LuckoftheDraw (9 page)

Alex had just showered and was getting dressed when the
doorbell sounded. He muttered a curse full of regret for not going to Petra
before she felt she had to come to him and headed out of his bedroom and down
the hall barefoot and shirtless, buttoning the fly of his jeans on the way.

He never should have left her in the first place, but he
hadn’t been thinking in terms of what she might have needed at the time. He’d
woken up and reacted to finding a man standing next to the bed in the dark. It
had left him rattled. All the possibilities of what could have gone wrong had been
running through his mind all morning.

And when he started thinking of why Jude had been there and
what he wanted, the rage Alex had woken up feeling had only become worse.

Yes, he’d needed to get out of there and clear his head
before he said anything worse to Petra than he’d already said. And yes he
should have gone back and made things right with her sooner. But she was here,
and damn if he wasn’t going to work his ass off to make it up to her.

Only it wasn’t Petra who stepped out of the elevator a couple
of minutes later.

It was Jude.

He stopped just outside the elevator doors and looked at
Alex cautiously.

“As long as I never wake up to find you standing on the side
of my bed in the middle of the night again you’re safe,” Alex told him.

Jude gave him a rueful look. Alex thought he heard him
mutter “your bed” and then shake his head as he started down the hall. “Can we
talk?”

“Sure.” Alex wasn’t particularly interested in what Jude had
to say, but he stepped aside and let him into the apartment anyway. “I just
made coffee if you want some.” He closed the door. “The bar is fully stocked as
well. Help yourself. I’ll be right back.”

He used the extra minute it took to put on a clean t-shirt
to get his head on straight. He needed to remember that he and Jude had been
friends until a few short months ago. While he’d always envied him his
girlfriend on some level, Alex had been able to keep that feeling far enough at
bay that it hadn’t affected how close they’d once been.

Jude was standing in the same spot just inside the door when
Alex returned to the living room.

“Listen, about this morning,” Jude started, then stopped as
though he needed to collect his thoughts. “I want to apologize for what
happened. I don’t know what I was thinking, assuming it would be all right to
just let myself in that way.”

“You’re apologizing to the wrong person, man. It’s Petra’s
house, not mine.” Alex crossed his arms. “Did you consider how much you would
have frightened her if she
had
been alone and woken up to find a dark
figure standing over her bed like that?”

Jude’s expression told Alex he was tortured by the thought.

“Every second since it happened,” he answered. “I didn’t
come here to get scolded for my bad choices. Can we please sit and talk?”

Alex sat. Jude sat on the couch across from him. Alex
waited.

“I’ve spent the past few hours thinking about nothing but
this, so please hear me out,” Jude said.

Alex sat back in his chair.

“I want her back if she’ll have me.”

Anger burned white hot through Alex’s veins, but he refused
to react.

“But I don’t want you to have to give her up either,” Jude
added after a moment.

The silence stretched between them while Alex processed what
he’d just said. A range of emotions ran through him, with everything from
incredulity to fear to pure, unadulterated rage tumbling together in an
out-of-control snowball effect. Mostly he couldn’t believe what he’d just
heard.

Alex sat forward. “What does that mean? You’re moving back
to Chicago?”

“No. I can’t quit my job. It’s the best work I’ve done so
far.”

Alex’s eyebrows went up, then slammed together. “So you want
me to keep her company while you’re gone and then just step out of the way when
you want a turn?”

“No.” Jude gave him an impatient look but Alex still wasn’t
clear on what he was asking. “I don’t want you to step aside at all, Alex. I
want the three of us to be together.”

Every muscle in Alex’s body primed to strike and then he
went completely calm.

“She’s always loved you the way you love her, you know,”
Jude said.

The impact of his words hit Alex like a rogue meteor falling
out of the sky.

“She might not have realized it until recently, but I saw
it,” Jude continued. “It was in the way she looked at you and talked about you
when you weren’t together. It’s in those damn nicknames you have for each
other.” Something that looked a lot like hate flashed in his eyes for a
fraction of a second. “You know she never once called me by a nickname? Not
once in all the years we were together did she call me her Judy the way she
calls you her Lexi.”

Jude stopped and drew in a deep breath as though he was
regrouping his thoughts.

“What I’m trying to say is you and I have always been good
friends, Alex, and we had a lot of fun that night we spent together.”

He was referring to the night of the bisexual key party Alex
had attended. While Alex had admittedly been hoping to get set up with Petra,
he hadn’t been disappointed to get Jude instead. And he couldn’t deny they’d
had a really damn good time.

Alex had always been mainly attracted to women, but he’d
occasionally found himself curious to know what sex with a man would be like,
and Jude had given him answers.

They’d been rough with each other in ways Alex found himself
holding back with even the kinkiest of women. The fact that anal was a
certainty—both ways—had been a high point. And while he had
not
been a
natural at giving head, they’d shared a laugh over his sad first attempt in a
way that had not made him feel like an idiot for trying.

Still…

“Have you talked to Petra about this?” Alex needed to know.

He saw the answer in Jude’s expression before he spoke.

“No. I wanted to talk to you first.”

Alex blinked several times as his answer sank in.

Then he threw his head back and roared with laughter.

“She is going to have your balls for not coming to her
first.” When he got himself under control he stood and went to the window
overlooking the street, shaking his head as he looked down. “You might have
taken a little more time to think that one over before you came to me.”

Alex stood there reining in the rage that burned through him
on a fresh wave.

He waited a moment for it to subside before he turned back.
The moment he laid eyes on Jude he felt sorry for the guy. It was clear he knew
how badly he’d fucked up when he left Petra and he was hurting.

“Will you think about it?” Jude asked, standing.

Alex shook his head. “No. There’s nothing to think about.
This isn’t about you and me and both of us getting her. In the end this is
going to be about what she wants, who she decides she wants to be with.”

His stomach was sick with fear but his thoughts were calm.

“I will not share her with you,” he continued. “And I will
not just let her go without a fight. Go ahead and try to get her back if you
think you have a shot, but know this—if you pursue her the gloves will come
off. I will never hurt you physically, but I will do whatever it takes to keep
her if I have even a slim chance of being with her.”

Jude looked at him a long moment. “Understood,” he said and
then let himself out of Alex’s apartment without another word.

The idea he might lose her made Alex’s chest ache. He fought
the urge to run, to try to beat Jude back to her house, knowing damn well that
was where he was going next. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do next, but making
a mad dash for her in a desperate attempt to get his plea in first did not seem
to be the wise choice.

He called and got her voicemail.

“Whatever happens next, Pete, whatever you decide, I am
always going to be your Lexi. That will never change,” he told her and left it
at that.

He went to his room and changed into workout clothes. He
would never lay a hand on Jude again, but he could hit a punching bag as hard
and as long as he liked, and there was one at the gym that was about to take
the brunt of his frustration.

* * * * *

When Jude told Petra what he’d proposed to Alex she laughed
until tears streamed from her eyes and the muscles of her stomach ached.

Jude laced his fingers together and hung his head.

“That’s the same thing Alex did,” he told her.

“He laughed?” she asked, incredulous. “He didn’t follow
through with punching your lights out like he almost did last night?” When he
shook his head she added, “That’s amazing.”

Jude chuckled, clearly in spite of himself. “He told me you
would have my balls. I expected him to be right.”

“No. Not this time.” She wiped her streaming eyes with the
sleeve of her shirt. “You get one free pass.”

When she looked up she was surprised to find him coming
toward her. She watched as he knelt in front of her with tears in his eyes.
When he laid his head on her lap and wrapped his arms around her waist she let
him.

“If I get one free pass I want to use it to get you back,”
he said quietly. “I never messed up once the entire time we were together. I
never cheated or raised my voice in anger, and I never would have dreamed of
striking you outside the context of some of the kinky things we did. I loved
you. I still love you.” He tightened his arms around her waist. “Can I please
have this one fuck-up?”

She ran her fingers through his hair, fresh tears in her
eyes and her heart in her throat. “Jude, I can’t.”

He groaned miserably and relaxed the hold he had on her
waist.

“Yes you can.” He sat up. “It’ll be easy. I’ll make it easy.
Try it.”

After all the time she’d spent desperately wishing he would
come back, how was it that she wasn’t the least bit tempted to ruin what she’d
started with Alex for him? And his idea for them to live as a threesome—while
she might have jumped at the chance when she was younger—was even less
appealing.

“You know what Busha always says, don’t you?”

He groaned and sat back. “Here we go,” he muttered.

She ignored him. “‘If you spit on the ground, do you pick it
up and put it back in your mouth?’” she asked, using Busha’s thick Russian
accent.

He gave her a bland look. “That’s disgusting.”

“But wise in its way.” She took his face in her hands.
“Jude, you were right to pursue your dream. It was cruel of me to ask you to
stay and selfish to not talk to you about it because I knew I wasn’t going to
get my way.”

He closed his eyes and turned his cheek into her palm.

“And you were right to insist that I not wait. I would have
been miserable without you for months at a time. The end would have dragged out
for who knows how long before I got tired of our situation and broke it off.”
She lowered her hands. “Neither one of us handled the end the way we could
have, but from this perspective, at this moment in time, I can see it was
inevitable.”

He shook his head. “Don’t say that,” he whispered.

“Nothing has changed, Jude. I still don’t want a
relationship where I have to leave home for any certain amount of time just to
be with you.”

“Would it be different if it were Alex?” he asked.

She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t asking to draw
her into a fight.

“It doesn’t matter because he doesn’t want to leave Chicago,”
she answered.

He groaned and hung his head. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Petra didn’t have it in her to try to convince him
differently. She could imagine living without Alex even less than she’d once
been able to imagine living without Jude.

Jude got to his feet and she rose with him.

“Do you like the work you’re doing now?” she asked.

A small smile touched his lips, but the effect on his eyes
was profoundly more enlightening. She could see before he answered that the
answer was a resounding yes.

“It’s far harder and unbelievably more rewarding than I
could have imagined.”

“Then you didn’t make the wrong choice.” In spite of her
newfound happiness with Alex, it hurt a little to say the words.

He nodded and looked at some unknown point over her shoulder.

Tears sprang to her eyes. “I will always love you, you
know.”

He stood and drew her into his arms, holding her as tightly
as she held him. She breathed in his familiar scent and let the memory of all
the times he’d held her in the past settle someplace happier in her mind.

“You will always be important to me, and I will always
cherish the time we were together.” She touched her lips to his temple and
something she’d been holding on to way too long gave up the uncomfortable hold
it had on her heart. “And you will f—”

“Oh, don’t say it,” he groaned, holding her at arm’s length.
“Do not tell me I will find someone better suited to me one day because I had
the best and I ruined it.”

“I thought the same thing until the craziest thing happened
a few weeks ago,” she told him, her stomach doing a little flip-flop at the
thought of that first night with Alex.

His mouth pressed into a thin line and he nodded. “Can I
call when I come home?”

“I would be insulted if you didn’t.”

He stepped in and kissed her, warm and soft, then released
her and headed for the front door without another word. He didn’t look back,
didn’t so much as look left or right before he stepped onto the sidewalk, so
she was surprised when she went to the door to watch him leave and found Alex sitting
off to one side on the wide front stoop.

Petra grabbed her coat off a hook and went out to sit next
to him. The air was cool, but the sun was shining bright.

“How long have you been out here?”