you?”
Micah, who had long ago believed he wasn’t deserving of love, rolled his head on his shoulders, looking like a mountain stretching its neck.
“It’s real for me,” he said, stark, honest, raw. “Whatever that means, however you want to phrase it, it’s real for me.”
“So we lay it on the table,” Dec replied, trying not to let Micah’s words hit him where it hurt. “And we see what she has to say. If and when she comes back here, it’ll have to be different. We can’t do this for our whole lives, Micah.”
“No matter what, it has to be up to her,” Micah replied. “And I can’t lose you, too, Dec. Whatever she says, yes or no, up or down, you or me, I can’t lose you as my best friend.”
Dec had to grit his teeth to keep from letting the emotion at the back of his throat overwhelm him and break free. He clapped Micah on the back and just nodded his agreement, even as fear and pain and guilt settled low in his belly. Because if this went wrong—and it had all the potential to go really, really, wrong—he could end up losing the two most important people in his life.
Chapter Thirteen
Something was up. Micah’s silence wasn’t anything new, though most of the time his quiet was a comfortable, peaceful kind, and right now Lily could practically see the lightning crackling around his body, signs of his unease and discomfort. Even the normally loquacious Dec was riding beside her back up the mountain with very little to say and the whole thing was so odd that Lily opened and shut her mouth several times, unsure of how to break the unusual tension.
After a very long quiet, she settled on a humorous topic. “So did the guys threaten to kick your ass or something?” She and Maddy had headed into the kitchen to get dinner together and the four men had stayed out in the fields for far longer than she would have thought it necessary to track a few coyotes, especially for the supposed best trackers in the mountains.
Dec scoffed. “They tried to. Don’t tell them I said this, but it turned into more of a heart-to-heart.”
Lily just laughed, imaging the four bulky, hulking men standing around talking about their feelings. Of course, that was adhering to all sorts of stereotypes about men and manliness and she knew for a damn fact that Dec and Micah both had feelings to spare, but the visual was striking.
“Well, Maddy and I had a good chat,” she said, feeling much more at ease than she had a moment before. There was nothing going on here except a little good old-fashioned quiet. She was definitely reading into it being something more.
“Ooh, safeguard your ego, Micah,” Dec said, looking over at Micah, whose stoic face cut into a small grin. She revised her earlier statement. Something’s definitely up. The question was what?
“Nothing like that.” She edged Cee Cee closer and swatted him on the arm. “I was going to wait to tell you guys until we got back, but I’m thinking of talking to Joe Delany tomorrow. Nothing serious, of course, just to find out what sort of requirements the job entails. I know Mia would love to run the shop on her own for as long as I’d let her, so I’m not worried about racing home, if he’d let me test things out for a few weeks. Mads says I can stay in one of the guest houses on the ranch then figure out if I want to make things permanent.”
Micah stopped short first and Aranck whinnied his disapproval at the sudden movement. Cisco, unbothered, casually pulled off to the side and Lily somehow found herself staring down two large horses and two seemingly larger men.
“What the hell is going on right now?” She didn’t mean to snap, but there was so much, between the way they’d both given her all that pleasure up on the hillside, to the overwhelming conversation she’d had with her sister about maybe uprooting her entire life, to the weird simmering tension between them, that Lily just didn’t have a whole lot left. “Because clearly something is going on and if it’s going to make you both weird and moody all night then I damn well want to know what it is.”
Another beat of silence. In the far-distant mountains, thunder rolled.
Micah spoke first, his words more sigh than speech. “Christian and Ryder got real with us, Lily. They wanted to know what we see happening here, in the future and all that. They just meant when you come back to visit Maddy, but now you’re thinking of staying here, so it looks like we have to answer this question sooner than we thought.”
And though she already had a very good idea as to where this conversation was going, Lily gritted her teeth and asked, “And what question might that be?”
Dec replied before Micah got the chance, “This thing between us, Lils, it’s…complicated. Maybe some men are cut out for a life like this, but I just don’t think I am.” He looked over at Micah, who slowly, but very definitively, shook his head. “We just wanted to lay it all out on the table, ya know? We can’t play this game where you date us both for the next however long you decide to live here, or whenever you visit.”
His voice dropped low and she could see all those shattered glimpses of the man who had been left by the women who loved him too many times.
“It’s a self-preservation thing,” he said. “It can’t be both.”
Such an innocuous statement. It can’t be both. Like she couldn’t have a cookie and a cupcake. It can’t be both, like a client couldn’t get winter and summer flowers in the same bouquet. It can’t be both, like she couldn’t keep the two men she loved in her life for any longer than two weeks.
Loved.
Holy shit.
The panic turned to anger in a second and she gripped Cee Cee’s reins tight in her hands.
“You want me to choose?” Her voice was scary calm and in the ghostly light from the thick clouds above, Lily could see they were both startled by her tone. “Oh, no, you don’t get to make me choose. No fucking way. Here’s the deal, gentlemen.” She overemphasized the word and Dec winced. “You’re allowed to break up with me. Both of you, either of you. You’re allowed to say, ‘Hey, Lils, it’s just not working out. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m afraid of commitment.’ Whatever the fuck. But you do not get to stand there—” Oh, her voice was definitely rising now. “Stand there and tell me that I have to pick one of you, like you haven’t both guided me into a new life, like you haven’t both helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel after all that I’ve lost. Like you haven’t both made me fall face fucking first in love with you these past days.” Her voice cracked and the waterworks started, silent tears streaming down her face. Or maybe that was the light splatter of drizzle on her face. So fucking fitting.
“You love us?” Micah asked, his voice so soft she could barely hear it. “Both of us?”
But Lily was done talking now. Her heart ached and burned and froze all at the same time and she turned Cee Cee away from the two men and back toward Triple Diamond.
“I’m going to stay with Madison tonight,” she said. “Maybe I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Lily, it’s about to storm. It’s not safe,” Dec said, his voice almost pleading, fear coloring the edges. Right at that moment, she didn’t give a damn. Because it hadn’t really resonated until right now, until she stared down the barrel of the gun, just what it meant to love both of them, just what it meant to have that love questioned, as if she could just snap her fingers and stop loving two men with equal parts passion and respect and joy and lust and everything else all rolled into one. And the fact that it had been these men themselves asking the fucking impossible question made the pain cut so deep in her chest that she wondered if she was even still breathing.
“I swear to God, if either one of you follow me, I’ll be on the first plane out of here in the morning,” she said, and without another word she was down the hill, pushing Cee Cee toward Maddy and away from the two men who so very carelessly held her heart.
&nbs
p; * * * *
Micah didn’t worry about much. He knew how to live in the wilderness for years, if he had to, could fashion food and shelter out of anything that could be found in the woods and could disappear off the grid overnight, should reason arise. He had long ago come to the conclusion that borrowing trouble only ever made things worse and his instinct as to when a problem was real or just looked real had very rarely steered him wrong.
So, the fact that he was worried at all, panic and fear gnawing at his stomach like midnight monsters under the bed, made him worried all over again.
They hadn’t heard from Lily in hours. He had wanted to follow her, wanted to damn her threats to leave to hell and follow her right down to the Triple Diamond Ranch, demand she…demand she what? The hurt in her eyes when they’d told her she had to pick one of them was as raw and gutting as a fish knife to the flesh and one glance at Dec had said everything. They needed to give her the chance to work things out or she would never forgive them. Besides, Maddy Hollis had been through everything before and if anyone in the world could offer some sage advice on unorthodox relationships, it would be her.
Except Lily hadn’t sent either one of them so much as a text or a basic call, and though he ached with the hurt he had seen in her eyes, the hurt he and Dec had caused her, Micah was more worried than anything else. He and Dec had come home, begrudgingly, and not ten minutes later, the storm that had been threatening all night had finally opened up and the skies had crashed down, wild and maddening around them. Trees whipped in the gales of winds and water hit the windows with the force of bullets upon the glass. He’d gone so far as to grab the puppies and other dogs from the barn, just as Lily had done the week before, and pulled out their candles and started a fire.
Which had kept him busy for all of about ten minutes. Now, each howl of the wind was echoing inside his very empty chest, rattling around, making him ache.