“Bill threw him out!”
I also keep my voice down. “Yeah, and tomorrow morning, Bill could show up here waving car keys at Lucas or something.” We each take one of her hands and press it against our chest, our thing with her. “Please, just…keep in mind he’s still a kid, and he’s in pain.”
Determination doesn’t even scratch the surface of the look I see in her grey eyes. “This time is different,” she insists. “And we can use Caine, too.”
“How?” Nolan asks.
She smiles as her fingers curl around our hands. “Well, obviously Bill isn’t going to be Caine’s favorite person right now. We show Caine that we welcome him in our home—because we absolutely do—and I think that’ll go a long way with him helping us gut-check Lucas if Bill tries to woo him back.”
I can’t fault her logic there but I still don’t want her getting her hopes up.
Lucas returns a couple of minutes later, while Zoey’s getting dinner on the table, without us even having to give him a time reminder.
Damn. Kid reallyisshook.
He returns her phone and hugs her again. “Thank you. He said yes, and thank you.” He buries his face against Zo’s shoulder. “I love you.”
Zoey looks damned triumphant as she hugs him. “Love you, too, baby. Always. All three of us do.”
We settle into our usual spots at the table and after we all have food on our plates, Zoey charges right into the center of the battle without any warm-up at all, and without warning us first. “There’s something you need to know about us, honey. I don’t want there to be any big secrets. We know yours now. But you can’t tell anyone ours.”
He scowls, and light flashes off the ring in his right eyebrow. Damn, I hate that fricking thing. It looks stupid and painful, but I agree with Zoey, it’s his eyebrow. Unless it gets infected or something, I’m not going to harass him over it. There are far more important battles to wage.
“Why not?” he asks.
“Thatwill soon be apparent,” she says.
Nolan looks vaguely terrified, which I totally understand, believe me.
Lucas looks from her to me, then to Nolan. Back to Zoey. “What’s going on?” he asks.
“Nolan isn’t here this weekend because his apartment’s being sprayed,” she says. “He’s here because the three of us are in a relationship together. We’re poly.”
When I watch Nolan, who’s sitting to my right, I see his gaze dip to his plate, the way his jaw tightens.
The way his throat works as he swallows.
I reach over and squeeze Nolan’s left hand, my pulse once again racing when he looks up at me and squeezes my hand back. I hate that there’s so much fear in his brown gaze right now.
Haaaaaate it.
Except Zoey’s right—we have to tell Lucas. Trying to keep this a secret with him living here isn’t going to work.
I can only pray the kid won’t fuck us over again.
