I poured everything into the kiss, desperate to feel him, needing him to know what those words did to me. When I’d finally planned to come find him, my mind had started cooking up all sorts of bad outcomes—that I was too late, that he’d just been caught up in us and hadn’t actually felt it as deep as I had, that he wouldn’t want me anymore. The thoughts had plagued me for days, but I’d made myself push through.

Hearing him say that he loved me made it all more than worth it.

He pulled back, and I let him even though I wanted to chase his lips with mine.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked through heavy breaths. “I don’t want to rush you. I don’t want you to end up in that place again.”

The place where I was panicking and nearly shouting how I didn’t love him.

No, I never wanted to be back there, either.

“I’m sure. I can’t promise I won’t have bad days. I can’t promise I won’t backslide into the grief from time to time, but I swear that I know what I want. I know that I want to be with you if you can be patient with me when I struggle.”

He cupped both of my cheeks in his warm hands and it made me feel more centered than I had in weeks.

“I can be patient,” he promised.

I knew he could. He’d been showing me that right from the beginning.

It was time for me to show him that it was going to be worth it.

I looked into his chocolate eyes. Green ones that used to look at me in the same way flashed through my mind, but it didn’t feel like agony to see them. It reminded me that I was lucky. I somehow had been blessed with the love of two men that had so much to give.

“I love you,” I told Liam again. The words were pure, free of the guilt of giving them to someone else. The way they should be.

I’m happy for you, Katie.

I was, too. So happy.

Liam pulled my face toward him, kissing me again. His tongue teased along mine until my whole body was responding. My hips rolled, trying to find relief for the ache he was stirring up. I rubbed against him, feeling the hard ridge of his cock. He was right there with me. His hands moved back into my hair, gripping it hard in a way that sent a shockwave through me.

“Let me take you back to my place,” he growled.

“No.”

His hold tightened. “I need you, gypsy.”

“Take me home,” I insisted.

“The farmhouse?”

I nodded my head even as he looked unsure. We both needed this. We needed for me to show him that I wanted us to be together in every way, out in the open. He stared at me for a long moment, searching for a sign that I wasn’t ready. He wouldn’t find it. I knew what I wanted.

Without another word, he pulled me from the shop, shutting down the lights and locking up behind us. He led me to my car—because of Owen’s seat, I knew—and put me in the passenger seat.

Without preamble, but with his hand firm on my thigh, he drove us home.

“Please,” I begged.

He was going to kill me. I was going to die right there if I didn’t get it soon.

Liam didn’t budge, though. He was content where he was.

“Lee,” I tried again.

His hands on me tightened until I thought I might get bruises where his fingers dug in, but I couldn’t give a shit. Still, even with that reaction to his name, he didn’t let up.

I couldn’t say how long I’d been on my back in that bed with his mouth between my thighs, but it was too long. I’d come already, and I was perilously near a second that I didn’t want to happen with just that incessant flick of his tongue against my clit. I wanted him inside me. I needed to have that aching place filled.

He didn’t agree.

I’d even take his fingers at that point if he was so determined to keep going down on me.

“I need more.”

He dragged his teeth over my lips, nipping at one before pulling back just enough to say, “You’ve got everything you need right here.”

He was right. With him in this bed with me, I had it all. I just wanted to actually feel it all.

“I need your cock.”

The viciousness of his thrashing tongue only increased at hearing that, and I could feel the coiling tension close to snapping.

“I don’t want to come without you inside me,” I kept pressing.

I didn’t know if I’d be able to help it though. With the way he was going at me, I was right at the edge. It wouldn’t be possible to hold out much longer.

“Please!” I cried, losing the sense of keeping my voice down despite the other people in the house.

Not a heartbeat later, his body blanketed mine, his hand slamming down over my mouth, and his cock sinking in right to the root. My loud moan was muffled into his palm.

“Hush, gypsy. You’ll wake everyone and they’ll all hear what I do to you.”

If it weren’t for Owen, I wouldn’t even care. Let them hear.

I bared my teeth, biting a bit at his palm, then turning to bite right on his fingers. Before I could make a sound, he shifted his hand and plunged two of the digits between my lips. I sucked on them happily, tasting his skin and the lingering wetness from my pussy on them.

“Fuck, you kill me,” Liam groaned.

I knew the feeling.

He pounded into me, pulling out until I only had the tip before rocking back in until he was fully sheathed. I felt each thrust with my whole body.

He came down until he was lying fully on top of me, still rocking his hips to take me hard. His head moved in close until he was kissing the edge of my lips right next to where they were wrapped around his fingers. That was what sent me over the edge.

I came on a scream that was muffled by his fingers filling my mouth. It felt like my entire body condensed to that place where I was spasming around his cock. Nothing mattered but that feeling.

Then, Liam’s cock swelled, jerked, and I felt him flood me with his hot release as he groaned loud and low. His pleasure only heightened mine, and we writhed frantically against one another as we both rode it out.

When it left me, I was unable to move, to do anything. I just laid there beneath him, feeling the aftershocks run through me as I tried to catch my breath.

“Fuck, I love you.” His voice was hoarse, from the emotion or the exertion I couldn’t say, but it sounded damn good.

“I love you, too,” I sighed.

I woke early, the mom in me knowing I needed to before Owen came charging in. I left Liam in bed—dressed, just as we’d both been since we could move again the night before, to be safe—and went to check on my boy. Peeking into his room, I found him already stirring.

“Hi, Mommy.”

“Morning, baby.”

He made the disgruntled face he’d started taking to when I called him that. My little man didn’t think he was a baby anymore. With first grade lingering right on the horizon like a threat, he might be right. He’d always be my baby, though.

“What’s for breakfast?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Why not?” His absolute confusion was cute. To his mind, Mom knew everything.

“Liam’s here, I thought we should wait to let him help decide.”

Owen’s eyes went huge on his little face. The next second, he was scrambling out of his mess of covers to get to his feet.

“Liam’s here?!” he shouted.

“Right here, bud.”

I turned to see Liam, his long hair sleep-mussed and so sexy it made me want to lock us back in the bedroom for breakfast. I hadn’t expected him to be up for a while, and he must have read that on my face.

“Felt you gone,” he said low.

That was all the time he had for me before he was being barreled into by an excited Owen.

“Liam!”

Lee crouched, making Owen release the hold on his legs, and picked my glad-to-go son up in his arms.

“Hey, buddy. I missed you.”

Lee missed him. My heart was melting and breaking all at once. Owen threw his arms around Lee’s neck, and I knew firsthand how much he had missed Lee, too. He’d told me often enough. The last few weeks he’d been a nightmare of bad moods and tantrums, which was so unlike him.

This was why.

I wasn’t the only one who’d handed over my heart.

“You’re back,” Owen said, but it rang of accusation.

“I’m back,” Lee agreed. “And I’m not going anywhere again.”

“Good.”

Yeah, it was good. Lee’s smile said it all about feeling the same way.

Good.

I closed my eyes for a second, letting myself feel it all. Lee and Owen’s happiness, my own, and that voice telling me this was right.

I love you, Joel, I thought. But that love didn’t feel burdened with pain as heavily as it used to. I would always love my husband, but there was room for more in my heart.

There was room for Lee.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Liam asked, getting us back on track.

“Pancakes!” Owen answered.

“You’ll turn into a pancake,” I sassed. The kid would have pancakes every day if he could.

Liam ignored me. “Pancakes it is.”

He turned to head out of the room, Owen—who usually hated being held this long—sticking right where he was as they left.

“Kiss ass,” I muttered to Lee as he left.

Behind his back, keeping it out of Owen’s sight, he gave me the finger.

Laughing, I stepped into Owen’s room to sort out clothes for him. On his dresser was a picture of him, me, and Joel. I kept it there so he’d never forget his daddy.

“Thank you,” I whispered to it.

For everything.

For loving me.

For giving me Owen.

For the knowledge I had deep inside, even if it had taken me a long time to find it, that he’d be happy for me now.

Then, without letting myself sink into the grief that still stirred in me at seeing that photo, I followed my guys to the kitchen for pancakes.