by Maxene Novak
I figured I could handle it if they were still hurt or angry at me for the breakup. But if they looked at me with pity…
I’d have to turn right around and walk out on the whole thing. Because I could handle anything but that.
Finally, I gave a very cautious agreement to it.
And that was how a week later I found myself opening the door to my hotel suite at the Beverly Wilshire to a pair of ghosts from my recent past.
They both looked just as good as I’d remembered. Better even, now that they’d had a chance to get some sun and decent food and rest. Jessie’s hair was still floppy and completely untamed. Shane was still wearing his hair shaved short on the sides and long on the top, but his hair was filled with golden highlights now. At first, I wondered if he’d succumbed to the L.A. obsession with vanity and gotten fake highlights. Then I realized they were natural. He’d just been walking around in the sunshine enough to lighten his hair the old-fashioned way.
I didn’t know how to greet them. How were you supposed to say hello to someone you wrongly and stupidly dumped without warning? Should we shake hands or…?
Suddenly Jessie’s arms were around me, my face buried against his chest, and I just sagged. He still smelled the same, like Irish Spring soap and a hint of cologne. Still felt the same, his hard chest more familiar than even my own body, his arms just the same as I’d remembered and frequently dreamed about as they held me like I was a precious treasure he’d just discovered and wanted to cart home with him.
And I didn’t know why, but I found myself crying all of a sudden, tears just pouring down my cheeks and soaking the front of his shirt. I was going to blame it on the steroids.
That’s when Shane joined in the group hug, those big, calloused hands of his caressing my hair.
“I’m so sorry,” I heard myself whisper to them. “I was so stupid. I thought…I thought I was doing the right thing for all of us. I know you thought I was being a selfish bitch. But I swear I really wasn’t! Both your careers were starting to go big, and I thought the fans would turn on us all and…”
“Shh,” Jessie whispered, pressing his cheek to my temple, and my fingers fisted even tighter around his shirt. “It’s okay now. We all get stupid every now and then. Just some of us have to go to rehab to figure it out.”
“Asshole,” I said on a laugh, leaning back to swat his rock-hard abs. I turned and wrapped an arm around Shane, pulling him in closer to me. “God, I can’t believe how much I missed you two. Even in Brazil, and India, and wherever the hell else they kept dragging me around to. I’d see a scorpion skewer and think ‘I wonder if Shane would be brave enough to try this; I know Jessie would.’”
Jessie grinned. “Yeah, you do know us.” He kissed my forehead, and I leaned into the kiss, overwhelmed suddenly that this was happening, that they were here, that their arms were really around me and we were talking and laughing as if I’d never broken us up.
“So…” I leaned back enough to wipe at my running nose. “I hear you two are L.A.’s latest new it couple?” I turned and led the way into the sitting area, stopping by a side table to grab a silver box of tissues along the way so I could blow my nose.
Shane snorted and rolled his eyes as he circled around to sit on the edge of the couch beside me. Jessie took the other side of me, flopping down on the couch so hard he bounced us a little.
I looked down at the wad of tissue in my hands. “I kept seeing all these pictures of you two out together in public. You looked…cozy.”
Shane reached up to tuck my hair back behind my ear, his fingertip making a lingering trail along my cheek. “It’s not the same without you though. We began this thing as a threesome. With just the two of us…”
“There’s a serious lack of variety,” Jessie finally finished for him. “Speaking of change, I like the new look.” He reached up to run a hand over my hair, and I sighed, feeling tension drop from my shoulders that I hadn’t even realized was there. “Gotta be a hell of a lot easier to take care of and cart around on that little neck of yours.”
A laugh escaped me. “It is.”
“Not to mention, sexy as hell,” Shane murmured, his voice dropping even lower than usual and making me swallow and things tighten low in my body.
Jessie cleared his throat, and I looked up in surprise at him. He shrugged. “Shane made me promise to act like an adult here. Now he’s the one acting like the lovesick idiot instead. Figures.”
“Asshole,” Shane muttered, but a smile teased at the corners of his lips as he stared at me.
Right. We should be acting like adults, shouldn’t we? I cleared my throat and sat up straighter. “So…I guess we should be working out how we want to do this song? Any thoughts?”
I looked from Shane to Jessie, only to find Jessie grinning wildly and Shane with a bemused half smile. Shane leaned back on the couch, stretching an arm out along its back behind me.
“What?” I murmured, confused at their hesitation.
Shane shook his head. “Still all business, I see.”
I took a deep breath to steady myself, remembering some of what I’d learned at rehab. “No. Not necessarily. And definitely not business according to what others want this time.”
Shane’s eyebrows shot up, as if he didn’t believe me. Frowning, I stood up and began to pace in front of the fireplace, needing the glass-topped coffee table between the three of us so I could think clearer and figure out exactly what I wanted to say.
I didn’t speak until I was ready. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be. They thought I should fit into this little mold, like I could only be one side of me. But that’s not who I really am. It took getting really, really sick in some foreign country, surrounded by strangers who had no clue who I really was, and then two months recovering in rehab—the one place I swore I’d never end up—to figure out that the lupus wasn’t killing me. I was. Every time I kept quiet instead of asking for what I wanted or needed, every time I pushed away everything I loved that didn’t fit inside that mold they made for me, I was killing off another piece of me.
“I had to nearly die to see this. And to find the courage to fight for the right to live my own life. But I’m doing that now. And you two being here, that’s a major part of it. Because what we had…” I had to swallow hard, take a deep breath and try again. “What we had wasn’t dirty or wrong like I thought. It wasn’t something shameful that should be hidden. You two figured that out. It took me awhile to catch up.”
I stopped pacing and faced them, my heart racing so fast inside my chest that I was slightly breathless as I pushed on. “I realized how much I loved you. Still love you. And that what we had was actually the only honest and healthy thing in my life. Well, other than my best friend Dani, of course.” My fingers twisted together before me as I searched first Jessie’s expression, then Shane’s, trying to figure out what they were thinking. “I don’t want to hide anything anymore. I deserve to get to be happy. And nobody else gets to decide what that happiness should be but me.”
They were silent, so silent I could count each of our breaths and the ticking of the clock in my bedroom through its open doorway.
Shane was the first to break that silence. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, loosely clasping his hands between them, his eyebrows raised. “So…what is that happiness now? What do you want, Sabrina?”
Oh God. They were really going to make me do all the work and take all the steps here, weren’t they?
Then again, I guessed that was fair since I was also the one who took all the steps to ruin what we’d had going.
I drew in a long, long breath, held it, then said, “I want…you two. I want what we had, but without the secrets.”
Shane stared up at me. So did Jessie.
Seconds turned into a minute.
Shane turned his head to look at Jessie, and they did that male wordless communication that always both intrigued and annoyed me at the same time
.
Something softened in Shane’s eyes, and they stood up and walked around the coffee table. I froze, needing all my courage to look up at them. Was this the moment they began to pity the poor girl who was still in love with them after they’d moved on months ago? Would I get the “that’s sweet, but let’s just stay friends” speech now?
Shane touched a fingertip to the underside of my chin, gently raising my head up until our gazes collided and held. “I think that could be workable.”
“Could be?” I mumbled, my whole body trembling with a wild and crazy growing hope inside.
I felt Jessie’s fingertips resting on my shoulders a second before they slowly slid lower to the small of my back, just before his breath whispered over the back of my bare neck, making my legs shake even worse. “Mmm hmm,” Jessie whispered. “As long as you do something for us now.”
“What?” I whispered, that wild hope choking the air from my lungs.
“Show us this mysterious tattoo you finally got,” Jessie said right before his lips brushed against my skin above the collar of my loose tunic style shirt.
Then Shane lowered his head, his lips brushing over mine so softly I was afraid to move, afraid to break the spell they were weaving around me.
Just like they had our first time together.
It was only when he kissed me a second time, more firmly now, that I dared to slide one hand up and around Shane’s neck, while my free hand reached back to grip the front of Jessie’s t-shirt, pulling them both in as close as possible until I was finally once again surrounded on all sides by their heat and strength.
And more importantly, their love. And this time, without any shame, or secrets, or regrets.
Only hope, and joy, and anticipation for what the future would hold for the three of us. Together.
EPILOGUE
Sabrina
One Month Later…
The limo pulled to a stop by the red carpet, and the cameras flashed.
“You sure you want to do this?” Shane asked from beside me on the limo’s smooth leather seat.
I took a deep breath and nodded.
The guard outside opened the door, and I eased out, careful not to catch my heels in the folds of my long, red, beaded satin gown. Immediately the paps began to shout my name and various things designed to try and illicit an emotional response from me. I ignored them all, stepping forward to make room.
Shane climbed out next, followed closely by Jessie, both beyond gorgeous in their custom black tuxes.
We paused like we’d practiced. Then they each held out an elbow, and I slipped a hand into the crooks of their arms. This was our coming out as a threesome for all the world to see.
We smiled for the cameras, and the shouting jumped into a frenzied pitch.
We slowly walked down the red carpet, posing at the customary spots for the cameras for a couple of minutes. Farther along the red carpet, many huge names within the music industry milled around in tuxes and gorgeous gowns, chatting together and being interviewed by select members of the media, many of which were televising all of this live worldwide. From the corner of my eye, I noticed many of our fellow music artists actually stopped talking and turned to briefly stare at us with raised eyebrows.
Even within the rock star world, arriving at the AMAs with two dates who I also now openly lived with full time was still pretty edgy.
I sighed, holding my smile in place in spite of it all. It would take time for people to get used to the idea of us. Some might not ever accept us. No doubt many of my fans would hate it too and shun me as a bad influence on today’s youth.
But this was my choice. Not the fans’.
“Sabrina, can you turn and show us your new tattoo?” someone amongst the paps yelled even louder than the rest.
Though inwardly I was shaking, I let go of my guys and turned my back to the cameras, then looked back over my left shoulder with a raised eyebrow and a saucy smile. Shane and Jessie had spent hours helping me find just the right dress with a large open back for just this moment to reveal my tattoo. And I had to admit, the red satin did nicely frame the twelve-inch-long angel wings that extended over my shoulder blades, one in black, the other in white.
“What does it mean?” another pap yelled. “Are you trying to break free of the good girl image and tell the world you’ve gone bad now? Is that why the public threesome?”
I tried hard not to roll my eyes as I gave the carefully rehearsed reply, because we’d known this would come up. And better to address it now rather than later.
“No. I have not ‘gone bad.’ The white and black angel wings represent different sides of me, just like all humans have. None of us are all good or all bad. We’re all a little of both. Including me. And the reason I’m here with Shane Reynolds and Jessie Quinn tonight is just as simple, and just as complicated. It’s because these are the two people whom I love dearly. The heart wants what it wants. It’s only the narrow minded who feel that everything in life has to be able to be placed inside an easy-to-define-and-understand box.” I turned to beam at my gorgeous guys, who beamed right back at me, their eyes shining with love and pride. Then they leaned in and kissed my cheeks at the same time, which actually wasn’t pre-scripted at all.
My heart swelled with so much love that it was kind of hard to breathe. I had gotten so incredibly lucky, not just in finding these two amazing men who’d completely stolen my heart, but in finding my way back to them and their forgiveness and to a shared future together that, while complicated and sure to not always be easy, would definitely always be exciting and full of love.
Then we turned to go inside the theater and get ready to give our first performance on stage. And this time, just like in our love, just like in our new shared lives, we would be doing it all together. With open hearts full of love. And with total honesty—with ourselves, each other, and the rest of the world.
The End
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).