Grace

 

I put a do not disturb sign on the bar door, and luckily we didn’t get any guests knocking that night.

Both men were hunched over the bar top for the early part of the evening, the man I’d known as Thomas Heath looking nothing like Thomas Heath as he cried big sobbing heaves that took his breath.

Brett wasn’t far behind him, I’m sure, but he held his composure remarkably well, every inch the elder of the pair as he reached out a firm hand to grip the younger man’s shoulder. I struggled to piece together what any of this really meant, so I kept my distance, there but not there, making my presence known without pushing in too hard on their working things out time. I hoped they could work things out. Even though the whole mess was a result of one man’s desire to ruin the pair of us in the name of pride, I still clung on to the hope that the bones of something half decent could be salvaged from the carnage.

My body was still aching hard from taking them both as I finally accepted a glass of white from my husband. I was close enough to Thomas that I could hear his shallow breathing as I sat beside him. I took his fingers in mine, daring to squeeze hard enough that he looked across at me.

“Please stay,” I said, “at least for tonight.”

“I’m not used to this,” he replied, a ghost of a smile on his mouth. “People normally want me gone, unless they want my dick in them.”

My own smile was a lot brighter than his. “I’ve been very happy to have your dick in me, but that isn’t why I want you to stay. I think I’m done with two dicks for a while.”

“Grace,” Brett said with a grimace, and I cursed myself for too much too soon.

I was still adjusting to the idea that Thomas was George Foster’s biological son, and therefore, in some fucked-up way, Brett’s stepbrother. I guess that made the whole threesome situation utterly gross on some level, but I’d be lying if I said I felt it.

The only thing I’d come to feel was delight between the two of them, fucked-up or not.

Tom’s eyes on mine conveyed that he was feeling on my wavelength, and that made sense to me. He’d never had a family, not one that meant anything. His relationship with his mother was clearly strained at best, and the string of stepfathers after his dad left had obviously amounted to nothing decent.

Brother, stepbrother… none of it meant much to him.

But it meant everything to Brett. I could see it in his eyes as he weighed up the other man with this revelation in mind. Hurt and confused and hopeful all compounded into one strange expression.

I knew Brett missed his father. I knew he was struggling every day of his life to live up to his legacy. To be confronted by a biological relation to the man he’d loved so dearly was more than enough to set his senses reeling. I found myself wondering if they ever stood a chance to find steady footing again.

“Why the name change?” I said aloud to Thomas, eager to keep the communication flowing.

“Why not the name change?” he replied. “None of my mother’s surnames meant anything to me. Hadley, Browning, Smith, Jones, Weston. Who gave two shits? They never lasted.”

“What about Heath?” I asked. “Why Heath?”

I felt his smile in my belly. “He was the only one I cared for, Gareth Heath. He tried hard with me, told me I could call him dad one day when I was ready.”

“What happened to him?”

His smile dried up in a beat. “Mother fucked someone else, of course. Some piece of shit from the local pub. Gareth wanted to give it another go even then, but she told him to get his stuff together and leave. I heard her talking to one of her whore friends about him later, saying he had a tiny dick and didn’t know what to do with it. I made the decision from that point that I’d make it my mission in life to prove to slutty women there was more to a man than his sexual prowess, or destroy them in the process.”

I couldn’t deny his logic. His brain was one of reason, his methods devoid of all emotion but laced heavily with the strategy of some deranged genius.

I was very glad to have been the slutty woman to have proved him wrong. Though I wasn’t a slutty woman really. Not even passable as one. There was only Brett for me in heart and soul, and always had been.

Brett and the fifty grand needed to save our life together.

The men were drunk on whisky when we finally said our goodnights, and I wasn’t far behind them.

There was an awkward moment as we got the lights and headed to the doorway, all of us hovering between the route to our private quarters and the staircase upstairs.

It was Thomas who made the call for us, and I was glad of it.

“I’ll see you for breakfast,” he said. “Not too early.”

“Breakfast,” Brett confirmed, his expression strong and constant as Tom reached out a hand for a handshake.

Tears sprang up in my eyes as my husband used the grip to pull Thomas forward into a man hug, his palm firm on the other man’s back as he bid him a good night.

I could only nod and smile so as not to cry, wrapping him in a hug of my own that found him rigid against me.

Time. It would take time to unravel all of this.

I tried to choke my emotions back for the sake of Brett’s as we washed up for bed together.

We were lying in bed in the darkness when he sighed and hugged me tighter.

“He’s my brother, Grace.”

“Stepbrother,” I said. “That you’re only just getting to know.”

“But still, he’s my brother. My dad’s boy.”

My fingers stroked his forearm. “And we’ll take it one day at a time,” I offered. “We need to see how this falls together, Brett. It’s still so early.”

I knew what was brewing before he said it.

“This thing with the three of us. We can’t…” He took a breath. “How can we…”

I shook my head against his shoulder. “Don’t think about that now,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters now.”

But it did matter. I could still feel them both inside me, aching both at the thought of doing it again, and at the thought of never feeling Tom’s naked body next to mine from this point on.

I was grateful when sleep found Brett, swallowing him up with the same easy breathing I’d come to depend on for my own.

I was less grateful when the hours ticked on ahead and I was still staring at the ceiling, still reeling from the heartache of finding out the man I’d fucked for money was my husband’s stepbrother.

It was the most natural thing in the world to slip out of bed and step up to the window, even if I ached every step.

It was also becoming the most natural thing in the world to find the man I’d known as Thomas Heath standing out on the front smoking a cigar.

I guess it made it a triple whammy that it was becoming the most natural thing in the world to step out and join him, too.