Page 116 of Use Me Up

“That is not what I want Hannah for,” I say.

Kane gives me a look. “Oh, well, that’s even worse, then.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“You want her to have babies with Ellis,” says Kane. “You want them to reproduce and us to be the little alpha uncles who come in and babysit and stay the night with Mommy and Daddy. I see right through you.”

I sit up straight. “Uh… well, Hannah and I have talked about this, and we think it would make better sense if, um, if it’s me first. Not Ellis. He’s not ready. But that would all be really far down the road. Hannah is barely twenty-five.” She just celebrated her birthday, and we went and met her parents, who I don’t think liked us very much, but then, I guess when your daughter is in some thing with three men, it’s a lot.

“So, you want us to move down there, but just to be close, not because of babies,” says Kane.

“It’s a process,” I say. “Eventually, I’m hoping it would lead to babies, to maybe all of us moving in together, to being close and—”

“Moving in together? All four of us?” says Kane.

“You don’t want to move.”

He shrugs. “I do like our house, I guess. It’s a good house. We like the location, and we spent all that time working on the stone walkway and the patio, and if we move, we have to leave it behind.”

“But what’s more important? A patio or family?”

“A patio,” he snaps.

“You don’t mean that,” I say.

Kane opens his mouth to say something and then closes it.

“What’s going on with you?” I say to him. “Why are you being like this?”

“Me?” he says. “You ambushed me again. You said this wasn’t about you being unhappy, Gatlin.”

“It isn’t,” I say. “I am not at all unhappy. I am actually very happy with what we have going on right now—”

“I am, too,” he says. “Which is why I don’t see why you want to change it.”

“I want to be closer to Ellis and Hannah,” I say. “These are people I love.”

He flinches.

“I know you love Ellis, at least,” I say, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility to say he’s got feelings for Hannah. He loves buying shit for her. Every time she comes to see us, he’s giving her jewelry or a new fancy case for her phone or a handbag. This is in addition to all the lingerie he buys for her to wear, but he says those are gifts for us, not for her. Of course, I know she loves putting on little lacy, sexy things for us to peel off of her.

She is kind of like our little sexy doll that we like to dress up and then undress and play with. She doesn’t seem to mind that at all, either.

“I do love Ellis,” Kane says. “But I like my life as it is. I don’t want a different life. You never seem to like our life.”

“Well,” I say, “maybe this is not the life I want.”

He groans. “That is a really shit thing to say to me at this stage of our involvement together, especially considering we share an omega.” He swears softly under his breath and flags down the waiter. “I’m going to need a strong drink,” he says.

hannah

“How was your dinner with Kane?” I sing into the phone with Gatlin. I’m sitting on the couch in Ellis’s living room, painting my toenails. I have my foot up on the coffee table, nail polish bottle on one side, phone on speaker on the other.

Gatlin told me that he was going to have a very important talk with Kane and that he would hopefully have news for me afterward.

Gatlin sighs, sounding dejected. “Not great.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “What happened?”