Ink Enduring (Montgomery Ink #5)

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  Maya opened the door before he could knock, and he smiled down at her. “I saw you park.” She studied his face. “You doing okay?” She moved back to let him in, and he stalked toward her, cupping her face in his hands.

  All thoughts of Holly and what he’d almost done if he hadn’t found Maya and Border fled his mind at the sight of her.

  “I’m doing fucking amazing,” he growled before slamming his mouth to hers.

  She kissed him back just as hard, their tongues clashing as their hands roamed each other’s bodies. “I’m not wearing panties,” she whispered, and he groaned.

  “Fuck, yeah,” he said with a feral grin. “I can’t wait to eat you up, Maya Montgomery.”

  She fluttered her eyelashes. “You know how I love oral. Though I still don’t know who does it better, you or Border. I’m going to need a lot of data to make sure.”

  He chuckled roughly. “I think that can be arranged.” He studied her face. “I’m so fucking lucky to have you in my life. You and Border. We weren’t ready before, you know. We weren’t ready until he was here. I can’t explain it. Yeah, you and I were tiptoeing around each other for a while, headed down a path that might have been so much different than it is now, but we would have fucked it up. It took Border for us to change what we thought we wanted, to see what we actually needed.”

  He didn’t know why he’d blurted that out just then, but he knew from the look in her eyes that he’d said the right thing.

  “We’d have done okay,” she whispered. “We’re hot as fuck, after all.” They both chuckled. “We’re everything, Jake. We wasted time, but who we are now? That’s who we needed to be in order to be together. The two of us? We could have made it without Border, but it wouldn’t be this. You’re right, we’d have fucked it up.”

  He kissed her temple. “And that wouldn’t have been enough.”

  She kissed his chin. “To misquote that horrible movie, Border completes us.”

  Jake smiled then, bringing Maya to him. “Yeah, he does. But you complete me, too.” She grinned at him, and he slid his hand beneath the waistband of her leggings, finding her ass bare. When he kept going to cup her between her legs, she gasped. “You’re bare for me, baby. Perfect.”

  “Don’t call me baby,” she muttered against his lips.

  “I’ll call you mine.” He kissed her then, knowing they were on the same page, their bodies tightly wound, in sync, and their thoughts and emotions on the future.

  We can do this, Jake thought. They could make this work.

  And for the first time in a long time, he had hope.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The bile in Maya’s mouth wouldn’t go down, and she’d already thrown up twice. Her head ached, and her limbs were too heavy for her to pick up for longer than a single moment.

  This couldn’t be happening. Nope. It was all just a dream. Soon she’d wake up and everything would be just as it was before things had come crashing down around her. Maybe she’d wake up between her two men and be perfectly fine.

  There she was again, telling herself she would be fine when she was anything but.

  She wasn’t going to throw up again. No, sir.

  And even if she did, maybe it was the flu. Yes, it could be the flu. That’s what they all said, after all.

  She looked down at the two tiny pink lines and cursed. Then she looked down at her feet since she was currently sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning against the wall, and cursed again. Six other tests of various types littered the floor, staring up at her. Judging.

  Yes, the little bastards judged her.

  Little fuckers.

  Some had two pink lines. Others had two windows where one was blue, the other a deep violet. One even had freaking words in the window that mocked her.

  Pregnant, it said.

  Pregnant.

  She, Maya Montgomery, was pregnant.

  And she didn’t know who the father was. She’d gone bare with both men and had even had a condom break with Border before she’d forgone condoms altogether. They were all clean and tested, after all. She was on fucking birth control.

  She wasn’t supposed to be pregnant. For fuck’s sake, the other women in her family were pregnant. That was enough Montgomery progeny for now. She wasn’t even sure if her men loved her. They hadn’t said the words, and she’d been too chicken shit to say them. Their future was more uncertain now than it had been when they’d started because they’d all been so freaking careful not to say anything about their future.

  Border could leave at any moment.

  Jake could decide it was too much.

  And Maya would end up alone and pregnant.

  In any other relationship, this would be too much, but with three people involved in a society where more than two was beyond taboo—and illegal in some cases—this was even worse. She’d never be able to marry both of them if it came to that. They could marry each other now thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling, and she could marry either of them, but there wouldn’t be a legal union between the three of them.

  That was if they wanted that in the first place.

  Her brain hurt, as well as many other parts of her since she’d spent the morning throwing up and drinking way too much water so she could pee on various sticks of doom.

  What would happen to this child? What kind of ridicule would he or she grow up with because Maya had been selfish to think that everything would eventually work out in a relationship between two men and her? She was going to ruin this child’s life because she told herself she’d take Jake as he was, no matter what. And in the process of that, she’d fallen for Border, as well.

  She was as much of a slut, a whore, as people thought she was. Her family, as well as Jake’s, might be okay with what they were—even if she couldn’t describe it fully—but that didn’t mean the rest of the world would be. She’d seen the looks on people’s faces as she stood in line at the grocery store with her two men. She could feel the stares as she went out to dinner with both of them. Though they’d been very, very careful to keep it casual, they hadn’t been able to hide it all. There was a reason the three of them were explosive between the sheets—and in the shower, on the couch, on the counter—and that reason just meant it would be forever difficult for her, Jake, and Border to hide what they were.

  And now she was pregnant, and she didn’t know who exactly had fathered her child. It could have been either of them, and if she were thinking a little clearer, she’d know that deep down, both of them would claim the child as their own. Or perhaps, that was just wishful thinking. They were still so new that they hadn’t discussed what would happen if she got pregnant. They hadn’t even discussed if she would move in, or what Border’s new job would be.

  Hell, they’d been so focused on not rocking the boat, they’d knocked the damn thing over… as well as knocking her up.

  Bile filled her mouth again, and she sniffed, refusing to let the tears fall. She was Maya freaking Montgomery; she would not cry. Crying was for the weak.

  And if she truly believed that, she wouldn’t be a Montgomery.

  Yet, if she cried, it would make it all that much more real. She put her empty hand on her stomach and closed her eyes. This can’t be happening, she told herself once again. Why couldn’t she wake up from this dream, this nightmare?

  She pinched her arm and cursed when all she ended up with was a red mark and the twinge of pain that told her this was all too real. There would be no waking up from this. There would only be the consequences of her decisions.

  In all her life, she never thought she’d be one of those girls that ended up pregnant accidently. She’d thought she was smart, untouchable. She’d been on birth control not only to regulate her periods, but because she damn well liked sex, and had since she was seventeen. She always used condoms except with Border and Jake. And when the freaking condom had broken, she’d told herself her birth control would handle it so she hadn’t even looked into the morning-after pill.


  Because of her lack of planning and poor decisions, she would be having a baby in nine months, and she still didn’t know where she stood with the two men in her life.

  Maya knew there were other options to take care of this. Adoption and abortion, for sure, but honestly, she knew that neither of those were for her. She couldn’t end this pregnancy because she was out of sorts. If she’d been younger, unsure of herself and her position in the world, that might have been an option. The same could be said of adoption at that point.

  But she wasn’t some twenty-year-old college student without options. Just because she didn’t know who the father was or how Border and Jake would react, didn’t mean she had to make rash decisions.

  And yet, as she put her hand on her stomach once more, she knew she couldn’t give this up, couldn’t stop what had come to her and changed her so quickly. She was going to have a baby.

  What she would do with that? How she would cope? She had no freaking clue.

  The sound of a door slamming brought her out of her thoughts, and she sucked in a breath. She scrambled up, the pregnancy tests scattering across the floor. She cursed and tried to gather them up, but she’d been an idiot and had taken too many. The guys couldn’t find out now, couldn’t find out this way. Tears finally slid down her cheeks, and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. There wasn’t enough time. She never had enough time.

  She threw four of the tests away and was about to pick up the other three when the bathroom door opened. Fuck her for not locking it, but she’d been in a state and numb. Not to mention, this was her freaking apartment.

  “What’s up, baby?” Jake asked before he froze. His gaze landed on the multiple tests in her hands and the others sticking out of the trash. She was kneeling on the floor, tears running down her face, her hair disheveled and panties dangling around one ankle since she’d been a little stressed during the last few rounds of tests.

  He called me baby, she thought. Baby. Oh, there was a baby all right, and it wasn’t her. And maybe if she hadn’t been having a panic attack or stroke at the moment, she’d have said something like that to diffuse the tension. Instead, she opened her mouth like a fish and tried to suck in air.

  It didn’t seem to be working too well.

  Border slid in behind Jake and looked down at her state before meeting her gaze. She blinked, trying to come up with words, but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.

  “Maya,” Border whispered. “Take deep breaths, honey.” He knelt in front of her, taking the tests from her and handing them to Jake.

  “I peed on those.”

  Oh, yes, classy. Of all the things to say in this situation, mentioning her urine ranked right up there with a lobotomy.

  Jesus, she needed to get her mind in the game or she’d break. Though she wasn’t sure she hadn’t broken yet.

  “I think that’s how these things work,” Jake croaked. “You got her?” He seemed to be talking to Border just then, but Maya wasn’t sure what she was seeing. In fact, she couldn’t see through her tears at all.

  Border nudged at her ankle, and she sighed so she could slip on her panties. Classy, she thought again. Oh, so classy. He slid his arm under her knees and around her shoulders before picking her up to his chest. She let out a squeak and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “I’m too heavy,” she rasped.

  “It seems you might be getting a bit heavier shortly.” He said the damn words so calmly that she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. That was the case with Border, though. She was never sure what he was thinking. Why weren’t the guys freaking the hell out as she was?

  That thought dried up her tears, and she was finally able to focus on what was actually going on around her. Jake stood in her living room, her tests clutched in his hands. The veins in his forearm stood out, and on any other day, she’d have thought that was sexy. Yet right then, all she could see was the strain.

  Border remained silent as he set her down on her feet. When he’d done that in the past, he’d always wrapped an arm around her waist and held her close. This time, however, he took two steps backward, the distance between them as cavernous as the emotional break within her heart.

  They were looking at her but not seeing anything. No one spoke, the tension in the room rising with each passing moment. She was finally able to catch her breath, the numbness she felt over the way they were acting spreading throughout her body. That blessed drugged-like feeling allowed her to think about what she had to do next.

  When Jake took a step, not toward her but to Border, she knew exactly what she had to do.

  It would always be them against her. She would always be the interloper. She’d known that when she came to Jake in the first place. She’d thought she’d be fine, broken or not, in her friendship with Jake when she thought he would marry Holly. But this was so much different. Different to the point that she knew she’d never fully be whole again.

  With that one movement between them and their silence, she knew that while they would want her, would perhaps even need her with them, she’d never be to them what they were to each other. They had a history she could only brush against, one she could never fully be a part of.

  A tiny part of her knew this was the emotions—and perhaps the hormones—talking, but the rest of her knew that to protect herself, to protect what was growing inside of her at that very moment, she had to be strong.

  To be the Maya Montgomery she used to be before she’d fallen for Jake Gallagher. Before she’d then fallen for Border Gentry.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said simply.

  Nothing was ever less simple than that, though.

  Border looked down at the tests in Jake’s hands and remained silent. Jake cleared his throat.

  “I can see that,” he croaked.

  She blinked quickly. She needed to get this over with before she broke once more. “I know we didn’t plan this, but it happened. These things do, I suppose.”

  “I guess,” Jake added. Border didn’t say a thing. Of course.

  “I know we didn’t talk about this, but it’s okay. I get it. We’ll work things out because it’s what we do, but I know we did this a little too fast.” She gave a manic laugh. “I mean, we were supposed to fall in love with each other first, you know?”

  Neither of them said a thing, and she forced herself not to take a step back from the blow. Holy hell…

  They didn’t love her.

  They didn’t say anything, they wouldn’t. After all this time, after everything they’d been through, they didn’t love her. She might have told herself she’d walk away from them so they could be what they needed to be, but that small part of her had always thought they’d love her as she loved them.

  She’d been so horribly wrong.

  Maya rolled her shoulders, putting on the façade that had let her become the Maya Montgomery others knew. She’d only let it fade for these two, and yet, she needed that shield once again.

  “As I said, this moved a little too fast, and I know we’ll have to discuss what we’re doing later, but I need some time.” Her voice threatened to break, and she paused to gather herself once more. She’d be damned if she’d fall apart in front of them when they refused to say a thing. “This is all a little too much right now with everything going on, so…yeah.” She looked at them once more, begging them to say a single word, yet they didn’t.

  They wouldn’t.

  “I’m out,” she whispered. “It’s always been the two of you,” she began. “And I understood that. I did. But then I didn’t. So, yeah, I’m going to go and let you do you. We’ll figure out the details later, but, yeah, this is a little too much right now.”

  When they still didn’t speak, either from shock or whatever the fuck was wrong with them, she let out a breath and turned away. She picked up her purse and walked as calmly as she could out of her own apartment, leaving the two men alone.

  Only they weren’t alone, were they?

  No, she was the one alo
ne. Because she was the one that had stupidly gotten pregnant with two men who didn’t love her; who clearly felt more for each other than they did for her.

  She was just so fucking stupid.

  With a sigh, she drove to her other home, the shop that had always steadied her. It would be her refuge, her place of purpose and need. She knew she might see her family there, and probably would, but maybe they would help her make things better. She’d always had them, even when she’d hidden her feelings for Jake from the world.

  Maybe the Montgomerys would heal her because Jake and Border hadn’t said a damn word.

  She parked in the lot behind the shop and turned off her engine, her body shaking. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t have a baby with two men who didn’t love her, who didn’t fight for her. She’d told them she was pregnant, and they hadn’t said a word. Instead, they’d moved closer to one another, and she’d been on the outside looking in.

  Maya didn’t know her next step, but she knew she couldn’t think of what it was when she wasn’t feeling like herself. Only she wasn’t sure she knew what that felt like anymore, or if she’d ever be able to feel it again.

  The knock on her car window forced a scream from her throat, and she turned to see the one person in the world she’d never thought to see again, yet the very woman who might be able to help because there weren’t any expectations.

  Maya opened the car door and let out a breath. “Holly.”

  Holly gripped Maya’s hands, her warmth soothing the ice that was Maya. “What the hell did that dumbass do?”

  The cursing coming from Holly’s mouth was so out of character that Maya couldn’t help but laugh, even as tears slid down her cheeks.

  “He didn’t do anything,” Maya finally said.