Chapter Twenty Five
Meg
“Is this fun?”
I glance beside me, looking up at Mateo. “Is what fun?”
He indicates the short line of people in front of us on the sidewalk, waiting to get into the theater. “You get your kicks waiting in lines, right?”
I roll my eyes, flashing him a smile. “Oh, right. Yes, I’m having a blast.”
“Elise isn’t going to be happy about this,” Adrian states, warily glancing around before looking ahead at the lobby doors.
Mia is hanging back by him, apparently deciding he is the lesser of two evils. I grin at Adrian. “Especially since it totally looks like you’re on a date with Mia,” I tell him. “Want me to take a picture and send it to her?” I ask, pulling my cell phone out. “Put your arm around Mia’s waist. I’ll write ‘wish you were here!’”
Adrian gives me the dead eye, daring me to do that.
“You girls and your damn pictures,” Mateo mutters.
“Well, maybe if you weren’t so old you’d get it,” I inform him with mock-delicacy, slipping the phone back into my little handbag.
“I’m not quite 34,” he points out. “I won’t need a cane anytime soon.”
“Ancient. We’re both barely out of high school.”
“You’re far past high school,” Mateo replies, rolling his eyes.
“Well, Mia isn’t,” I point out.
“Hey, she’s Adrian’s date; take it up with him.”
“Keep it up,” Adrian says, shaking his head.
Mateo smirks, sparing me a secret wink. I grin, leaning into his side and wrapping an arm around him.
I don’t expect Mia to join in. During the car ride here she was committed to not enjoying herself, but she surprises all of us when she says, “I probably would’ve dated Adrian.”
This surprises Adrian most of all. He stares at her. “Really?”
She nods. “I mean, it wouldn’t have ended well, because Mateo, but sure.”
“She would’ve corrupted you,” Mateo states, glancing back at Adrian.
Mia scoffs. “Yeah, I’m the corruptor in this group. Definitely.”
“Huh,” Adrian murmurs.
The line finally moves. I contemplate how hard it would be to get rid of Elise and fix Adrian up with Mia. Ultimately it seems like a lot of work, and I’m not convinced Mateo would allow it, so I stick with the sister wife serenity.
Mia’s commitment to her cause wanes a bit when we get inside the theater. It’s gorgeous, and Mia’s never even been to anything like this before so she gets starry-eyed, taking in every beautiful inch of the interior. Mateo takes advantage of her momentary happiness to wrap his other arm around her waist and she doesn’t resist. Now it no longer looks like we are on a double date. Now it looks like what it is—we’re both his, and Adrian is just here to keep guard.
This all feels pretty much normal to me at home, but it’s a bit jarring now that we’re in public. Mostly people are involved with their own lives, but we still catch some odd looks. I’m just pregnant enough that I’m not drawing much attention, but Mia is a 19-year-old knockout at her physical peak and all dolled up in a skimpy, backless dress; she gets more than a few once-overs from more than a few men. She doesn’t seem to notice (which is so annoying). Mateo does, but he doesn’t care. He’s not Vince-possessive, and he probably doesn’t mind showing her off, anyway. I’m amused by the guys who watch long enough to make it past Mia’s sexiness, past Mateo with his arm curled possessively around her, and then on to pregnant little ol’ me, his other arm wrapped around me. That’s when the eyebrows jump. That’s when the confusion registers.
It’s fun. It’s really fun. We need to go freak people out in public more often.
I lean in to tell Mateo, “People-watching is fun.”
He smiles, perceptive enough to pick up on the same things I’ve been picking up on. “Isn’t it?”
“I think we should do it more often,” I tell him. “Let’s go to sporting events. I don’t like sporting events, but there are lots of men there. We can put Mia in a white tank top and short shorts and parade her around. It’ll be great.”
Mia leans forward now, hearing her name. “What?”
“Nothing, sweetie,” I reply.
Mia wrinkles her nose up at the endearment, and a man walking past bumps into Adrian in his attempt to look back at Mia’s ass. Adrian is not amused. The man turns red and starts paying attention to where he’s going. Mateo smiles and gives me a little squeeze.
Yes, the theater is fun.
The show’s pretty good, too. We’ve got good seats up front. Mateo bought out the seats around us, because Adrian hates people and Mateo likes privacy anyway. It’s a pretty full show, so we look like major assholes. We kind of are though, so it is what it is.
I steal glances over at Mia from time to time, on Mateo’s other side. Once the theater goes dark and the show starts, Mateo takes her hand. She lets him. So he starts running his fingers over the sensitive skin on her wrist. Judging by the rise and fall of her chest, he’s turning her on. I take this to mean he is not coming to our bedroom tonight.
When the show lets out, Mia and I are both pretty pumped. She rattles on about her favorite parts, and I share in her excitement. The men don’t join us for this conversation, they just let us tire ourselves out as we walk back to the car.
Impulsively, since we’re walking ahead of them, I grab Mia’s hand. She seems surprised for a split second, then shrugs and starts swinging it.
“We should go out on the town more often,” she tells me.
“Just wait until we’re in Paris,” I tell her. “We’re gonna have to take someone to stay at the hotel with the kids in the evenings so we can all go out at night.”
“Paris, huh?” she asks, reluctantly pulled in.
I nod, grinning over at her. “It’ll be great. We can go shopping during the day and stop at cute little cafes. Go to the Louvre and the opera house. Have a picnic with the girls—they can blow bubbles in front of the freaking Eiffel Tower. Get pumped for this.”
“That does sound pretty great,” she admits.
I nod, still swinging her hand. “Mateo’s been there before with Beth, so I’m sure he knows some good stuff to do. And then when our little ones are all tucked away in bed, we can go out with Mateo. I’m pretty sure the French will be more open-minded about our whole thing we’ve got going on here, but I’m not going to Paris to people watch, so who even cares?”
Mia sighs, but this time it’s not with pleasure.
“What’s wrong?” I ask quietly, leaning in.
“That just sounds really nice.” She says it sadly, like someone who wishes they could go, instead of someone who will definitely be going.
I give her hand a supportive squeeze. “It will be nice. Let it happen.”
“I can’t,” she says, quietly. “It’s not fair.”
I sigh, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and giving her a little hug as we walk. I guess I’ll have to give her a little more time.
“Hey, why don’t we get food?” I ask, changing the subject. Releasing Mia, I slow down so the guys can catch up. “Are you guys hungry? Baby Morelli and I are starving.”
“I could eat,” Mia agrees.
“All right,” Mateo says, as Adrian pulls out his phone. “Where do you want to go?”
Mia grins at me. “Chipotle.”
“Yes,” I agree, vehemently. “We’re going to Chipotle.”
“The taco place?” Mateo asks, unimpressed.
“And burritos. You’ve never been?”
Rolling his eyes, he says, “Shockingly enough, I have not.”
“You’re such a snob,” Mia shoots back over her shoulder.
“You’re gonna love it,” I tell him. “You get to watch them make your food. It never leaves your sight. This is going to be right up your alley.”
He doesn’t seem convinced, but it doesn’t matter. We’re taking Mateo Morelli to Chipotle for the first time, whether he likes it or not.
---
Apparently my date night plan really pleased Mateo, because tonight, even after his trophy girlfriend parade, Mateo is back in our bed. I’ve never enjoyed the sight of him undressing for bed so much in all our time together as I do now.
“What?” he asks, since I’m watching him with a semi-goofy grin on my face.
“You’re so sexy,” I tell him.
He smirks at me as he climbs in beside me. “Am I now?”
I roll my eyes. “You know you are. You wouldn’t get away with half the shit you get away with if you weren’t.”
“I think I’d still get away with half,” he disagrees. “Maybe three quarters.”
“You think that because you have the confidence of a sexy man,” I inform him.
He doesn’t dislike having his ego stroked, but since he doesn’t need it, he wraps an arm around me and changes the subject. “Tonight was a good idea. I’m glad you suggested it.”
“I have lots of good ideas,” I inform him. “I’m a regular chick magnet. Also, you know, Mia’s my best friend, so I do have a little bit of insight into her. If you ever came to bed, maybe I could share some of it.”
“I’m sure you’re dying to talk about Mia in bed,” he says lightly.
“Hey, she’s your mission right now, I get it. I’m a team player.”
“She’s being such a pain in the ass,” he says. “I didn’t think she’d resist this hard. She’s always been so malleable.”
“Well… she wouldn’t have. If you would’ve just curbed your damn caveman impulses, we had a supple, loving sister wife ready to join the team. This could’ve gone much more smoothly. We’d all be in Paris, walking arm-in-arm right now, eating baguettes.”
Mateo rolls his eyes. “What is it with women and Paris?”
“Hey, you clearly took Beth, so you have to take me. We can go to all the places. I’d like to go to Venice one of these days, too.”
“With Mia?”
“Sure. I mean, as long as you’re there. I love Mia, but I don’t really want to have a romantic vacation with just her. All three of us though, sure.”
Mateo sighs, but it’s a nice sigh, like I’m lightening the load on him instead of adding to it. His grip on me tightens and he gives me a tender kiss. “You’re the greatest wife ever.”
“Damn straight,” I tell him, leaning in for an even longer kiss.
Now I get my reward. I’ve pleased him, I’m doing well with his little sister wife plan, and now he’s kissing me, and his hands are roaming, and I’m finally gonna get laid. It’s so damn cute how he thinks I’m Mia and I won’t notice his pattern. Though, to be fair, maybe I wouldn’t if he’d come around more.
“Since you have such a great wife,” I tell him, catching the hand that’s about to wander between my legs, “you should visit her more often.”
“I know,” he says, somewhat seriously. “I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you. I’ve been caught up in Mia’s shit.”
I nod once. “I know. That’s fine. Just make sure you come back.”
I get a genuine smile now, a tender one, the kind I love. “Always.”
I caress his face approvingly. “Good.” Releasing his hand, I add, “You can resume.”
Laughing lightly, he moves in closer and kisses my neck. I sigh with pleasure, closing my eyes.
“I missed your mouth.”
“Oh, did you?” he murmurs, before dragging that mouth down my body to much more pleasurable places.
He’s really happy with me, because I get double orgasms tonight. First he works magic with his mouth, and then he gives me his perfect cock. On top of being super relaxed, I get to fall asleep curled up in his arms again. This night is basically all win.
When I’m just about to drift off to sleep, the sound of Mateo’s voice calls me back. “You’ll tell me if I’m wearing you down, right?”
Prying my eyes open, I look over at him. “You’re not going to wear me down.”
“But you’ll warn me if that changes.”
“Of course,” I assure him.
He nods, but I can see he’s not satisfied. Then he adds, “If you notice Mia is…”
I nod. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
“I don’t know if she’d tell me.”
“Probably not. But I don’t think she’ll get worn out. Like you said, it’s easier with both of us. I mean, not for me; I can handle you on my own, but for her. I can help both of you stabilize when your crazy-ass tornado love threatens to bring the house down. You guys just have to let me. Let me work my magic.”
“I’m not used to having an actual partner,” he tells me. “Beth and I didn’t have what you and I have. I’ve never had that before, not with anyone.”
I nod with feigned arrogance. “I’m one-of-a-kind.”
“You are,” he says seriously. “If you were anyone else, you wouldn’t have made it through this Mia thing.”
I shrug. “It’s a windy season. Not a big deal.”
“When everything settles, I’ll make it up to you.”
“No need,” I assure him. “I’m fine. Just do whatever you need to do and get this Mia shit straightened out so we can all settle in. That’s what I want.”
His gaze drifts toward the ceiling and he sighs. “I don’t know if I’m going to get what I want.”
Frowning slightly, I question, “The sister wife thing?”
“No.” He doesn’t go on right away, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to, so I settle in to sleep. Baby Morelli is draining me, and now that I’ve finally had sex, I just want to sleep. So of course now, when I just want to sleep, he feels like sharing. “I wanted to know that I could fix it. No matter what I did to break it, I just wanted to know that she was wrong and I could put it back together.”
“Why? I mean, wouldn’t it be so much easier to just… not break it in the first place?”
“I don’t always know when I’m breaking something.” He turns his head to look at me, to meet my gaze. “I broke things with Beth. Not like this, not like I did with Mia, not on purpose, not by doing any one thing. I just wore on her. We were together for years, and she loved me in the beginning. She was completely in love with me the way Mia was.” Shaking his head slightly, he said, “And then one day she couldn’t anymore. I tried to make her fall back in love with me. I used every trick I had; I used sincerity, logic—you name it, I tried it. I exhausted my arsenal, and I couldn’t win her back. I failed so spectacularly that she tried to get me arrested. She was that desperate to leave me, and… I don’t know why.”
I curl up against him, wanting to offer comfort. I know how much it frustrates Mateo not to understand things. It’s his least favorite thing in the world. “Mia isn’t Beth. She’s just hurting right now, but she will love you again. I’ll make her.”
Smiling slightly, he says, “If I can’t, how can you?”
Rolling my eyes, I tease, “I got you, didn’t I? I’ve got game; I can reel her in.”
“I just really wanted her to be wrong.”
I consider his desire for a moment, cross-referencing it with what I know about Mia. After a minute, since sleep obviously isn’t happening until I solve this, I come up with something. “If you would’ve broken things with Mia by accident, the way you did with Beth, you could’ve won her back. Mia is made of love. It’s in the fabric of her DNA. She wants to forgive. She wants to accept and love and move on. But you didn’t just hurt her, and you definitely didn’t do it by accident. I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a hell of a lot harder to forgive you for something you do to someone else than something you do to me. If Mia would’ve fallen out of love with you over time or you would’ve hurt her by accident, she would’ve come back to you. But what you did to her was intentional and cruel. That’s a different thing. It made her feel unimportant to you.”
“That’s insane,” he replies. “Obviously she’s important to me or I wouldn’t have done all this in the first place. She knows who I am. She knows I play dirty.”
I nod, giving him that, but reframing it for him. “You’re right, she does. And I’m sure it’s part of what she likes about you. But even when you’re getting your villain on, you’re supposed to be her villain. You’re supposed to set the world on fire for her, not set her world on fire. She didn’t want Vince to die. She begged for your help, and you didn’t hear her. Women need to be heard.”
“I haven’t made her feel unimportant since it happened though. I’ve gone out of my way to give her attention—you know that.”
“I do. I also know that the one time you let her down is going to stand out more than the many times you didn’t. You have to make it up to her. I think you should apologize.”
His gaze drifts back toward me. “For Vince?”
“Well… sure. But also for ignoring her when she begged you for help. That’s a hard thing to come back from. You lost her trust when you did that. Tell her you regret everything that happened and you’ll never do it again.”
Shaking his head, he says, “I won’t tell her that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know if I can keep that promise. In the long run, it’s worse to make a promise and break it than not to make it at all.”
“Well, who else can you kill? I mean, Vince is already dead, so just don’t kill me or Adrian and I think you’re pretty much set.”
“I don’t know how someone so naturally submissive could be this hard to conquer.”
I adjust my hand on his chest and close my eyes. “You shouldn’t have killed her boyfriend. That was a mistake. But she’s out of boyfriends to kill, so let’s just get past this and we’ll be good.”
He’s quiet for a couple minutes, then he suddenly asks, “Do you think she likes Mark?”
“Not sexually, no.”
My opinion seems to weigh more than whatever data he’s compiled, so he relaxes.
I’m completely exhausted now, so I lean over and brush a little kiss across his perfect lips. “You should get some sleep and finish plotting against Mia tomorrow.”
Lightly smiling, he acknowledges, “Maybe.”
“Definitely.” I yawn, my eyes watering.
He surprises me by coming in for one more kiss. “Thank you for being you.”
I flash him a sleepy smile. “Anytime.”