"Yeah, back in Tulsa. She was trying to sleep in her truck. I mean, it was her first event, so she was new and all. I made sure she had a room to crash in."
"And did a lot more than just sleep?" I pressed.
He shrugged. "I mean, I kissed her a bit. Well, and helped her take a shower."
"You," I told him, pushing past him to get to my bag, "are a dick, Ty."
"What? I didn't fuck her!" he insisted.
I grabbed a pair of clean jeans and pulled them on. "But you groped her, made out with her, and got her naked in the shower?" I asked incredulously. "Fuck, Ty. Consent, man!"
"Well, yeah," he said.
"Forallof it!" I snapped.
"Oh." And he dropped onto the edge of the spare bed. "Is she pissed at me?"
"No, but she should be," I told him. "And I didn't kiss her.Shekissedme. I stopped her. I talked to her. I took her home and made sure she was ok, and then I told her fucking boyfriends - and J.D. is terrifying when he thinks she's being threatened, so you know."
"You told him you didn't do anything, right?" he asked.
I bent to find a shirt. "No, not that. I fucked up, Ty. I said something about her being theirs, and I thought J.D. was going to find a damned knife in their fancy-ass kitchen and gut me."
"Huh?"
I stood to pull the shirt on, making him wait until I was covered. "Ty, J.D. is crazy. He's unhinged and brags about being a pit bull.Theirpit bull." Then I pulled out one of the little chairs beside the half-ass table in here and sank into it. "He's also right."
"And I wasn't there," Ty reminded me. "I came to make sure she's ok, and that everything went fine. Help me out a bit?"
"Call room service and order some coffee," I told him. "My phone's dead, and people wash their underwear in the coffee makers in these rooms. Not drinking someone's skid mark."
"Ok..." He pulled out his phone and started swiping.
While he did that, I scrubbed at my face, trying to get my brain working. Today was Thursday. I was pretty sure Cody, Tanner, and J.D. would be resting and recovering before tomorrow's event started. Likely bracing for things to go bad, too. Shit, and I needed to make sure they knew I was cool with seeing their make-out session, but that could wait.
I barely had my brain working again before Ty was done. "So?" he asked. "What was J.D. right about?"
"She's not his. She's not Tanner's." I leaned back and stretched out my legs, guessing this was going to be a long talk. "Their relationship is open because no one owns Cody. They're with her, sure, butwith. They don't own her, make her decisions, or put restrictions on her. Pretty sure the same works between them, too, but I didn't ask."
"Ok?" Ty said, sounding as confused about that as I'd felt last night.
But a little sleep added distance between the concept he'd been trying to share and the fear of seeing J.D. that pissed. "They love her enough to not put her in a cage," I tried to explain. "Ty, there's three people in that relationship already. There's no 'faithful' when they're already fucking someone else, so it sounds like they rewrote the rules. And they did it because they don't own her. They just trust her - and I heard all about how you fucked up."
He hung his head. "Yeah. Cheyenne?"
I nodded. "Sounds like. Said you got possessive. I think J.D. went the other way to make up for it, and Tanner's smart enough to follow his lead."
"They're good to her," Ty said. "And yeah, J.D.'s right more often than not. In the harshest way, but still right. He fucking cut Austin because he grabbed her tits, Jake. He convinced me to step up and lead because this hazing shit sucks. And yeah, he used Cody as a reason to convince me, but his point? It's true for all of us."
"Yeah," I agreed.
Thankfully, that was when someone tapped at the door. Ty hopped up to answer it, which I appreciated. When he returned with a carafe of coffee? I almost groaned at the smell of it. Ineededsome of that.
"Cream?" he asked as he set it on the table and turned over the provided cups. "Sugar?"
"Two of each," I said, watching while he poured. "Ty, why did she kiss me?"
"Cody?" He glanced up, then back to the cups he was fixing up. "Jake, she's a smart woman. She's also learned a lot since she joined this crazy circus. So have I."
