“Look—”
“She won’t even talk to me,” Van interrupted, slicing his eyes over to Grant. He shrugged, rolling his shoulders. “Won’t respond to texts. Wouldn’t let me see her. Just… pushed me away last night. Made me let her go and watch her walk away crying.” He raised his eyes to Grant’s. “Do you know what it feels like to have to witness your own heart breaking while it beats inside someone else’s chest? To watch that part of your heart walk away, knowing how badly she’s hurting? I get that none of this makes any fucking sense, man. People don’t meet the way we met her. Don’t have this… this connection right off the bat. They don’t fall in love with strangers they met in a hotel bar. But I did. And so did she. Somehow, she loved us both… and now she’s pushing me away because you made her believe you hate her, when you love her, too.”
He watched as Grant swallowed hard, his dark gaze dropping once again to the floor between his feet.
“You better figure out how to make this right. Because if we lose her because you’re a giant dickhead…”
Grant nodded, still looking at the floor. They had never talked about Hope, how that weekend had changed them, about their feelings. How finding her again had changed them. He took another drink of the bourbon. Maybe it was the liquor combined with the incomprehensible heartache he was suffering that had finally loosened his tongue. Whatever it was, he couldn’t stop the words from falling out of him. He’d bottled them upsince Chicago, respecting Grant’s wishes to not speak about it, sweeping everything under the rug like their generation had been taught, as if that made everything disappear.
“We don’t even know that this is something that we can make work, Van…”
“We spent every goddamn waking second with her for an entire weekend. And I realize that’s not enough time to really get to know someone… but I know everything I need to. I know that she’s kind, and beautiful, and so willing to put her fragile heart in our unworthy hands. I know that she’s scared. That she’s never felt like this before, either. That we both feel it in our gut—” he said, thumping his fist against his abdomen and staring up at the ceiling, “—that if we could just figure it out… this thing could be magic. Isn’t that what soulmates are, anyway? Magic living in separate bodies?”
“Van… you’re drunk.” Grant sighed, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck again. He knew he was drunk and making no sense. But it made sense tohim. They were magic, all three of them, but only when they were together. He just needed Grant to see it, too. “We don’t share like this, for a reason.”
“Because we get jealous.”
Grant nodded, raising his eyes to his. “Yes,” he answered gruffly. “This is going to get messy.”
Van shrugged, taking another drink of the bourbon. It was almost empty now. “I’d rather have messy with her than without.”
Grant shook his head and sighed again. “How are we supposed to make this work, huh? We what? Flip a coin for who gets to sleep with her at night? Draw straws to see whose bed she sleeps in? Rock-paper-scissors for who gets to cuddle with her on the couch? I mean, are we supposed to—you know, us together—?”
“I don’t know, Grant,” Van muttered, shrugging his shoulders again. “I don’t have any of those answers. But I know I want to at least fucking try to make this work with her. We’ve been best friends for years. We already fucking live together. We get along, for the most part, other than this! I love you, man. That’s not to say I want your dick in my ass, but if that’s what you need—”
“Jesus, Van,” Grant huffed, backing away from the door and rolling his shoulders. He grunted a snort of a laugh. Van watched as Grant strode over to the edge of the bed and stared, shocked, as Grant bent down and kissed him. It was mostly chaste, as Van was too shocked to respond, and when Grant pulled away, they stared at each other. “Feel anything?”
“No,” Van said, which was the truth. Not revulsion, but no spark, either. Grant nodded.
“Me either. I love you, too, buddy, but not like that. Okay?” Grant muttered, straightening. Grant plucked the bourbon out of his hand and downed the rest of it before handing the empty glass back to Van. He backed away toward the door again, leaning against the doorframe once more. “I know I—fuck, I love sharing her with you. I love it. I won’t lie and say I don’t get off on watching her with you. Knowing we both make her come, watching her take both of us… It’s fucking hot. But I don’t know how to share her every single day, Van. This is an entirely different dynamic than a hot as fuck one night stand. I need my space, so the three of us sleeping in one fucking bed isn’t gonna work. But having to split our time with her… that doesn’t work either. In Chicago, it was just some fucking pipe dream, fun and exciting to think about. Finding that one person that makes your soul feel like it’s on fire… but knowing that I have to share that fire with you, too? In reality, in the here and now, it’s fucking terrifying. What if I can’t make her as happy as you can, huh? What if she never feels the same for me as she does for you, andover time she just… stops coming to me? I couldn’t handle that. Having her here, but knowing I’m not what she wants…”
“So you self-sabotage us both?” Van asked, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing. He swayed slightly, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the alcohol or lack of sleep. Probably both. “I don’t see Hope being like that, Grant. She’s crazy about you. She wants both of us, not just one or the other. She won’t settle for one or the other because she won’t choose. Can’t we just figure it out, all three of us? Because we’re kind of doing her an injustice by assuming all of this without even talking to her. If she’ll ever talk to us again. You need to apologize. Soon, before she tries to run.”
“Do you think she will?” Grant asked, and Van nodded solemnly.
“I think she’s scared and hurt enough to want to, yeah,” Van said quietly.
“Where can I find her?” Grant asked, raising his eyes to Van’s.
“Thought you’d never ask.” He told him her sister’s address, and Grant entered it into his phone’s GPS, not that he would need it. It was simple enough to find. “Bring her home to both of us, okay?”
Chapter Nineteen
The rain behind him was fitting. Cold and dreary and it sank into his bones while the steady patter of raindrops on the sidewalk behind him and on the small covered porch over him dulled everything else around him. It was somber and gloomy and matched the feeling in his gut. He knocked on the door, and then a moment later he could see a shadow as she passed by the window on the right side of the door. It opened just a few inches and her mouth opened in surprise when she saw him standing on the tiny concrete landing. He watched as her gaze fell on the bruise blooming beneath his left eye.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice quiet and husky. The puffiness around her blue eyes and the redness at the tip of her nose was testament to the crying she’d done, and it ate at him mercilessly. She clutched at the edge of the door with her fingers, half hiding behind it. What looked like an extra-long t-shirt covered her from neck to mid-thigh, her legs bare beneath it. A long, thin sweater type thing covered her arms and hung at her sides, revealing the slope of one breast that wasn’t concealed by the door she was using as a shield. She shifted from one bare foot to the other and he realized she was afraid of him. Fuck.
“Van told me where to find you,” he said quietly. It was reminiscent of her words from the day prior.
She scoffed, rolling her eyes as she snapped, “Van can mind his own business though, right?” He watched as tears filled her eyes and she blinked rapidly, quickly dropping her gaze from his. “Please go away, Grant. I don’t… I don’t want to see you.”
“Did I hurt you?” he asked quickly, throwing a hand out to brace against the door as she made to close it. She swallowed hard and he saw her grip on the edge of the door tighten until her knuckles were white. He could see the red marks still etched into her wrists from her panties being wrapped around them. “Yesterday. Did I…did I hurt you?”
“Probably not in the way you think,” she whispered, keeping her eyes down. “What do you care, anyway?”
“Hope,” he pleaded quietly, refusing to let her close the door. “Let me make it better. Please. I have no excuse for my behavior. I was… I don’t deserve a second chance, I know that. Please, butterfly.”
“Don’t…don’t call me that,” she gritted out, her lips pulling into a thin line. The pain in her voice… it made his chest tighten in agony. “You don’t get to call me that anymore.”
