4

CHAPTER

Four

Like wayward ducklings, they responded to her directions and before long they were sitting on Adam’s couch, readying the first shot of whiskey.

Jessi held her glass up. “Only connect.”

The heat of the liquor helped burn through the lump of emotion in Mick’s throat. E. M. Forster’s words had been their toast since she’d read Howards End back in high school.

“That’s my shirt,” Mick said as they all began to eat and relax a little.

She shrugged. “Looks like it’s mine now.”

Adam poured them each another shot. “I have nowhere to be tomorrow. I figure being drunk might help us get started with this whole talking it out thing.”

“Twisted Steel is closed this weekend so everyone could have a bit of time off after working balls out to finish all the projects we wanted to showcase tonight.” Mick offered their toast this time and was rewarded with a smile from Jessi.

“I have a fitting appointment, but it’s not until three.” Jessi leaned back against the cushions and Adam grabbed her feet, pulling them into his lap.

“Where’s your fiancé?” Adam asked her.

“It would serve you both right if I said he was waiting for me at home.”

“Stop agitating her,” Mick said easily.

“Okay then, where have you been for four years?” Adam challenged.

“What about you?” Mick replied.

“You guys are such babies.” Jessi pointed at Adam. “You better have something sweet in this house or I foresee one of you running out to get me a candy bar. No one’s too drunk to walk their ass down to that gas station I saw on the way in. I’m just getting that out there.”

“How is that even connected?” Adam asked.

“You guys are babies. That’s pretty much connected to everything. I need something sweet for strength to get me through this so we can fix a mess years in the making.” Jessi’s tone was patiently amused so Mick eased back too.

“There’s ice cream in the freezer,” Adam said. “Not everyone is as well-adjusted as you are, Jessilyn.”

“Oh fuck off.”

Mick cackled. “Twice in one day.”

“I’m gifted.” Adam sucked in a breath.

“As I was saying,” Jessi continued as she sat up enough to pile some ham and cheese on a cracker, “fuck off, Adam. Yes, that’s it. I’d rather be well-adjusted and not living with someone who deserved a lot more than a woman who could never love him because her heart belonged elsewhere. What about you?”

Adam got up, grumbling the whole way to the kitchen.

“Ice cream.” Jessi said nothing else, winking at Mick.

Indeed, Adam brought in a giant bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce and some whipped cream on top.

“It’s like you knew I was coming,” Jessi said, delighted as she took the bowl. Then she frowned. “If you had this stuff because some other someone you’ve been nailing liked it, I don’t want to know.”

Adam got to his knees in front of the couch, facing Jessi. “It’s not for anyone but me. And now you. I’m grumpy and taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”

She held out her spoon, loaded with ice cream and toppings, Mick took it and then she did the same for Adam.

“I’ll go first.” Jessi tucked her feet beneath her and Adam joined them on the couch once more.

Mick looked to Adam. They’d been the ones to push away, she their anchor. And yet again, she was shouldering something to make things easier for one of them.

He knew Adam felt the same sort of adoration for her at that moment.

“Stop.” Jessi put her bowl on the coffee table and shifted to more easily see each of them, her back away from the couch to face them instead. Each man was touching her within moments. Mick, his palm over her knee and Adam twining his fingers with hers, holding her hand.

“It’s all right to be weak sometimes.” Jessi smiled. “I’d never knowingly harm the bond I have with either of you so I hope you’ll trust me to open up, but I’m going first because neither of you seems ready right now. And that’s okay.”

“I had a lot of conditional affection in my life,” Mick said. “We love you, but. Or you’d be a better member of our family if. You don’t do that. You never have.”

“I tried not to love you,” she admitted. “I tried to put you both in the people I once loved and will always care about but I’ve moved on box. For years I tried. But it didn’t work. Because I can’t unlove you. Neither of you. It’s impossible.”

Adam lifted her fingers to his mouth to kiss them. “Tenacity. It’s a fantastic quality and one of the many reasons I love you.”

“He means to say he’s glad you can’t unlove us.” Mick rolled his eyes at Adam. She was in a good mood and they wanted to keep her there, not get her riled up.

Jessi snorted. “That doesn’t mean this is going to be easy. I’m not the same Jessi I was before you joined the military and then you left.” She indicated Adam with a tip of her chin. “It won’t work if we can’t open up. I can go first, though.”

Jessi looked to both of them, still shocked into delight at random moments when she remembered they were actually together at last. Her lost boys.

So strong and fierce, and yet when it came to this, it was she who could stand as an equal to bear the weight. “Eight months ago I had an audition of sorts. A friend suggested me to the Seattle Opera.”

She grinned at the memory of the first phone call. The flattering thrill of something she’d been working so long to achieve.

“They asked for two pieces for their adaptation of Rigoletto. I’d been thinking about moving back to Seattle for the last two years or so.” Her pride had kept her in Portland long after she’d known there was no running from what she felt for Mick and Adam.

“It was a sign,” Mick said. It was a tease, but an inside joke, not in any way making fun. And she was glad because if he’d mocked just then it would have really hurt.

She nodded. “It took a few months so I began to look for jobs up here. I needed to figure out if it was truly possible for me to earn a living in Seattle. And I needed to break things off with Carey. It had been coming for some time. It was totally my fault and I felt awful to do it, but he’s actually speaking to me again, so I guess he’s forgiven me. Anyway, I moved into my studio, accepted that I was really going to come home. Even if they hadn’t loved what I’d made, there’s a considerable client base in the Puget Sound, so I began to plan. My place here is in a good retail district with lots of free parking. I moved in at last three weeks ago tomorrow. I sleep in the loft above my workspace. I got the invitation to the grand opening three days before I picked up my keys.”

“Another sign.” Adam didn’t smirk, though.

She nodded. “When I saw your car tonight, I knew I’d made the right choice. Then I sort of panicked that dealing with both of you at once would be too much. And it sort of is, but I guess that’s something I like.”

“Jess, I’m so proud of you! This stuff with your costuming is amazing.” Mick hugged her and she tumbled against him, laughing.

“Thanks,” she said, breathless when Adam lay atop her as they both ended up in Mick’s lap. “I moved to Portland because you went back to Iraq and then Adam left me a little more every day until we were strangers. I had to go because being here and having Adam look right through me hurt too much.”

Adam’s intensity changed. No less powerful, his sadness that he’d hurt her flashed over his face as his muscles tightened.

“I fucked up. So much.” He shifted his weight so he wasn’t resting on her. “I wasn’t looking through you. I just lost my shit for a while.” Adam brushed the hair from her face.

“Is this the I Fucked Up Olympics? If so, can we do the medal award ceremony and get down to the real issue now?” Mick asked.

“Does that mean you’re going next?” Jessi didn’t bother to hide her amusement as she craned her neck to look up at Mick.

Mick swallowed hard and decided to be as brave as she’d been. “When I came home from the military the first time and we were together, it changed everything.” He’d felt, for the first time in his entire life, that anything was possible. That it hadn’t mattered that their relationship didn’t look like most.

Just a few times, less than he could count on one hand, the three of them had been together, and it was enough to turn him inside out. Because his whole life it had been, as he’d said to them moments before, conditional love from his family. From his community.

“I thought I had it down. Being with you, the growing thing between me and Adam. And then that scene with my father.”

Adam shifted so Jessi could crawl into Mick’s lap, wrapping herself around him. Only this time, after a brief moment, Adam also pressed close.

Mick buried his face in Jessi’s hair, breathing her in, holding her with one arm, Adam the other.

“I thought I was cool with it. With what I was. Who I was. But after the fight with my dad and the following days, it just made me itchy. Panicked. Like I had to choose, and what if I chose wrong? Had I fucked up the best thing in my life because I let myself have Jessi the way I’d wanted for so long? Adam? Well, I hadn’t really let myself consider us being together like that. I didn’t feel good enough for either one of you, and I was afraid that if you had to choose, I’d lose you both.” And so soon after he’d kicked his pill habit, it had been extra scary.

Jessi spoke, her voice muffled by his shirt. “So you ran.”

“I ran because I was afraid to stay. I was afraid of what would happen when reality set in. Ran because I was terrified of what would happen if I chose wrong.”

And had been without this. For years.

So stupid. Jesus.

“And you’re back now? Not just in Seattle, but in my life?” Jessi asked, tipping her head back to see his face.

Mick cupped her cheek and she leaned into him. “I needed to get my shit straight before I made contact.” He lifted his gaze to Adam’s. “I’m back. In Seattle and in your lives.”

Jessi’s body snuggling into his after years without her felt so good it nearly hurt.

“I’m sorry I left the way I did. Sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. I was a shitty friend, and I hope you’ll let me make it up to you. To both of you.”

“Things just unraveled for me when Mick left. Watching Jessi try to process, trying to be there for her and not managing it very well. I felt like an asshole, felt like I’d been tossed away. Felt like I needed to be someone else to see if that’s what I should do for the rest of my life,” Adam said.

His leaving—the way he’d done it—had been a way to allow himself the space to take what he wanted and gorge on it.

Jessi lifted her face from where she’d been buried in Mick’s shirt, locking her gaze on his.

Adam hated that she’d been hurt. Hated that it had been necessary in any case, to step away and be Adam in a completely different context.

“And did you like what you found?”

Adam took her hand. “It was something I had to do. I’m back to you now. For keeps.”

Which didn’t make it any less harsh, he knew. He had a lot of fucking sins to make up for when it came to Jessilyn Franklin. He just had to hope he was man enough to do what it took.

And that she found it within her heart to understand. One day.

As for Mick, that was still complicated, only in a different way.

“For keeps like we’re all close friends again? We hang out and share our lives?” Mick asked, wariness in his voice.

Jessi wore the sweetest confused expression, and Adam refused to think about how terrifying it was that she got to him the way she did just by being herself.

“I didn’t want to assume,” Adam said.

Jessi rolled her eyes. “You realize that all three of us showed up after years of being apart. We all clicked back together pretty much immediately. And now it’s like we’re all shy? After all we’ve shared? That’s what this is, then? We’re all friends but not like before? We just forget those times? You two want to see other people?”

“Is that what you want?” Adam asked carefully.

“You left, Adam. After you left, Mick. I didn’t want to walk away. You two did. So asking me that question sort of makes me mad.”

“You’re the one who lived with someone else and was going to get married,” Mick mumbled.

“You guys are such assholes sometimes. Despite what you both put me through, I accept that you needed to step away. But you come back to me with this? No, thank you. If you want to just be friends, all right. I can deal. But you need to be up front and you can’t be kissing my fingers and Mick needs to stop grinding his cock into my ass. Friends don’t do that.”

“I just wanted you to know I didn’t expect you to hop into bed or anything. I didn’t want to assume,” Adam repeated.

Jessi looked up to Mick. “And you?”

Mick was smarter than Adam, though, because he hugged her tight. “If it was up to me, I’d want us to all be together. Really together.”

“Suck-up.” Adam rolled his eyes.

“She’s on my lap, though, so I declare that a win.”

Adam reached out to snatch her from Mick’s lap, bringing her to his own. “Looks like she’s in my lap now.”

“Something friends don’t do,” Jessi reminded him.

Adam took her cheeks in his hands and then claimed her mouth before she could say anything else.

It slammed into him so hard—a wave of regret that he’d put this aside—that he gasped, sucking in the sigh she gave him.

A sweet enough kiss. For now. Hunger, barely leashed, filled him. He wanted. Wanted what had been freely offered before he’d truly understood how rare and special it was.

“I’m always your friend,” he spoke against her mouth. “But I’d be a liar if I claimed I didn’t want everything from you. Being away from you only underlined it.”

“I was so lonely without you both.” She closed her eyes a moment to avoid his seeing all that pain, but he saw it, felt it cut him to the bone.

“I’m sorry. I was lonely too.” Adam had filled every moment with a pursuit of pleasure, but this was something totally different. Something he might not have really recognized if he hadn’t been without it.

But what he did see was he’d have a job of earning her trust back, even if she was being easy enough right then.