Chapter 8 #2
He moves to skirt past me for what feels like the umpteenth time today, but I can’t let him. Not again. I reach out to stop him on instinct, desperate to unravel the confusion burrowed in my gut.
“Locke,” I plead, though I don’t even know what I’m asking of him.
He freezes when my fingers circle his wrist.
I’m careful not to squeeze or to put too much pressure on his joints. I can only imagine the way his arthritis is flaring if he hasn’t slept much over the last few days. Maybe this conversation would be better left until the light of day, after we’ve both had a chance to rest.
But Sunday night and all that went down with the Sharks has created this urgency inside me: to take what I want, to be with who I want, and to fulfill my promise to Alice.
I want to live.
I want to thrive.
I want to fall in love and to feel every moment on the way down.
I want to stop Locke from walking out of this room—to stop this, the moment where he seemingly gives up on us and walks away.
I know I’m a lot. My baggage is so heavy. And he already carries enough of his own. But if he’s just willing to try… to let us recover from this and see what tomorrow brings…
My touch isn’t in vain, because he at least slows and meets my gaze over his shoulder as he tries to circumvent the couch and move past me.
“Joey,” he breathes, the sound sorrowful, when his pained eyes meet my tear-filled ones. “Why are you crying?”
With a scoff, I swipe the moisture from my cheeks with my free hand. “Why am I crying?” I sneer. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because you just broke up with me?”
His brows shoot into his hair-line and his Adam’s apple bobs under the red and black ink of his throat piece. Before he can respond, I snap.
“Guess it’s not much of a breakup, though, since we barely even got started. I’m sorry it didn’t work out how you wanted, but I didn’t expect it to be like this, either. Everything we did… all the things we shared? I thought it was worth it.”
I’m rambling, but between the tears leaking out of my eyes and the snot threatening to drip out of my nose, something has to give, and the words escaping one after another are impossible to stop.
“What did you just say? It is what it is?” I mock, sniffling again.
“Where was your nihilism when you pulled me away from the party on Saturday night and swore you wanted me? Where was this callous exterior when you made me admit I wanted you, too, over and over again, before we had sex in your bed?”
I close my eyes, embarrassed, and release my grip on his wrist so he can leave.
Before I can retreat in on myself, he catches my fingertips, startling me enough that I peer up into his face.
The anger flaring in his eyes is enough to break me all over again.
Low and agitated, he asks, “You think I’m breaking up with you?”
I watch him blankly, blinking away tears.
“You literally just told me to take care of myself and that you’d try to stay out of my way. Pretty sure that’s the universal sentiment people use during a breakup. Surprised you didn’t throw in an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ for good measure.”
He cracks a smile—a real, genuine, squinty smile—and my heart lights up with hope.
Half a second later, though, it crumbles into a million little fragments. Because he was set to walk away. Just like that. Without putting up a fight. I tuck my head and hold back fresh tears, desperate for him to leave so I can properly fall apart.
“Just go,” I mutter, refusing to let him see any more of my heartbreak.
“Joey,” he whispers, catching my chin and tilting my face up. “I want you so bad it hurts. But you picked him. If you want to be with Kylian…”
He trails off, glancing at the door.
Kylian is his best friend. Not just his best friend—his first friend after years of feeling unwanted and impossible to love. This is as much about him and Kylian as it is about him and me.
Finally, his standoffishness makes sense.
And although I can’t stand the prospect of being rejected a second time in the span of ten minutes, I shoot my shot.
“I want to be with Kylian,” I confirm, then quickly add, “And I want to be with you, too. Kyl and I talked about it… Before…” I trail off, afraid that referencing the incident with the South Chapel team will send me right back to that headspace.
“He thought you’d be on board. That you wouldn’t be bothered by… by…”
“By what, Joey?” He takes a step closer. “Sharing you?”
My cheeks flame at the callout.
Locke doesn’t leave me in suspense for long. He tilts his head back and forth, as if he’s considering his words carefully.
“Kyl’s not wrong. But I’m not okay with an open arrangement. I don’t want to be with anyone else, Hot Girl,” he challenges. “I want you and only you.”
I cover my face with my hands. “I don’t want you to be with anyone else either,” I admit, wrinkling my nose at the clear double standard.
“Yet you want to be with us both.”
The statement is just that—a statement. It came from Locke, but it’s so Kylian.
I bite down on my lip to keep from smiling, but I do allow myself to peek up at him through my fingers while he processes the possibility.
Because despite how optimistic I want to be about his response so far, I can’t help but steel my heart for rejection.
After what feels like a lifetime, his warm hazel eyes zero in on me. “Kylian already agreed, didn’t he?” Locke smirks, the amused look on his face proving just how well he knows his childhood buddy.
He stares down at me for another breath, then that smirk transforms into the bold, genuine smile I’ve grown to love.
“Okay. Yeah. Fuck. I’m in. I want you any way I can have you, Hot Girl—in every way. If that means I share you with one of my best friends, I’m game.”
Butterflies riot in my stomach, a tickle of delight combined with the effervescent lightness that so often consumes me when I’m around this man. He holds the key to parts of me I haven’t had access to in years. The way his smile lights up my insides thrills me every time.
He circles back around the couch without dropping my hand. As soon as he’s close enough, he interlaces our fingers, sits down, and pulls me off the armrest and into his lap.
Once I’m settled, his body deflates and the tension oozes from him. “Fuck,” he says, relaxing into the cushions. “Come here and let me hold you.”
Hooking one arm under my legs, he uses his free hand to cradle the back of my head.
I sink into his embrace, savoring the bliss that comes with being wrapped up in all things Nicholas Lockewood. I breathe him in and exhale all the darkness of the last few days, along with the despair that gripped me when I thought I’d lost him.
“This is why you’ve been acting distant all day,” I muse, nuzzling into his chest and tracing the intricate lines inked along his throat.
His Adam’s apple bobs under my fingertips, then he’s ducking and running his nose along my jaw. The kiss he presses to my neck before responding makes my heart practically float in my chest.
“I didn’t think this—you and me, and you and him—was a possibility. I assumed you’d choose. And I’m used to not being picked first.”
My heart aches at his admission. It’s only been a couple of weeks since he opened up to me about his childhood, about how he bounced around various foster care arrangements as a kid until he finally found a real home with Gary and Brenda.
“Can I tell you something?” he asks, placing a kiss on my shoulder as his fingertips dance up and down my arm. “In the beginning, I wanted you to pick me.”
I still, self-reproach creeping in again as guilt washes over me.
“But that thought is fleeting compared to the need I have to see you happy. Happy. Safe. Loved. If that means others are involved—”
“Just one other,” I correct.
He smirks. “Yeah. Okay, Joey.”
He’s not even trying to placate me, his tone a playful, deliberate tease.
“I’m serious,” I insist, squirming to sit up straighter so I can look him in the eye.
“I bet you are,” he muses, digging his fingers into the back of my scalp and tilting my head right where he wants it. He leans in to kiss me, and as much as I crave the connection, I arch back until I’m out of reach.
Shaking my head, I give him my best deadpan expression. “I know what you’re trying to do, Emo Boy. Do you really think you can flirt your way into making me forget how you just tried to break up with me when we weren’t even officially dating?”
My words are in jest, and he’s not buying my shit.
He smacks a peck on my lips, then kisses me again, longer and deeper. Warmth settles in my belly, percolating through all my limbs until I’m putty in his capable, tatted hands.
He nips at my earlobe, sending a shudder down my spine and an ache pulsing in my clit. “I’m just making sure you know where I stand, baby. It’s me and you. Plus him. And maybe them.”
I try to glare, but his smile is so wide and the sparkle in his eyes so charming it’s hard to look at him and feel anything but happy.
Still.
I do my best to set him straight.
“Kendrick can barely tolerate me on a good day. And Decker…”
Decker. He’s become an enigma in my life.
He’s the root of so much pain, yet a sanctuary when I least expect it.
He may never give in to the chemistry that tries to boil over when we’re alone together, but if he did, I can guarantee he is not the sharing type—so if we’re really doing this, I have to count Decker out on principle.
“Okay, Hot Girl. Whatever you say.”
“Locke,” I huff in warning, but his name comes out sounding more like a moan.
He captures my lips again, teasing the tip of his tongue against the seam until I open for him.
Desperate for a better angle—a deeper connection—I grasp his shoulders and shift in his lap so I’m straddling him.
Rising to my knees, I grip the hair at his nape and force his head back, loving the way he lets me move him wherever I want him.