by Gemma Snow
What does it matter, you’ve already been in both their pants. Bad time for puns. Very bad time for them.
She found her jeans on top of her duffel bag and yanked them on, then the wool socks, then she headed for the living room.
Quinn was behind her first. By the time Lucas came out of the other room, he was wearing his flannel pajama bottoms—or maybe those were Quinn’s, too. What the fuck ever, they’d shared each other’s clothes in the past. Hell, she’d been stealing both their clothes pretty much since day one. But the idea of wearing them now—it felt all kinds of topsy-turvy.
“What’s the problem, Evvie?” Quinn asked. Lucas was leaning against the doorframe behind Quinn, his arms crossed and his pose almost relaxed, except that Ev knew better. She knew so, so much better, and the clicking tension in his jaw and the way his face pulled taut were all indications he was absolutely on edge.
And the fact that she knew it, not only did she know it but she wanted to put him at ease any way she knew how, that right there was the problem.
Sleeping with them hadn’t been the problem. It had been amazing and incredible and showed her a whole new world of pleasure and desire that even now Ev ached for. But sleeping with them had shown her the problem, and if she acknowledged what had gone on between them, how it had fundamentally changed something inside her, she would without a doubt ruin the two most important relationships in her life.
“What’s the problem?” Her voice cracked. Fuck. She’d faced down goddamned serial killers and hadn’t so much as batted an eye, but right now, with the formidable force of the two men before her, making her want despite everything else, Ev was losing control. And that pissed her off. “This… We should never have. Fuck. What if this makes things weird, huh? Was it worth it?”
Makes things weird was like calling a high alert code something to be concerned about. This wouldn’t make things weird—it would destroy them. All of them. Her relationship with Quinn, her relationship with Lucas, the guys’ relationship with each other. And the idea that they wouldn’t be what they had been for the last five years to each other—that scared Ev more than just about anything she had seen in her job.
“It won’t be weird,” Lucas said quietly, hanging back in an uncharacteristic move of restraint and defiance. To whom? Who’s in charge here? It sure as shit wasn’t her. “Ev, if you can just tell us what the problem is…”
“This.” She motioned to the room. “We fucked it all up. I fucked it all up, by letting this happen. I should never have let any of this happen. Not last night. Not this morning.” She glanced at Quinn when she said it, because hey, if she was going with self-flagellation she might as well hit the gas. The corner of his jaw ticked almost imperceptibly, but Ev saw it nonetheless. Yeah, this wasn’t good. None of this was good, despite how very good it had felt last night.
“It may not feel weird now,” she said. “But it’s different between us now. You can’t deny that it is, and I hate that. I hate the idea that we’re not as strong as we were.”
Quinn took a step toward her, but Ev pulled away and grabbed her coat off the back of the couch.
“It was just sex,” Quinn said. “We made love, nothing more.”
She scoffed. “Made love. No, babe. We fucked, all night long we fucked, and it felt great. But now it doesn’t feel so great, does it?”
It didn’t feel great to say those words, not when they weren’t true, not when Ev knew in the back of her mind that no matter how rough and crude and intense their sex had been, it had been making love. At least for her.
They didn’t understand where she was coming from. That was clear on both of their faces. Maybe they had really both believed things could simply go back to normal once the sun rose. Maybe, if the circumstances were different, if she were different, they might have. But they also didn’t know the secret she’d been running from for months, the one Quinn had mistakenly believed to be a bad mood caused by work or family stress, the one that didn’t just threaten to ruin everything between them now, but already had, in a fundamental, cracking foundation sort of way.
But Ev couldn’t say any of that. And right now, her throat tight with unshed tears, her face burning with fear and frustration and anger, she couldn’t say anything at all. Instead, she yanked her coat on, turned on her heel and, for the first time in as long as she could remember, if she didn’t count the night before, Ev played the part of the coward and fled.
Lucas watched her go in a tangle of winter clothes and hair and cold wind and he felt like a weight had settled right in the center of his chest. For a second, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get air back past the choked-up knot in his throat, and he knew that, despite the lack of articulation, despite the obvious emotion that had twisted Ev’s words into something hurtful, something cruel, she was absolutely, undeniably right.
He felt like he was watching himself move over to sit on the couch. At some point, Quinn had started a fire in the grate, because the room was warm and cozy. Lucas didn’t feel any of that comfort, though. His skin and his chest and his mind all felt frozen with the knowledge that, yep, he’d made a colossal fucking mistake.
“Did I miss something?” Quinn was the one leaning against the wall now. Lucas hated when he did that analysis thing, looking too close at a person’s nonverbal tics to see what they were hiding, what you wanted, what you were willing to die for. Most of the time, that last one was reserved for the terrorists they encountered, but Lucas wasn’t entirely certain it didn’t apply here too. “This should have been fine, right?” He cocked his head to the side and stared at the door Ev had just run out of.
It is fine. It should be fine and it is fine and…
“What am I missing, Lucas?”
Fuck. If he’d known it was this fucking hard to have a secret living with two other FBI agents, he would have picked friends in the civilian sector.
“Maybe you should go after her,” he said, instead of replying to Quinn, because what he really wanted to say, what he really wanted to tell him was on the tip of his tongue and if it came to light, there was no going back. Not in the we slept together in a big old pile last night way, but in a way he’d never be able to shut back up.
“She doesn’t want me to,” Quinn said. “She wanted to be alone to process this, whatever this is. I’ll find her in a few minutes.”
Then he came over and sat down next to Lucas on the couch, filling the space with his presence and making the weight and guilt and hurt in Lucas’ chest feel both so much heavier and so much lighter. That was what friends were for, wasn’t it? Being there when you needed them even if you didn’t want them? Crowding your personal space when you didn’t know what was best for you?
And Lucas had gone ahead and committed the cardinal sin of friendship. Or rather, he’d finally acknowledged that thing deep inside himself that meant there was no going back to the way things were.
Quinn placed his hand on Lucas’ shoulder and Lucas smiled. They’d been through a hell of a lot together, each of them fighting their own demons, together. Each of them running to the Bureau, and away from the things they’d left behind, Ev’s in her neighbor’s closet nearly two and a half decades earlier, Quinn’s on the streets of Kabul, Lucas’ in East Hollywood. To speak nothing of their jobs and the horrors they faced each and every day they went into work. Another thing that tied them all together.
That past was just one more reason Quinn deserved the absolute truth and so Lucas finally lifted his head out of his hands and turned to look at the man he’d called brother for nearly five years.
“I’m transferring.” There, that was easy.
Coward.
Quinn blinked, but didn’t show any other signs of even having heard Lucas. So he barreled on, sure that once he started he wasn’t going to stop until the whole sordid tale was out there for the world to see.
“The Los Angeles office has an opening and they want me. It’s closer to my family and I…I can do some good in my homeland, ya know? Clear the streets
I walked as a kid.” He scrubbed his face with his hands and wondered why this was the hardest conversation he’d had in recent memory. “I wasn’t sure, ya know? In fact, I’ve been going back and forth on it for a while. But I think I’m going to accept. I think… I think it’s best.”
Because I tasted the fucking forbidden fruit and it didn’t make me want her any less, didn’t make me…
“Why?” Quinn was remarkable at that, at not putting any emotions into his voice. It was the only way one worked in his field. But Lucas knew him better and he knew that Quinn was probably feeling both confused and hurt right now, and the last thing he wanted to do was make this harder for any of them, because lord only knew it was damn hard enough.
“I thought I could stay,” he muttered. “When you and Ev first started dating. Hell.” He laughed, the sound self-effacing and more bitter than he felt. Or thought he had felt. “I actually thought I was happy for you guys. Imagine that, right?”
He took a deep breath, because this wasn’t going to be the first time he said it out loud. It wasn’t going to be the first time he told another person. No, it was going to be the very first time he acknowledged it for what it was in the months since the feelings had first churned his gut and left his heart cold.
“I love her, Quinn.”
He turned. Quinn’s eyes were soft. Softer than Lucas had expected them to be, but then again, maybe this hadn’t been the revelation for his best friend it had been for Lucas. The thought made his shoulders sag a little and a small amount of weight lift from his spine, the tension in his back loosening by a fraction and a half. Quinn—and Ev, of course—they’d forgiven him for a lot. No, things couldn’t go back to the way they had been before all this, but they might be able to forgive him and that mattered.
“I thought I’d be able to touch her without losing my mind,” Lucas admitted, and was it just him or was the sound that came from his throat a little tight and pinched and husky? “I was wrong. Being with her last night, this morning, it only made those feelings real. Strong. Dangerous.” Not a flicker of surprise in the other man’s gaze. That was good, at least.
He stood, because he was sitting there in his goddamn pajama bottoms, and Quinn was fully dressed and had been up and working while the moon was still high in the sky and wasn’t that just the way of things between them?
Of course, he couldn’t bring himself to hate Quinn. Not even now.
“I think moving is the best thing for all of us,” he said. “Because you guys deserve a chance and…and so do I.”
Then it was silent. The fire crackled in the grate and the wind brushed the windows and rustled the bare trees, but the silence was one between Lucas and Quinn, a silence where Lucas truly didn’t know what Quinn was going to say next—or if he even deserved to hear it.
“I thought I’d be more surprised by this.” In truth, Quinn didn’t sound surprised at all. “But I also know what it’s like to love her, so maybe I’m biased.” He chuckled against his hand, brushing his mouth as if deep in thought. Lucas paced, his movements frenetic as a caged beast. Quinn sat there looking fucking dignified and handsome and in control of a situation there was no getting control over.
“I would never do anything to drive you two apart,” Lucas said quietly. “But I also can’t stay here. Not now. Not after what we’ve done together.” And not with the knowledge that she would always be so incredibly close to him, and yet farther away than the whole distance from Los Angeles to DC.
“Of course not,” Quinn replied. “I…I’m not quite sure what to say here.” Quinn Langston, unsure—Lucas had seen everything. “I know we would miss you if you moved.” He shook his head before Lucas could interrupt. “We would both miss you. A lot. And I also understand why transferring feels like the right thing to do.” He paused. “Does she know? Is that why she left like that?”
Lucas shook his head, the familiar guilt settling heavy back in his stomach. “You’re the only person I’ve ever said it to. Including myself. I think she’s just afraid of ruining our friendship, but that one is all on me.”
A humorless laugh, if he had ever heard one.
Quinn looked like he was about to say something, but a phone buzzed on the kitchen counter and he glanced away from Lucas then grimaced.
“Brandenwell is up my ass about this file,” he said. “Hang on. Just… Just hang on.”
Yeah right, like there was anywhere for him to go. The Triple Diamond Ranch might have spanned about three miles in every direction, but he couldn’t run far enough or fast enough to clear his own head. Plus, with his fucking luck, he’d probably stumble upon some blissfully wed orgy involving one of the Hollis sisters. Was it technically an orgy with three people? It didn’t matter—chances were he’d see Ev next, and that was one he really couldn’t bear.
I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to walk away. Not from either of them.
But he also didn’t want to flay himself on the cross as he watched the two of them slip deeper into their powerful, long-term relationship, one that would eventually include a place of their own, one that would never include him the way he now understood he wanted to be included. Or something.
Fuck. Just fuck. That summed it up pretty nicely.
Quinn chatted quietly on the phone for a while, his face back to an impassive mask, and Lucas found a long-sleeved shirt on the back of the chair and tugged it over his head. No use in being naked during his nice little pity party. Eventually, Quinn signed off then slipped the phone into his pocket.
“She needs me to look at something.” He was apologetic now. “It’s urgent and can’t wait, but this conversation isn’t over. And I think, before you make any rash decisions, you need to speak with Ev. Okay? Don’t accept the job yet.”
It was the most he had said since Lucas’ confession and Lucas nodded a little dumbly.
“Okay,” he said. His voice was distant and didn’t sound familiar to him. Quinn gave him a somewhat tight smile then headed out of the door, shutting it behind him. Just like Ev.
Lucas shook his head. If he had any goddamn sense, he would be the one to walk away next time, before anyone else got the chance to do it first.
Chapter Twelve
The barn was warm and comfortable, and Ev understood why she’d stumbled upon Lily and Micah in there the first night. It was sweetly erotic, with strong scents of hay and firewood and flannel, and it made her ache to be held, caressed, kissed.
But, of course, aching to be held, caressed and kissed was what had gotten her into this fool mess in the first place.
She should have fucking known she wouldn’t be strong enough to keep her feelings separate from her desires. Deep down, she had known, of course. But she’d wanted him, wanted the whole thing, more than she’d cared. And this was her hangover to show for it. Fitting, since being with the both of them together was intoxicating and spicy and hot across her tongue and lips and neck…
A soft moan escaped her mouth and Ev couldn’t have told herself for a million dollars if it was out of lust or sadness. Were they mutually exclusive? It seemed like they should have been, but her body still hadn’t forgotten any of Lucas’ touches or tastes or the way he’d felt inside her, and goddamn it, that was part of the problem.
“Ev, is that you?” Her shadow came into view first then Lily stuck her head around the stack of hay to where Ev was sitting.
Hiding. Like a coward.
“Hi, Lily.” Her voice cracked. What would the folks who’d called her the ice queen have to say now?
“Don’t Hi, Lily me,” Lily said. She was a tall woman, willowy and thin, but her arms were muscled and when she set her shoulders and jaw, nothing about her would blow down in a stiff wind. “We shared clothes. We’re way past informal.” Ev didn’t want to admit exactly what had happened in those borrowed clothes. Lily crouched so they were eye level, her dark brown gaze far too knowing for comfort, and Ev just rolled her eyes.
“Whatever you’re going to say, just s
ay it.”
Lily opened her mouth, but before she got the chance to say anything, the door opened again and, a moment later, Maddy Hollis joined them in the warm, cozy corner of the barn. It was a good thing it was still early, otherwise she’d be showing up to this wedding smelling like horse.
“Oh dear.” Maddy went full older sister in a second. Ev had two sisters of her own, confident, brash, outspoken women, who had busted on her and their brother through most of her childhood but would have both been first in line to defend her in a fight to the death. Maddy’s expression was nothing short of ferocious, though it was clear she was trying to hold back.
“Which one hurt you, love?” she asked. She didn’t bother to crouch, but simply settled against the wall a few feet from Ev, fire in her eyes. Sympathy and patience, too. “I bet it was the pretty one. It’s always the pretty one because they’re used to getting away with everything.”
Ev raised an eyebrow, trying not to smile. “Which one is the pretty one?”
“Lucas, obviously,” Maddy said, at the exact same moment Lily said, “Quinn, of course.”
Both of Ev’s eyebrows went up at that. “Scouting my men, are we?” Their expressions changed at the same instance Ev realized her slip. “Not my men. I mean, Quinn is my man, but Jesus, I was just kidding. Lucas is my friend, not my man.” She was rambling and Maddy and Lily Hollis were letting her, because without a doubt they both knew exactly what was going on in her head.
So Ev decided not to beat around the bush. Jesus, what fucking good would it do, huh? Ev was smart. She was well-educated and street-smart and knew a hell of a lot about people, about what made them tick, about what made them do good things and bad things and the whole spectrum between. But when it came to a matter like this, she was on foreign turf. No use in denying a tour guide.
“I slept with them last night,” she said quietly. “Both of them. Then Lucas again, this morning. Alone.”
And why that felt like some sort of confession, Ev wasn’t quite certain. Quinn had essentially given them a free pass to do whatever they wanted to do. It wasn’t like she was cheating.