Homewrecker (Into the Flames #1) (30 page)

“I’ve already talked to Gunnar about this.”

“OK… well now you’re talking to me. Do you love Kennedy?”

“It’s not a new revelation, Lynsey. I’ve loved her for as long as I can remember.”

“But you broke it off. You broke her heart, and your own in the process. Why the fuck would you do that to someone you love?”

Dropping my eyes to my hands, I hold my breath to compose myself before looking up and meeting Gunnar’s infuriated stare. “Because he’s my best friend. I love him too. I never set out to hurt you, Gunnar.”

He ignores me, but Lynsey keeps rambling. “If you both love her like you say you do, you’ll figure this shit out, because watching her fall apart isn’t fun for me. She isn’t eating, she’s not sleeping and she’s slowly losing more of herself every day because she doesn’t have you guys. None of you are happy right now. Just looking at you I can tell that, and you need to figure out how to fix it.”

“What the fuck do you expect, Lyn?” Gunnar bites out. “Everything isn’t gonna magically be better overnight!”

“No shit. Quit yellin’ at me, asshole, I’m trying to talk. Love isn’t black and white. There’s no right way and wrong way to love someone, as long as you love them with everything you have in you. It’s not something you can define. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other, guys.” I try to decipher what the hell she is rambling on about, and when the hell she became the expert on love, when she stands up and wipes her eyes. “You’re adults, pull your panties out of your ass and be grown ass men. Figure your shit out because I’m not going to stand for losing either of you assholes, and neither of you would survive without each other, or Kennedy. Don’t throw your hearts and decades of friendship and love down the drain when you know there are ways to work it out for all three of you.”

Without another word she storms from the room, sniffling as she wipes her eyes again and yells that she loves us no matter what. I’ve never seen her anything but controlled, and never have I ever seen her tear up. It just goes to show how serious the situation is for all of us, not just Kennedy, Gunnar and myself.

“Was Lynsey cryin’? Or was I seein’ things?” Gunnar asks. I look around the room, thinking I missed someone walking in because he can’t be talking to me, but we’re alone.

“I think hell just froze over.” After staring at Gunnar for what seems like a lifetime, I finally break and open my mouth again. “So we’re all miserable. I can’t go home, Kennedy’s been stayin’ here, and you’re at Mark’s. Nothin’ is gonna get better if we keep avoidin’ each other.”

“So what do we do?” he finally asks. There’s a hesitation in his voice that I’ve never heard come from him before. A hesitation that makes me nervous but I push that feeling down and stand up. Pulling my keys from my pocket, they jingle by my side as I think. Blowing out a frustrated breath, I look back up at him.

“No fuckin’ clue, man, but it’s gonna take me more than this one beer to figure it out.”

A few hours later the table we acquired is littered with empty bottles and shot glasses that we keep attempting to stack into a pyramid. As drunk as we are we keep knocking the damn things down, but neither of us care anymore. Once the alcohol started to hit, and things finally didn’t feel so forced, we were able to talk out most of the important things before losing sight of everything because we got intoxicated.

Gunnar grabs the fresh shot in front of him and tips it back into his mouth. He coughs, choking a little as he tries to swallow. When he finally gets it down, he slams the glass against the table. Everything rattles and the stacked empty glasses tumble again.

“Well, shit.” For a second he stares at the mess in front of him completely seriously, almost like he’s about to cry because he watched them fall without trying to stop them. Suddenly, he drops his head to the table and cracks up. I, in turn, can’t help but laugh right along with him and we get so loud that everyone at the bar turns to look at us. When he finally sits up, he drops his head back against the wall and sighs. “I miss my wife, Dix. I miss her so fuckin’ much.”

“I know.” I nod. “She not the only one I miss though, Gunnar. I don’t like the shit goin’ on between us.”

“You sure you love her?” he finally asks. “You can’t, I don’t know… forget you have feelings for my wife?”

I laugh, letting the alcohol flow through me so I don’t clam up. “I’ve loved her since before I even knew what it meant. I don’t see that feeling goin’ anywhere. Sorry.”

I wait for him to flip out on me because up until a little while ago, probably shot number five, he was still pissed off. Part of me wonders if he’s being so calm because he’s starting to see that I never really meant to hurt him, or if he’s waiting for his chance to kill me off without being considered a suspect.

“Can’t really blame you,” he finally says. “She’s easy to love.”

“So what now?”

He shrugs. “I guess we rehash our idea some more when we’re sober and then talk to her and see if it’s somethin’ that she wants to try. If it works, it works. If not, at least we can say we tried.”

“Guess Lyn was right when she said there was no right or wrong way to do this.”

Tipping the bottle back to his lips he shakes his head. “Don’t ever fuckin’ tell her she was right. It’ll go to her head. But I swear if it gets me my wife back, and we’re happy again, I’ll kiss that bitch’s strap-on.”

Tucking my feet behind me, I shift until I can rest my head on Lynsey’s thigh. Without me having to even ask, she begins to run her fingers through my hair. It has been the only thing to calm my racing mind and put me to sleep in the time that I’ve been here, and thankfully she doesn’t complain even though it’s not even five yet. I think she likes the control she has over my body by doing it, but it also keeps her from worrying about me not sleeping at all. When I finally close my eyes, feeling sleep starting to drag me under, my phone goes off. Instead of reaching for it I keep my eyes closed and let Lynsey read it. It keeps me from getting my hopes up only to be let down when it isn’t a message that I want.

“Two fuckin’ weeks later. It’s about damn time,” she mumbles, confusing me. “Wake up, bitch.”

“I feel no love from you,” I mutter into her thigh. “You should be nicer to me and my broken heart.”

Using her thumb, she touches my eyelid and lifts it so I can see the screen of my phone. As soon as my eyes focus I grab my phone and sit up, rereading the text from Gunnar again and again. My stomach twists, anxiousness and excitement rolling through me at the same time.

“What do I do?” I finally ask her.

The smile on her face is comforting even though she’s shaking her head at me like I’m an idiot. “That text is from your husband and it’s asking you to come home so you guys can talk. It’s better than silence, isn’t it?”

“Anything is better than the silence I’ve been getting.”

I don’t waste any time pulling my shoes on and grabbing my keys before I’m in the car and on the road. It either takes longer than it should for me to get from Lynsey’s house to ours, or my nerves are completely shot. Either way, by the time I pull into the driveway and reach for the handle on the front door, I feel like I’m going to be sick. Not exactly the feeling I want to be having while trying to save my marriage.

The last thing I expect when I open the door and step in is to find Gunnar and Dixon sitting in the living room on the couch. Neither one of them speak as I make my way into the room and ease down into the chair across from them quietly. Both guys wear their best poker faces, keeping me from knowing anything that happens to be going through their minds right now. The silence in the room is deafening and when Gunnar pushes himself to the edge of the couch so he can rest his elbows on his knees, my heart leaps into my throat.

“Do you love me, Kennedy?” Since I can’t seem to speak, I nod. “You love him too though, right?” Pulling my eyes away from Gunnar’s, I seek out Dixon’s and find him already watching me. I can’t tell if he’s silently begging me to say yes, or hoping I say no so he doesn’t hurt Gunnar anymore, but I can’t lie. I nod, never looking away from Dixon. Out of the corner of my eye I watch Gunnar sigh and flex his hands.

Shoving off the couch, Gunnar drops down on his knees in front of me. He slides between my legs, sliding his hands up my thighs and I breathe a bit easier with his hands on me. “Still love me?” I ask, barely able to hear my own voice.

“Kennedy, I tried like hell to stop lovin’ you these past few weeks. I did everything short of fuckin’ you out of my system. I tried to hate you so it wouldn’t matter. But all I felt was my heart breakin’ more every time I opened my eyes and you weren’t there. So when Lynsey talked to us, and I finally calmed down enough to talk to Dixon, we could only figure out one way for this to end well for all of us.”

“What does that mean?”

Standing up, Gunnar steps back and sits down on the couch where he was. “Neither one of us wanna lose you. And now that Dixon and I talked, I realize that I’m not the only person that can love you like you deserve. I don’t want to lose you, Kennedy, and I’m afraid without you bein’ with him too, I will. Hell, I don’t want to lose either of you. But I don’t just want a piece of you, and I realize now that after everything started that’s all I was getting’ when you were sneakin’ around behind my back. I lost part of you to him because of havin’ to keep it a secret. I think that if we’re honest goin’ into whatever the hell this it, that we can find where we belong and make it work. If we don’t, at least we tried and didn’t throw everything out the damn window because of something avoidable.”

“I still don’t understand,” I admit.

For the first time since I walked in Dixon finally speaks and his voice soothes me like Gunnar touching me did. “Us. The three of us. Together.”

I feel like a fish out of water, gasping for air while trying to process everything they’re telling me. After weeks of not being near either of them, not being able to touch them and tell them I love them, here they are telling me that I can have them both. No more sneaking around or lying. My mind has to be playing tricks on me, but I take a chance and go along with it. “Is this something you guys really want?”

“I love you,” Dixon confesses. “I love you both and I don’t wanna lose either of you. This seems like the only option that ends with us all happy. It’s the only real option, Kennedy. Either we go for it and win or we try and lose everything anyway, but I’m not willin’ to walk away without at least giving it a shot.”

Gunnar turns his attention away from me and focuses on Dixon. “When the hell did you start doin’ pep talks? Maybe I should haul you in at half-time.”

I know he’s trying to lighten the mood, but I need him to be serious right now. “Gunnar, what about you? Are you sure you want this?”

“Baby, I’m not completely sure of anything except the fact that I love you. I hate that you went behind my back, I hurts that you broke the trust we built for years, and it kills me that you had to go elsewhere to get something because you thought you couldn’t ask me for it and I couldn’t see it. But what I’ve realized, and the whole reason that I agreed to try this is because when you love someone, when it’s an all-consuming kind of love like I feel for you, you don’t just let it go. You fight for it and figure out a way to keep your heart from shatterin’ because you know without a doubt that if you lost that person you would go insane and never be complete again. I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life feelin’ like I have the past few weeks.”

Dixon grabs my attention again. “Is this somethin’ you want, Sunshine? Do you want both of us at once? All the time?”

As I sit here, trying my damnedest not to cry, I realize that this is exactly what I want. Living with only one of them at a time made it hard to breathe and living without both of them at all was close to impossible. “I want to feel whole again and without both of you, I don’t. I can’t breathe, I can’t sleep…”

“You’re obviously not eatin’,” Gunnar interjects.

“That too.” I shrug, letting my eyes wander down at my fingers as I play with a frayed strand on my jeans.

Gunnar lets me get away with staring at my leg, but not for long. Whispering my name, he waits until I’m looking at him to continue. “If this is something you want, something you are willin’ to try and see if it works for all of us, I see no better time to start than the present. We can work everything else out once we figure out if this is gonna work for all of us.”

It’s like the world around me slows down as Gunnar and Dixon look at each other and then back to me before reaching for the buttons on their jeans. I choke on my breath when they both pull their thick cocks free and lose my ability to think when they both begin to slowly stroke themselves. I alternate watching each of them, completely fascinated by what is unfolding in front of me. Even though I can tell that Gunnar isn’t one hundred percent on board with the situation at first, he comes out of the awkwardness fast enough. My fingers itch to touch them, but I can’t move because I’m scared if I do I’ll wake up and all this will be over.

“Baby, breathe,” Gunnar chuckles. “We’re doin’ this because we talked about everything. It’s OK. As mad as I was about everything that happened, I know why you did it. It still hurts, but I think I understand why and I’m sorry you felt I wasn’t listenin’ when you tried to talk to me. Bein’ without you all this time made me realize that I don’t wanna lose you but I’m afraid if you aren’t with him too, I will. I’d rather try it this way over havin’ you sneak around and lie.”