She weakly shook her head, moaning again as Cody started fucking her ass.
Letting them take over was pretty much a given at this point. Her body felt like overcooked pasta and had about as much tensile strength. They even managed to coax one last little orgasm out of her before first Cody, then Justin, made those delicious moans she was quickly coming to grow addicted to hearing.
Breathtaking. No other word for it.
Cody carefully pulled out first. “You all right?”
She nodded and hoped the noise she made matched the movement of her head.
Justin chuckled. “We’ll clean you up. Hold on.” He gently rolled her to the side and got out of bed.
She didn’t even try to move. Not that she could’ve at that point, if she’d wanted to.
Okay, between the overnight excitement, and the move, and now this, it sort of counts as exercise.
She wouldn’t feel guilty about missing her Monday run after all.
Yay, me.
The men returned with a warm, wet washcloth and another towel. After getting her cleaned up, they climbed back into bed on either side of her.
Justin leaned in. “Love you, baby.”
“Love you, too.” Although it came out sounding more like Lub utoo.
“Love you,” Cody said.
“Lubutoo.”
The world disappeared, and on what a fine note it chose to do that.
* * * *
Brooke let out a soft snore before Cody even finished settling into position. He couldn’t believe the highs and lows the day had brought. From what could have killed them, or at the very least made this particular Monday the suckiest of Mondays, to…
This.
Perfection, now softly snoring in an orgasm and exhaustion bliss between them.
Justin looked at her, then smiled and lifted his head to kiss Cody. “Love you, buddy.”
“Love you, too.”
They let out nearly identical sighs of satisfaction as they stared down at her.
“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Justin asked.
“Yeah. We’re damned lucky.”
“Yeah. If she told us she never wanted us playing with anyone else ever again, I’d agree to it just to make her happy, without hesitation,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I want her in our lives for the rest of our lives.”
Cody nuzzled his forehead against Justin’s. “Same here, man. Same here. Whatever it takes, whatever we have to do, no more ruts. No more unhappiness.”
“Agreed.”
They stared at her for another long moment, both of them unable to believe the miracle of her walking into their lives and how close she came to never making it home in the first place.
To never entering their lives.
“Hey, Cody?”
“Yeah?”
“We didn’t die in that tornado this morning and this is heaven, did we?”
Cody laughed as he laid his head on the pillow. “No, because if we had, she would have already had a king-sized bed and you wouldn’t have needed a condom.”
“Ah. Good points.”
Chapter Eighteen
They’d been living together for nearly a month when, early one Monday morning after Brooke had already set out on her run, her cell phone rang.
Cody sat up, aggravated, because normally they could sleep in for at least another thirty minutes before she returned. He fumbled around on the bedside table for the phone while Justin pulled a pillow over his head.
“Who the fuck is that?” Justin grumbled.
“I’m working on it.” His hand finally landed on it and he managed to hit the answer button. “Hello?”
The woman sounded a little startled. “Hello? Is this Brooke Wallace’s number?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you Brooke Wallace?”
“Do I sound like Brooke?” He realized how that came out and took a deep breath as he sat up. “Sorry, I was asleep. This is Brooke’s boyfriend. She just went out jogging. Who is this?”
“This is the Manasota Palms Retirement Complex. I need to speak with her immediately about her father.”
That drove all sleep from his system like a railroad spike to his brain. He reached across the bed and started smacking Justin. “What happened? Is he okay?” Please let him be okay!
“I don’t have anyone listed who’s authorized to discuss his medical condition except his daughter.”
“Please, lady, is he alive?”
“He’s being transported to the hospital.”
He stood up, stumbling around in the dark, trying to find shorts. “Is he going to make it? She’s going to freak when we find her, so give me something, anything.”
“He had a fall. He was conscious and talking when they transported him. He pulled his nurse call cord in his bathroom.”
He breathed out a sigh of relief. “Jesus, thank you. I swear I won’t call the HIPPA cops on you for that. Can she call you back at…” He glanced at the phone’s display and read the number off to her.
“Yes, ask to speak to Nurse Davies in the independent ALF office.”
“We’ll go out and find her and have her call you back in a few minutes.”
He tossed the phone on the bed and grabbed clothes.
“What’s going on?” Justin was, at least, vertical and speaking, although he stood with shorts in his hands.
“Her dad had a fall. He’s been taken to the hospital.”
* * * *
Brooke had a good pace going. She knew today would be a five-mile day, for sure. She had some funky zydeco blasting in her ear that she’d found on iTunes and had bought on a whim. It was adding an interesting beat to her run, changing her pace up a little.
She wasn’t paying attention at first when the car zipped past her, then cut hard off the road and slid to a stop on the sidewalk in front of her. She was about to turn and run the other way when she realized it was Cody and Justin.
She ripped the earbuds out and ran toward them, dread filling her. There were only two reasons she could think of that they would do this…
And the ugly churning in her gut told her it wasn’t because the shop’s alarm company had called.
“He’s alive,” Cody immediately said, dialing the phone in his hand. “He had a fall and was taken to the hospital.” He spoke into the phone. “Yes, Nurse Davies in the independent ALF office, please. I’m calling for Brooke Wallace.” He put the phone into her hand.
She felt like she couldn’t breathe, and not just because of the pace of her run, either.
Please, not Dad! Don’t take my dad, too!
The call connected and a woman answered. “Nurse Davies.”
“This is Brooke Wallace. My dad…” That was all she could get out before the tears hit her.
“He’s currently being transported to the hospital. He took a fall in his bathroom and hit his head, but it’s his hip he’s complaining about. He was awake and talking and coherent when they transported him. Please, don’t panic, ma’am. It doesn’t appear to be life-threatening.”
She was aware of Cody and Justin holding her up, easing her into the passenger seat as she felt her legs give way beneath her. “Where is he? Can I go see him?” A rushing noise began filling her ears.
The nurse tried to give her directions, but when Brooke realized she wasn’t processing, she said, “Wait, please tell Cody, I…I can’t…I’m not…”
He took the phone from her as the rushing noise in her ears turned into a roar and the world went black.
* * * *
Brooke came to with two strange men bending over her, trying to talk to her, and somewhere the agitated sound of Cody and Justin yelling at someone.
“Ma’am? Can you tell me your name?” one of the strange men asked her.
She sat up, startled and shoving at what turned out to be two EMTs. An ambulance and a sheriff’s cruiser were now parked blocking the street next to the sidewalk where, apparently, she’d fainted.
She tried to stand, to get to where two deputies were holding Justin and Cody back, but the EMTs were trying to keep her sitting and one of them had a blood pressure cuff on her arm.
“Let them go!” she screamed. “They’re my guys! What is wrong with you? I have to get to my dad!”
One of the deputies turned. “Ma’am, you know these men?”
“Yes! They’re my boyfriends! My dad’s place called to tell me he’d fallen and for fuck sake get this goddamned thing off me!” She started ripping at the blood pressure cuff, trying to remove it.
“She fainted,” Justin said. “We tried to tell you that. She didn’t eat anything before she left for her run.” They shook off the deputies’ hands and headed over to her.
The deputies remained close on the men’s trails as she tried to get to her feet again. “We have to get to Dad,” she insisted.
“Ma’am,” one of the deputies said, “We had someone call in an attempted abduction.”
“They’re my boyfriends!” she screamed at him. “I was jogging, and—”
She turned to the EMTs. “Please tell them I fucking fainted!”
One of the EMTs looked up. “From what those guys said, I’m betting she fainted.”
“We tried to tell you,” Cody said. “Look at her phone. Call the place back, talk to Nurse Davies in independent—”
“Please, can we go? My dad’s been taken to the hospital, and I need to make sure he’s okay.”
Five minutes later, once the deputies were convinced Brooke was okay and not being coerced, they let them all go. The men drove her home. It took them all about ten minutes to grab showers, change, and then head back out again for the hospital.
Justin grabbed her a travel mug of OJ and a granola bar to eat on the way to the hospital. When the EMTs found out she hadn’t eaten anything, they surmised it was probably the shock of the news and a blood sugar drop from the exercise that made her faint.
When Brooke bolted into the ER she found the front desk immediately. Two minutes later, a nurse was leading the three of them back to a room.
“I told you what I want—I want coffee,” she heard her dad gripe as she hurried into the room.
That nearly made her burst into renewed tears again as she started laughing. If he was asking for coffee, he couldn’t be too bad.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wallace,” the nurse he was arguing with said. “You can’t have coffee until after we do your X-rays and determine the full extent of your injuries.”
He turned to Brooke. “Honey, did they call you? I asked them not to call you until I knew how bad I was. I didn’t want to scare you.”
She leaned in and kissed his cheek. He had a square bandage high on his forehead. “What happened, Daddy? Are you all right?”
“Oh, they think I might have broke my hip or something. I wasn’t paying attention and got tangled up in a towel on the floor and I tripped. I whacked my head against the wall. Just a cut, nothing major. It’s probably already stopped bleeding. But I landed hard on my left hip and it hurts like hell.”
She collapsed into a chair one of her guys slid under her. “You scared me to death,” she scolded, relief flooding her.
“Not half as bad as I think you scared those EMTs,” Justin muttered.
“What?” her dad asked. “What EMTs?”
She glared at him. “You just had to say it, didn’t you?”
“What happened? Tell me what he’s talking about,” her father ordered.
“Mr. Wallace,” the nurse said, “you need to stay still and calm down. Your readings are going up.”
“Yeah, they are. So what?” He looked at Cody and Justin. “What happened? What EMTs?”
“Like father, like daughter,” Cody quipped.
Justin told the story, her father breaking out laughing. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry I scared you like that.” He reached out and grabbed her arm. “I guess you gave those deputies and EMTs a story they can tell for a while, didn’t you?”
The nurse wore a disapproving look. “Are these family members?”
“Yes, yes, you can talk about my medical stuff in front of them. They’re my daughter and her two guys.” He squeezed her hand, hard. “And I obviously couldn’t have picked two better guys for her if I’d tried myself.”
* * * *
The X-ray showed yes, Brooke’s dad had broken his hip, and he would need surgery for it. They admitted him, much to his consternation.
Even more to the nurses’ consternation, who had to listen to him gripe about coffee until they got an IV started and gave him a sedative to calm him down while they were waiting for a slot to open on the surgical schedule.
Justin and Cody had found the cafeteria and picked Brooke up a bottle of iced tea and a trail mix bar to snack on. She didn’t want to eat it in front of her father, but he overruled her.
“I don’t want you faintin’ again, hear me? Eat.”
Cody snickered as she frowned, but ripped open the wrapper and stared eating. “Remember that tone of voice,” Cody said to Justin. “We might need it on her.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
By nine o’clock that night, her dad was back in his room following a successful surgery, and Brooke was busy updating all his friends on his condition.
She imagined that, by the next morning, he would probably have several dozen of his car buddies heading in with breakfast treats and coffee for him.
He looked tired, old.
Frail.
“I’ll be back in the morning, Daddy,” she said as she kissed his cheek. “You behave yourself today. Don’t piss off your nurses.”
He gave her a loopy smile. “What’s the fun in that?”
“Remember what you always said to me about being nice to food servers? That goes even more for nurses. Trust me, I know from personal experience.”
“Yeah, yeah. I won’t aggravate them too much,” he promised.
She crawled into the backseat, Justin climbing back there with her while Cody drove them home. She finally allowed herself to cry, hard, scared, agonized tears she’d willfully held back by the skin of her teeth while in the hospital.
It was too much, too many bad memories at once.
The memory of how he looked in the hospital years earlier after the accident…
Too much.
Far too much.
They helped her inside the house, undressed her, and got her into bed as she still cried.
Finally, when she’d cried herself out, she softly asked, “Please don’t leave me. I can’t do this alone. I thought I could, but I was wrong. I know I can’t.”
“Never,” Justin swore, nuzzling close. “We promise we’ll never leave you.”
“Yeah,” Cody said, nuzzling in on her other side. “You’re stuck with us for life, babe. Always and forever.”
She closed her eyes and, with their hands tightly clutched in hers, she crashed into an exhausted sleep.
* * * *
When they realized she’d fallen asleep, both men let out identical, relieved sighs. Justin hated feeling helpless to do anything but be there for her.
And he’d damn near gotten himself arrested that morning when the deputies first arrived. It was only Cody trying to calm things down that kept him from shoving past the deputies and trying to get back to Brooke, where they’d laid her on the sidewalk and the EMTs were evaluating her. She’d suddenly slumped where she’d been sitting sideways in the car, pitching forward, and he’d barely caught her before she’d hit the pavement. In fact, he’d lost his balance and rolled with her in his arms, taking the brunt of the impact so she wouldn’t get hurt.
Yeah, in retrospect, that might have looked bad to someone who’d only seen part of it. Then another car had pulled off the road, the woman behind the wheel on the phone and eyeing them suspiciously.
He guessed she’d probably called it in.
“What a fuckin’ day,” Cody muttered.
“Yeah.”
Cody snorted.
“Dude, you sooo almost went to jail.”
“Yeah. Not funny.”
“No, it wasn’t funny then, because I was shitting bricks we were going to get our asses shot off because you wouldn’t calm the fuck down.”
“Sorry.”
Cody snorted again. “No, I get it. I was scared, too.”
Justin looked at Cody. “How long do we wait before we quit waiting?”
“Let’s get through this with her dad, first. Then we can sit down and talk to her.”
“She’s the one. Our one,” Justin said. “I don’t want to lose her.”
“We’re not going to lose her,” Cody insisted. “Relax.”
“Life is short. I don’t want something to happen to her and us not be able to take care of her because of stupid laws.”
They had each other listed with a power of attorney, and their families all knew it.
Although they hadn’t quite gotten around to telling everyone the full extent of the truth about Brooke, yet.
They’d have to get her a power of attorney for them, too. And them for her.
Well, one of them. The other one needed to marry her.
“Let’s get through this first,” Cody repeated. “It’ll be okay. You’re just scared.”
“Fuck yeah, I’m scared.”
They both startled as Dixon landed on the end of the bed and let out an irate maow.
“I’ll get him,” Cody said. “Poor guy’s probably starving.” He picked up the cat and headed out of the room with him.
Justin snuggled Brooke even more tightly in his arms against his body.
No, they wouldn’t lose her. What was that about bad things coming in threes? First, the tornado. Then this.
He didn’t want the next wake-up call to be a tragic one that he could have prevented by getting things in order.
Chapter Nineteen
Brooke had a suspicion something was up with her guys, but neither of them were fessing up to it. After nearly six months with them, she could pretty much read them both.
She decided to let it go and enjoy the day. Her father was on the mend and back in his apartment, although using a walker that slowed him down and made him grumpy. Her life was settling down—again—and it was time to relax. They would have a great night later with their friends at Seth and Leah’s party, and she’d even get to go swimming in their pool.
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