Redefining Home

by Megan Linden

  “That’s good.” Roy nodded. “Listen, could we talk? In private?” He tilted his head to the side and back, and Adrian didn’t need more to understand that Roy wanted to get away from the curious ears and eyes behind him.

  He should perhaps say no and send Roy on his way, but he knew he wouldn’t. There was no way Adrian was going to miss an opportunity to spend some time with this man. It was as simple as that. It wasn’t smart and it wasn’t safe, but it didn’t matter.

  “Sure.” He got up from his chair with some effort and caught a railing to support his weight. Roy took a step forward, keeping his sharp gaze on Adrian’s every move, but he maintained his distance.

  Adrian wondered what Roy would do if he reached out for him—not because Roy needed help but because the impulse to touch Roy, to get close, was becoming ridiculous.

  But the mere idea of being rejected was enough to keep Adrian in check.

  He moved slowly to the back door then paused. He’d forgotten his phone.

  “Could you get my phone for me, please?” he asked Roy, who was a few steps behind. “It’s on the ground by the table. I dropped it earlier.”

  He didn’t like the idea of asking for favors, but having to try to bend and stretch to fish his phone out with Roy watching would have been way worse.

  He did like watching Roy squatting to get the phone, though. Adrian let his eyes wander down the man’s frame—the muscular back, the appetizing ass.

  Then Roy straightened up and crossed the porch to hand Adrian the phone, and as they brushed fingers, Adrian’s toes curled. Fuck.

  He turned away quickly and walked inside to the kitchen area. He’d moved too fast and his ankle was aching, but he needed the distance, especially once Roy closed the back door and they were truly alone.

  Adrian sat at the table, hooking his ankle over a different chair. The couch would be more comfortable but—

  Roy sat on the other side of the table and Adrian realized his mistake. Across the table like this, they were close enough for their knees to brush together. Close enough to reach out and touch, if Adrian wasn’t careful.

  They stared at each other in silence for a while and it felt like the tension was buzzing in the room. Roy’s gaze was like a shadow of a touch and it only left Adrian wanting more.

  He was always left wanting more, it seemed like.

  “Why are you here, Roy?” he finally asked when he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “I needed to see you.”

  Adrian grimaced, looking down on the table and swallowed the sarcastic responses. He didn’t want to start a fight.

  “I was trying to keep my distance,” Roy went on, “but I was also afraid you might just get up and leave one day and I wouldn’t get a chance to talk to you again.”

  “What’s there to talk about? I mean, really?” Adrian glanced up at him, suddenly fed up. “What do you want that won’t end up the same way it did ten years ago? With me, alone and you with Bill? What could talking possibly accomplish?”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you ten years ago,” Roy whispered.

  Adrian nodded, a sharp move of his head that sent a spike of pain down his tensed back. “I know. You said that.”

  “If there was any other—”

  “But there isn’t one, is there?” Adrian cut him off because he didn’t need empty platitudes. They only hurt in the end, anyway. “There’s no way, so why can’t we just…leave it?”

  “Can you, though?” Roy’s intense gaze was staring right at him. “Can you leave it behind?”

  “What do you want me to say?” Adrian asked, rubbing his open palm over his stubbly cheek. He hadn’t shaved in a week, but he still wasn’t used to this. “You want an admission that I still feel something for you? You want a confession? Tell me. What is this about?”

  “I want you to tell me the truth. Because if you can leave it behind—or if you already have—then that’s it. It’s over. But if you can’t—” Roy turned away and seemed to be fighting with himself. “If you can’t then I think we should talk about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t leave it behind.” Roy fell back in his chair. “It nags at me and now that you’re here, I just—I just can’t seem to let this go.”

  ‘Because I can’t leave it behind’. Adrian curled his fingers around the wrist of his other hand and squeezed, hard. He couldn’t believe his ears. He’d known, back then, that Roy had wanted him. They’d grown closer over time but there had been something there right from the start.

  But he’d also convinced himself that Roy hadn’t cared as much as he had—that since he’d left, nothing else mattered. So to hear now, after ten years, that Roy couldn’t leave it behind…

  Adrian was floored. “But there’s—There’s Bill,” he said, and right away the memory of the man came back. He wasn’t just some anonymous guy anymore. Adrian knew things about Bill now. He’d seen him. He’d felt him against his body—Stop that.

  “Bill’s a fixture in my life. The one thing that’s never going to change about me, if I have any say in this,” Roy said.

  “Then that’s it, isn’t it?” Adrian squeezed his wrist again, to the point of pain. “You say you can’t let this thing with me go, but you also can’t—and won’t—let go of Bill. There’s no place there for the both of us.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  The quiet question shocked Adrian into silence. What the hell? There was no way Roy would cheat, so… What does he mean? A threesome? Something else?

  “You need to spell it out for me here,” Adrian said, narrowing his eyes and swallowing against his suddenly dry throat. “What exactly are you saying?”

  Roy stared at him for a moment then straightened in his seat. “I think— No, I know you responded to him. I know how people seem when they’re attracted to him,” he said, words falling from his mouth. “He never notices, but I do. With the way he looks, I’ve got a lot of practice,” he added with a quick one-sided smile, here and gone.

  But Adrian wasn’t in the mood for joking. Every nerve in his body was standing at attention. He felt as if he were standing on the brink of something. He just didn’t know what it was.

  “So you thought…what? Since I’ve never stopped caring about you and you think I find Bill hot that I would…what?”

  He needed to know, needed to hear Roy say it. A part of him wanted to scream ‘Yes, yes, I’ll take whatever you’ll give me’ but he was smarter than that these days. Roy needed to tell him what he meant before Adrian would jump into the abyss and get hurt.

  Chapter Eight

  “So you thought…what? Since I’ve never stopped caring about you and you think I find Bill hot that I would…what?”

  Roy looked at Adrian. The man was tense and wary, unwilling to give an inch.

  ‘I’ve never stopped caring about you.’

  Okay, maybe Adrian had given away something. It was an admission he hadn’t wanted to make earlier and it felt like a small step forward.

  But he still expected Roy to make the next one. A bigger one. And Adrian was probably right. If Roy wanted this, he needed to spell it out.

  He just didn’t know how to put it into words, into things that could come true.

  I want Bill and I want you. He wished it was enough. He wished it would make everything easy and give the answer for what they should do next.

  Meanwhile, he was stumbling in the dark, searching for the way out of this mess and hitting blocks at every turn.

  “I thought that maybe there was a way to—” He hesitated, searching for the right words and failing. Nothing seemed right, nothing quite fit. “I want both of you in my life. So I thought that maybe we could try—not just me with him and me with…with you. That would never work.” He swallowed hard and his leg started trembling under the table. “But maybe it could work if we do it together—the three of us.”

  Adrian didn’t seem to even blink. “The three of us together?” he whispered, so quiet that Ro
y barely heard him over his heart hammering.

  This was it. Sink or swim. “Yes.”

  In the silence that fell, Roy could hear both his and Adrian’s heartbeats—each uneven and quick. He longed for the harmony he’d heard that first day out on the street, but it wasn’t there now. Over the week that had followed Adrian’s accident, Roy had almost convinced himself he’d imagined it. But if he hadn’t… If he hadn’t imagined it and it was nowhere to be found when he was alone with Bill or alone with Adrian…

  Wouldn’t that mean the harmony required all three of them to be together in one place?

  Or was it all just wishful thinking on his part, so he could feel better about wanting things he should never even think about?

  “What did Bill have to say about this?” Adrian asked, staring at the table between them. His face was a blank mask, but Roy could sense a violent storm of emotions surrounding Adrian like a cloud. He wished he could read them, make sense of them all, but he couldn’t.

  All he had was the truth.

  “I haven’t talked to him about it yet,” he admitted and watched Adrian’s face harden as he lifted his gaze to meet Roy’s.

  “You came to me first?” He crossed his arms. “What if Bill says no?”

  Roy had tried very hard not to think about that. But when he had, the answer was simple. “Then that’s a no and we’re dropping the idea.”

  “Just like that?” Adrian narrowed his eyes. “‘Hey, Adrian, how about a threesome? But if you say yes, I can still reject you later on.’ Great plan. Thanks a lot.”

  Roy sighed, resting his elbows on the table as he leaned forward. He rubbed his thumbs over his eyes. “It’s not about me rejecting—”

  “Why did you come to me first? Why not start with Bill?”

  Roy dropped his hands and willed himself to look Adrian in the eye. “I’ve spent the last ten years denying him something I know he wants the most because I couldn’t fully forget about you. Now you’re here and he’s—” Afraid. It still hurt to think about. Roy had done what he could to reassure Bill, but he knew it wasn’t so simple. “If there was a way I could spare him any hurt right now…”

  “Oh, but hurting me is fine?” Adrian snorted without humor and turned away. “Hurting me again.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” Roy got up, unable to stay still any longer. “What I want is to see if there’s something that can be done—”

  “You’re putting me on the spot to be rejected again, damn it!” Adrian pulled back his chair as if he wanted to get up, too, then glanced down on his foot and deflated. “You’re getting my hopes up one second and throwing me off a cliff the next. You did it in San Francisco, and you’re doing it again now.”

  Roy’s chest hurt and his wolf wanted to whine, but he knew he deserved it. Every angry word, every insult Adrian—or Bill, for that matter—wanted to throw at him for this, he deserved it.

  “I want to give us a chance,” he said, falling down onto his chair. “Because the alternative is you leaving, and I just can’t take that without a fight. And yes, I came to you first because I didn’t want to hurt Bill unnecessarily if you’d later reject the idea. But that’s also because I feel like you’re more likely to reject it.”

  Adrian’s gaze snapped to his. “What? Why would he say yes?”

  Because he loves me. Because, despite everything, he feels drawn to you and I know it. There were reasons Roy didn’t want to voice but there were some he could. “Because he sees me struggling. Because he can feel how much I”—he paused and gestured between them but finally forced himself to finish the sentence—“how much I want you. And your reaction to him.”

  “He—” Adrian cut in, glancing down at the table and Roy could see the flush spreading on his face. “He could feel my reaction?”

  Roy shrugged. “In theory, he could, but I don’t think he read it as, you know… Interest.” At Adrian’s grimace, he went on, “For a werewolf, we can sense different reactions if we pay attention—the uptick in someone’s heartbeat, the smells particular to some emotions or behavior, sometimes the body language, too.”

  “So you, what, realized I reacted to Bill then came up with a plan to have a threesome?”

  Roy could have taken the words as flippant, if Adrian’s whole body wasn’t so tense.

  “I realized you both reacted to each other,” Roy corrected. “I wouldn’t say anything or suggest anything if it wasn’t mutual.”

  Adrian seemed stunned, as if the fact that Bill was attracted to him too was the strangest thing he’d ever heard. “I don’t— I don’t know what to say.”

  Roy nodded. “I get it. I know it’s”—unorthodox, crazy—“surprising, and I don’t want to pressure you or anything. If you say no, you say no, and that’s the end of it. I promise. I wasn’t sure I’d even ask you when I was coming here. I didn’t expect an answer right away.”

  He was hoping for it, yes, but not expecting it.

  Adrian glanced to the side before frowning. “What did you tell Bill about coming here, then, if you didn’t ask him yet?”

  Roy tensed and turned away.

  “Oh, God, you didn’t tell him.” Adrian glanced at his front door as if Bill was about to come charging in. He turned to glare at Roy. “What the fuck, man?”

  “I didn’t want him to—”

  “Worry? Get mad?” Adrian cut in. “Are you kidding me?” He pushed his chair back from the table and this time didn’t even look at his foot. He walked up to the couch and turned to glare at Roy. “You’re so concerned about his feelings then you go and do this?”

  “I will tell him,” Roy defended himself. Not telling Bill wasn’t his greatest idea, but he thought it was better than the alternative where Bill would flat-out refuse or frown at him until Roy fessed up the reason for the visit.

  “I’m in this town for a week and even I know how fast the news travel around here. These women out on the bench? They probably told all their friends they spotted you here the moment the patio door closed.”

  Roy’s gut tightened. He’d known the word would spread, but he hadn’t expected it to outrun him.

  “No, I—” He glanced back, trying to see the women on the bench, but they weren’t there anymore. Moon, please, let Adrian be wrong. “Damn it.”

  He got up fast, the rest of the conversation forgotten as the images of Bill hearing about this flooded his head.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Roy turned so fast he almost stumbled. “What?” He didn’t dare to hope, but—

  Adrian met his gaze head-on. “You’re going to make a big mess explaining this. You need help.”

  “And you think you showing up there will somehow make it better?” Roy asked. He might make a mess on his own, but taking Adrian with him now would be like pouring gasoline into a fire.

  “If your idea has legs, if he’s really”—Adrian waved his hand—“interested, then I guess it will be one way to find out.”

  “Wait. Does that mean…?”

  Adrian looked away to the side for a long moment, then met his gaze again. “It means that I’m game if he is—if he doesn’t kill us first because you’re stupid.”

  Roy stared at him for a few seconds. He’d hoped, of course he had or he wouldn’t have asked in the first place. But now… Now he couldn’t believe his luck. It’s not over yet, he reminded himself. Not yet.

  “Okay.” He nodded and headed to the door. “Come on, then.”

  There was no backing down now.

  * * * *

  When Roy parked next to their building, the tension inside him skyrocketed. On the way, he’d tried not to think about looking Bill in the eye if his partner had heard about him going to see Adrian already. But now, there was no escaping it.

  “Having second thoughts?” Adrian asked, glancing at him before turning away to stare out of the car window.

  Roy turned to him. “No. And stop trying to give me a way out.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel
as he fought the urge to reach out and touch Adrian. It would be more than off-limits now, when Bill was so close and possibly hurting. “I didn’t change my mind about trying for this,” he added, waving his hand between them and the building. “I’m not going to. You and Bill are the only two uncertain variables, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Adrian took a deep breath before glancing back at Roy. “Okay, then let’s go check how uncertain the last variable is.”

  Roy nodded and got out of the car, trying to calm his heartbeat. He told himself the worst thing that could happen was Bill saying no, but no matter how much he’d been trying not to get his hopes up, his heart—and his wolf—weren’t listening. If Bill said no, it was going to hurt, no question about it.

  And to top it all off, Roy had gone and potentially hurt Bill when he’d been trying to do the exact opposite.

  Game time. He pushed the entrance door open and went inside with Adrian right behind him.

  With every step, Roy’s uneasiness grew. What if this is a terrible idea? What if Bill hates it? What if I just fucked everything up even more?

  As they were nearing the door to Bill’s office, Roy tried to listen for his partner’s heartbeat. When he heard it—speeding up, out of rhythm, wrong—he almost ran the last few steps.

  When he threw the door open, their gazes met and Bill’s nostrils flared. He jutted his chin forward as he always did when he was readying himself for something unpleasant.

  Roy swallowed. So much for a good start.

  Adrian slipped past him into the room. “He’s not leaving you,” he said in a way of greeting right as the door closed behind them.

  “What?” Roy glanced away from Bill then back, only to see Bill’s shoulders loosening just a fraction. Roy narrowed his eyes. “We’ve talked about this! I’ve told you I’m not leaving you, ever.”

  Before Bill could say anything, Adrian huffed, shaking his head. “You don’t— You don’t get it.”