Fifteen

Jasper

“Why won’t you let me see you?” I couldn’t understand it, Ann said she wanted both of us, yet she wouldn’t agree to see me.

She sighed on the other end of the line. “Because it’s too hard.”

That shouldn’t have made me feel as good as it did, but dammit it was good to hear. “But it doesn’t have to be.”

When she spoke again, her voice was soft. Quiet. “But it always will be, don’t you see? I want you both and you don’t want that.”

“So, it’s all or nothing, is that it?”

She sighed and the sound ripped open something inside of me. “Yes. If I chose one of you over the other, your friendship will suffer. I can’t be the cause of that, not when it wouldn’t even make me happy. I know you think I’m playing games, but I’m not. I’m grown, and I know what I want. That’s why I think it’s best if we don’t talk anymore. Goodbye, Jas.”

Shit. Fuck. “No!” It was no use. The call ended and the screen went black. She was done. With me. With Bryce. With both of us.

And I hated it. For nearly a week I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about the way she felt so soft against my hard body. Her sexy feminine scent and her laugh, so musical in happiness, but so thick and husky in lust. And the way she knew what she wanted from us was like an aphrodisiac. She just knew.

I wanted her and I couldn’t deny it. Hell, it was only after she’d walked away from me and refused my calls that I realized how much she meant to me.

How much I wanted her. Desperately. Deeply. Frantically.

At least half a dozen times I was tempted to toss the phone in the trash and go to her apartment, force her to let me in so we could hash this out. Then I thought of Bryce and how gutted he’d feel, so I’d sit my ass back down with another bottle of whiskey.

Because as pissed off as I was about this whole fucking situation, the truth was that I could only admire Annie for her decision. Her determination not to come between us. Many women had tried over the years and every last one of them had failed.

I started drinking again, only this time I wanted company. I picked up my phone and tapped the face of my oldest friend. “Bryce, get your ass over here. I’ll have my driver take you home later. We’re getting drunk.”

“You better have some fucking food this time. And I mean real food, no Kobe sliders or caviar salsa. I want real fucking food. Pizza and subs and fries and wings.”

“All of that?”

“I just got off my second forty-eight.”

“All right. I’ll order something, just get here.” The call ended, and I scrolled through my phone in search of a nearby pizza joint. Bryce was a grown man who still ate like a college kid. Not that I could blame him, the boys at the firehouse cooked nothing but chili and tacos, nachos and beef stew. But I wanted a drinking buddy and I didn’t really give a shit what we ate, as long as it allowed me to keep drinking.

I’d finished half the bottle by the time Bryce arrived and finally, I felt good. “You look tired.”

He frowned. “Yeah, well you look drunk.”

“Not yet, but I’m on my way. Come, partake with me.” I motioned him forward and shut the door, following the sound of his heavy boots on my hard wood floors. “I’m drinking eighty-year-old scotch, but have whatever you want. There’s even beer in the fridge.”

Bryce looked at me. He really looked, studying me to see if he could find the scar. Find where I was hurting. “You all right, man?”

“No, I’m not fucking all right. She won’t see me, either. Says it’s too hard. She doesn’t want to come between us. What the fuck is that about?” His lips twitched when he came back from the kitchen with a beer. “Why is that funny?”

“She’s looking out for us.” Bryce wore a sweet, adoring look that made me want to punch him. “Told me our friendship was special and too magical to mess with. Magical. What the fuck is that?”

“That’s nice but it doesn’t change anything, does it?”

His shoulders fell. “I guess it doesn’t, but it does prove how amazing she is, that she would put our friendship above her own desires.”

Yeah, that was one, extremely charitable, way of looking at it. “What the fuck does amazing do if neither one of us can have her?” My voice thundered in the spacious room, but Bryce just smirked. “It doesn’t make us any closer to her.”

He shrugged and dropped down on the far end of the sofa, leaving the coffee table between us. “It’s just nice to know that someone out there thinks we’re both so fucking great, that our friendship is worth preserving. Other than us.”

And that was why she wanted him, because he was the best damn man I knew. He was more than my best friend—more like a brother. “Shit. We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

Bryce leaned back and took a long pull of his beer, savoring the taste for a long damn time before he spoke. “How can she be happier with both of us? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” I spent the first couple days after Ann left my place thinking the same damn thing, wondering how she could possibly want both of us. Then I removed my head from my ass and thought about it objectively. “How many times have you met a woman and thought, she’d be perfect if she had tits like Sonya or a work ethic like Marianne? Or you wish the new girl had something from an ex?”

“Okay, so none of us gets everything we want. You make compromises for the right person.”

“Yeah, you settle.” Because that was the other thing I’d figured out in my eighty-year-old whiskey haze. Ann wasn’t being unreasonable, she just refused to settle. “She truly believes the three of us are better together. And for her, that’s everything. She doesn’t want to settle. I get that.”

“It sounds like you’re okay with it.” I heard the accusation in his tone and hell, I even understood it.

“I’m not okay with it, but I’ve spent the last few days trying to understand it.” I spent hours, eyes blurred from too much booze, reading on polyamorous relationships. I needed to understand how three otherwise normal people, could possibly be happy sharing a lover. It went against human nature as far as I was concerned, but for Ann, I needed to know.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, really. At first, I was just curious but the more I read about it, the more I learned and the more I wanted to know. Did you know that people do this, for real? Live in a home together, have children and all that? Three and more.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

After that we did more drinking than talking, and when the food arrived we moved to the dining room and stuffed our faces. And drank. And avoided the big blue-eyed elephant in the room between us for a long time.

“You’re considering it,” he said finally.

He was right, in a way. “First, I’m trying to understand it.” If I could understand it, I figured I could consider it. Maybe.

“Fuck. Now I have to consider it, you know?”

I laughed at his twisted logic.

“I’m serious. If I don’t at least try, you might get her in the end.” He bit into a spicy wing with more gusto than it required.

“I think the past week has proven that isn’t true. How many times did you call?”

He grinned. “Eight. She answered once to tell me to stop.”

“Me, too.”

Bryce reached for the whiskey, filled both glasses half way and pushed one toward me. “To finding the right woman, and seriously fucking considering the impossible.”

“Cheers.”