“Her kids are grown, so why does she have to worry about whether people think she’s a good mother?”
“Jamie,” Nerea said urgently. Callum could see her hand tightening on his arm, warning him, but Jamie either didn’t feel it or didn’t know what she meant.
He went on, his face flushed with anger. “And why should she worry about people calling her a whore ’cause she’s good at relationships?”
That was Callum's cue to step in.
“Jamie,” Callum leaned in as if he hadn’t heard any of what had just happened and wrapped his arm around Jamie’s shoulders, a smile on his face. “There are some people I want you to meet.”
He steered Jamie bodily away; Callum was certain that without intervention, Jamie would have taken a swing at the critic. Loyalty and honor were all well and good, but there were some things that were never acceptable no matter how deserved.
He watched with relief as Nerea, pale, moved from the scene of the confrontation to fold herself into another group of their friends. Reassured that she was taken care of, Callum continued to steer Jamie through the mingling crowd and out into a quiet, mostly abandoned corridor.
“What are we doing out here,” Jamie asked when Callum drew them to a halt. He blinked in the dim light as if he’d only just realized they were no longer in the middle of the exhibit and he was no longer yelling at someone.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Callum said, trying to keep his own rising anger in check. “But that is not how you deal with people like that.”
“But — ”
“I heard what he said,” Callum said, even if that was — strictly speaking — not true. He could guess well enough. He’d heard most of it all before. “And you need to not react that way.”
“I — ” Jamie said.
“I understand that the world is terrible to women,” Callum ran right over him, because this was not a debate. Or even a discussion. This was a statement about Nerea and how she needed to exist in the world.
Jamie still looked belligerent, so Callum let his own anger and disappointment come through in his voice and his bearing.
“I understand that Nerea’s life, in particular, in public, can be very hard. But you cannot call people out like that. That is not what we do.”
“What do you mean, not what we do. I can do as I like. Just because you’re not willing to stand up for her in public and risk pissing people off. And you both just outed me, to everybody, saying I’m dating her. So don’t tell me what I’m allowed or not allowed to say.”
Callum went very still. His emotions warred. He was furious with Jamie, worried about Nerea, and now wracked with guilt. They had all made errors, and what the consequences of those errors would be, Callum did not know. Now, however, was not the time for apologies. Jamie needed to calm down, and the three of them needed to get through this as a united front. Everything else would have to wait.
“This is not about me,” Callum finally said. “This is not even about Nerea. This is about she, and I, and the unit we have been in public and in private for the last thirty years. The one that has allowed us to live the life we want to live. You now share that unit with us, but that doesn’t change how Nerea and I are together or how she and I deal with these matters. And I’ll thank you not to make a scene that only puts her more in a spotlight that she doesn’t want and doesn’t deserve.”
“But — ” Jamie said again.
“And if you didn’t want to be outed, you shouldn’t have accepted our invitation tonight.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Most things aren’t. We’ll talk at home.” Callum spun away before his own anger got the better of him.
THE REST OF THE PARTY, not to mention the cab ride back to the flat, was tense, but Callum hoped they could go upstairs, hash matters out with Jamie, and go to bed. The less they dwelt on this mess, the better.
What he was not expecting was Jamie to march up the stairs and into the flat, whirl around on his heel, and glare at them with the air of an angry puppy. It was adorable, but that didn’t mean the situation wasn’t serious.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that in public,” he snapped at Callum.
“I didn’t talk to you like anything in public. I took you aside and we had a private conversation because you don’t get speak to anyone the way you did,” Callum said. “But it will be better for all of us to let the matter drop until we’re all calmer and can discuss it rationally.”
“Calmer! You’re the one who yelled at me in a corridor at the Tate Modern. After outing me!” Jamie turned to Nerea, his voice pleading. “You heard what he said about you, I couldn’t let him — ”
“When a man says those things to me,” Nerea interrupted him, “Callum draws him off to the side of the room and talks to him, quietly. He tells him that he understands where he’s coming from, but that there are ways one talks to a lady, and that is not it. I know it may seem gendered and unfair to you. That’s because it is, but it is what works. And it frightens them.”
“You gave me this whole speech about how you’re not Callum’s property!”
“I’m not,” Nerea said calmly.
Jamie turned to Callum. “But you want me to just roll over when people say terrible things to her face.”
“You’re not listening!” Callum snapped. His patience had limits, and Jamie had finally surpassed them. Jamie trying to play him and his wife off each other was also profoundly displeasing.
“I don’t want to be a poster woman,” Nerea said. “For polyamory or open marriages or politics or anything. I want to paint, as I did before I met Callum, as I did before any sort of normal life became impossible. I couldn’t even finish university! But I don’t need your protection, or Callum’s. I want to do my work and have my loves and deal with these things quietly.”
“I can’t believe you! If you want to live quietly, why would you say I was your date?”
“Because you were. Because it needn’t be a big deal,” Nerea said.
Callum bit his lip so he wouldn’t comment harshly on Nerea’s reasonable but completely wishful thinking. He didn’t need to be fighting with her as well.
“Well it doesn’t fucking work like that, does it?!” Jamie hollered at her.
“Not when you make it harder,” Callum said.
“I am not the problem here.” Jamie looked at Callum, looked at Nerea, and then strode to the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked, standing from where she had leaned, nearly slumped, against the arm of the couch.
“To make trouble elsewhere, I guess.” Jamie’s usually sunny face twisted in anger as he yanked the door open. When he slammed it after him, a picture frame on the counter toppled over.
Chapter 21 - Nerea deals with a very worried Callum
“Why isn’t he home yet?” Callum demanded, pacing back and forth in the narrow space of the flat. Nerea, in the armchair and still in her dress, uncrossed and recrossed her legs. It was very early in the morning, long past when Nerea would have liked to collapse into bed, but Callum was far too wired for that to be an option.
“He’ll come home when he’s ready,” she said. She didn’t say that might be never. Jamie could decide that this type of bullshit from the outside world — or from Callum, who should have known better — was more than he could handle. She didn’t want to frighten her husband any further. It didn’t seem like that big of a fight to her, despite the level of drama. But she couldn’t be sure. All she could do was be optimistic and wait to berate whoever needed berating until this was fixed.
“Where did he go?” Callum stood abruptly from the kitchen chair he’d fallen into and started to pace again.
“His flat, probably.” Nerea tried to sound bored instead of irritated, but it was the third time Callum had asked in as many hours.
“He left his keys here. And his mobile. We couldn’t get in touch with him if we wanted to. He still doesn’t know the city that well. Anything c
ould have happened to him.”
“He knows the city perfectly fine. Jamie’s a big boy who can handle himself in London. He’s been living here nearly a year! He probably just went to crash with a friend.” She was worried, too, but that was a motherly reflex she was not planning to indulge, considering the remark that had started this whole mess.
“I should look for him,” Callum patted his pockets as if checking for his own keys. “I’ll find him, apologize, explain everything...I’ll bring him home — ”
“Explain what?” Nerea said.
“That we love him.”
“Callum.”
“What?”
“You’re being ridiculous. He knows that. And it didn’t stop him — or us — from fighting,” Nerea closed her hands around the keys Callum had dropped on an end table, next to Jamie’s. “Feelings don’t fix logistics. They don’t eliminate the fact that we all made mistakes tonight. Let him sort himself out.”
“I still have to try.”
“Where are you going to look?” Nerea said. “You don’t know where to start, and the last thing this night needs is someone tweeting about you running around the city in distress.”
“I could start — ”
“No. No, stay here, love. I know you want to find him. But all we can do is wait, and I don’t want to be alone.” It was a cheap shot, and she knew it, but it worked to keep Callum from tearing all over London on his own.
WAITING WAS EASIER said than done. By the time the London sky had started to lighten, almost imperceptibly, into morning, Nerea had nearly shouted at Callum herself. His pacing was unbearable and his nerves were contagious.
“I want to invite him to Christmas,” Callum said out of the blue.
“You what?” Nerea asked, as startled by the sudden break in the silence as she was by the words themselves.
“If he ever comes back and if we can fix this.” Callum sounded tired. “I want to invite him to Christmas in Spain and to Devon’s wedding.”
“Margarita,” Nerea corrected automatically before she completely registered the suggestion. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“No.” Callum gave a weak chuckle. “It could be disastrous on any number of fronts. But we love him. We want him to be a part of our lives. If that’s true, why shouldn’t we include him in family holidays and celebrations?”
“For one, I imagine Jamie’s family may have some objection to us stealing him for Christmas,” Nerea pointed out. To be honest, her heart leapt at the idea of having Jamie in Spain again so soon and for the holidays no less. She wanted to immerse him in the sights, scents, and traditions of Christmas in the old house. He would also be a wonderful companion at the wedding. Assuming no one said anything judgmental and set him off. Which was, at the moment, far from certain.
“Our children rotate their holidays between various in-laws," Callum said. "His parents can hardly expect different from him.”
“Yes, but I have no idea what, if anything, he’s told them about us,” Nerea pointed out. “We shouldn’t make it more difficult for him.”
“We should ask,” Callum said. “Because we can’t make that choice for him. Unless you don’t want to?”
“I very much want to,” Nerea said. “Besides, he’s twenty-four and left his mobile here,” she said, attempting poorly to inject some levity into the situation. “He’ll be back.”
Chapter 22 - Jamie takes a walk
As soon as Jamie got to the street he realized he’d left his keys and his mobile at Callum and Nerea’s. He wasn’t getting home to his flat tonight, and there was no way he was going back upstairs. The lack of a mobile also made crashing with a friend difficult; he didn’t want to show up at somebody’s door unannounced in the middle of the night. And finding a pub to sit and drink in until morning seemed pathetic. The only option left was to walk. Which he did for hours until he had worked off his rage.
He slowed his pace but didn’t stop moving as worry overtook anger. He kept his head down, not wanting anyone to see that his eyes were wet although there were few people on the street at this hour. Tonight he had very possibly screwed up absolutely everything that had been good and magical in his life: Not only his relationship with Callum and Nerea, but his career, too.
His mother had been right that one wrong move could follow him forever. Jamie’s outburst tonight had definitely been a misstep, but so was Nerea exposing their relationship without having checked with him first. Dating his co-star’s wife looked ugly, and anything truthful Jamie could say to make it look less ugly wasn’t his to say. Jamie wasn’t sure he liked that scenario. If he was going to be open about his relationships he wanted to be open about all his relationships. Assuming things between him, Nerea, and Callum were fixable, would they be amenable to that? And if they were, what would the wider consequences be? Every choice opened a massive can of worms, and this mess wasn’t just about his public life. What would his parents think?
He turned onto the Strand and stayed with it as it became Fleet Street. He passed St. Paul’s Cathedral and drifted down Cannon toward the monument to the Great Fire. The light shone on the wet pavement; the windows glowed even in the small hours of the morning; and the fog wound its way through the streets. He walked until he was too tired to feel scared and too preoccupied with the city to feel sad.
By the time he reached the middle of Tower Bridge the sky was beginning to grow light. Jamie stood watching the river as it turned from black and gold to a gray streaked with blue. London wasn’t ever going to be home in the way the Dublin of his childhood had been. But he was absolutely in love with this city and his life in it. On some level he was still a scared little boy wanting to run back to his family for comfort, but right now that wasn’t about his relatives in Ireland. It was about Callum and Nerea and their odd too-small flat under the eaves. It was time to go home.
Jamie wasn’t sure if his lovers would accept his apology when he got there, but he knew he owed them one. And if they did forgive him, Jamie had demands of his own now. After all, he deserved an apology too.
By the time he got back to Covent Garden, the businesses that catered to the morning’s first commuters were starting to open. He stopped into Costa for coffee and a bag of pastries; ten minutes later he was standing on the sidewalk in front of Callum and Nerea’s building. He hit the buzzer with his knuckles. Even if he had remembered his keys, after their argument waiting for them to answer only seemed polite.
He startled when the door swung open and Callum, still wearing last night’s clothes, stood before him. His jacket was gone, his tuxedo shirt was nearly halfway open, and his tie, undone, hung creased around his neck. His hair was a mess and there were deep circles under his lovely hazel eyes.
“Oh thank God,” he breathed as he pulled Jamie inside and wrapped him up in a hug so tight he could scarcely breathe.
Jamie wriggled awkwardly to save the pastries from being crushed and then buried his face in Callum’s shoulder, inhaling the familiar, reassuring scent of his cologne and Nerea’s shampoo. When Callum finally let go, he held Jamie’s shoulders tightly as if he was afraid he was going to run away again. It was then that Jamie noticed Nerea at the top of the stairs, barefoot but still in her dress from the gallery, looking tired and yet more lovely than he’d ever seen her.
“Are you going to come up?” she asked.
UPSTAIRS, JAMIE BOUNCED on the balls of his feet. He had a script prepared of everything he needed to apologize for and ask about and explain, but Callum put a steadying hand on his shoulder before he could even open his mouth.
“Clearly, we all need to have a conversation,” he said gently. “But just as clearly, we all need a nap. And a shower.” He gave Jamie a somewhat worried smile, looking his rain-soaked hair and clothes up and down.
Nerea nodded her agreement. “So we are going to hold off on the discussion until we are all clean, no longer tired, and have completely devoured that lovely heap of sugar and carbs,” she said, indicating t
he bag of pastries with a nod of her head.
Jamie felt himself relax. Apparently he was not done learning tonight. With ease and gentleness, Callum and Nerea had made it clear that the conversation they desperately needed to have could keep, and none of it had to be handled with anger and panic. The three of them were going to be okay. Even so, Jamie wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep with so much left to solve. But as soon as he got out of the shower and crawled into bed in his usual spot between the two of them every muscle in his body seemed to give out at once. He thought he said something about being glad to be back. But he was asleep before he could be sure.
When he woke the sky outside was overcast and it was hard to tell the time of day. He groped around until he managed to get his hands on someone’s mobile. Early afternoon.
Nerea woke when Jamie tossed the mobile back down on the bed. She cracked an eye open and smiled at him.
“Feeling better?” she asked quietly.
Jamie nodded, even though he felt nervous all over again. “Yeah.”
“Good. Now poke Callum. If we have to be awake, he has to be awake.”
Callum was much more reluctant about returning to consciousness, but eventually got out of bed to bring them all coffee. As Nerea and Jamie propped themselves up against the headboard Callum sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed facing them.
“I want to apologize to you,” Jamie said as soon as they were all settled.
Nerea tried to interrupt, but he held up a hand.
“No, let me finish. I said some things to Callum that were unfair, and I put you in a bad position, Nerea. It was your night, to be handled on your terms, and I made it about my reaction to someone’s bad behavior toward you. For that, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” Nerea said with a gracious nod of her head.
“That said,” Jamie continued. “I am not a mind reader. And I should not be told ‘this is how we do things’ only after the fact. I’m twenty-four, I’ve never been in the public eye before, I don’t know anything, and all I did was read that damn book.”
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