Chapter 24
RIGGS
Idropped Smith off at home after out weekend date.
Went home, laid down on my side and curled up in a ball, staring at an empty pillow trying to decide whose head I wanted to see there more.
I slept like shit, and Sunday was a wash, but Monday rolled around and Merrick and Holden showed up to start at eleven on the dot.
I got them settled and promised them lunch later in the week.
Damon showed up at twelve on the dot with bags under his eyes, looking like he hadn’t seen a bed or a hairbrush in days.
“Do you have appointments today?” he asked, propping his elbows up on the counter. There was less room for him there now, Merrick and Holden’s portfolios spread out beside mine.
“A couple.”
I’d deliberately had the two new guys start on a day when I wasn’t overbooked because I wanted to be available in case anything came up that needed attention.
I’d already shown them around, made sure they both knew where everything was, and left them to get unpacked into their stations.
I couldn’t have picked guys with more opposite personality types.
Merrick was as bright and fun as the tattoos in his book, and Holden didn’t look like he’d smiled a day in his life.
He was a man of few words, but he had paint stains on his hands every time I’d seen him and his work spoke for itself.
Besides, having two guys who liked to talk might have sent me over the edge.
As it were, Merrick rattled on while Holden occasionally answered him with a nod or a grunt.
Having people around was going to take some getting used to, but Damon had probably been right. It was time.
“When?” Damon asked.
“Two and five.”
“Can we get lunch?”
I glanced toward the back of the shop and jerked my thumb toward Merrick and Holden. “I can’t really leave at the moment.”
Damon shoved his hair back and frowned.
“We can go upstairs, though,” I said. “If you wanted privacy.”
He nodded.
“Hey, guys,” I called out to them at the same time I lifted the pass-through for Damon. “I’ve got to head upstairs for a minute. Just holler if you need me, alright?”
“You got it,” Merrick chirped, and Holden jerked his chin in agreement.
Damon trudged up the stairs behind me, closing the door to my apartment as soon as we were inside. He brushed past me and went to the couch, collapsed onto it and bent forward, resting his head in his hands. I joined him, rubbing my hand up and down the length of his spine.
“What’s going on?” I asked, patting the space between his shoulders. “Is this about Athena?”
“No,” he said quickly, “Well, not directly.”
It was as I’d feared, his night with Athena—and her two boyfriends—had been too much for him to handle.
Damon was my best friend and I loved him, but he had the habit of getting in over his head, especially when it came to his sexual interests.
Damon wasn’t the kind of man to say no to anything.
He was more the try anything three times kind of guy.
But he’d historically kept most of those times to the opposite gender.
I knew getting involved with a woman who had two established male partners would be a shock for him, but I’d underestimated the impact.
“Wes and Grant?” I asked.
Damon flung himself against the back of the couch and covered his eyes with his forearm. “I liked it,” he muttered.
I chuckled, shaking my head even though he couldn’t see. “I’m sure you did.”
“No… not just them. I…the three of them.”
“I mean…what’s not to like, buddy?”
He dropped his arm into his lap and glared at me.
“I didn’t…it wasn’t. It wasn’t like being with a woman and two men,” he said, which cleared up absolutely nothing for me. “They’re together.”
“I know. They have been for years.”
Athena had already been with those two before I’d met her, and that was right before Ev died.
The three of them frequented a handful of popular LA clubs, Rapture being one, the Cathouse being another, though they were there less and less these days.
Athena had also recently purchased a BDSM club in New York called The Black Door, a venture made possible by her younger brother’s bank account and his relationship with an exceedingly popular artist whose name I could never remember.
She had done all of that with Wes and Grant by her side—at her feet—and I would have expected the sun to burn out before I’d believe the three of them were anything other than together.
“I’ve messed around with men before,” Damon said, which was news to me.
Instead of calling him out on it, I raised a brow and waited for him to continue.
“This wasn’t like that.”
“Oh,” I said, trying not to laugh at him. “You like the fact they’re together. You like how the three of them are…with you.”
He nodded and covered his face with his hands.
“Why is that so bad?” I asked, pulling his fingers away from his face so he didn’t claw his eyes out.
“I can’t be with them.” He blinked at me, eyes bloodshot.
“Why not? Because they’re not looking for a fourth or something else?”
“Yes,” he said. “Both. I don’t know.”
Damon was a fucking disaster. I patted his back and used him as leverage to stand.
He grunted and jerked his shoulder trying to make me fall, which failed.
I went into the kitchen and got him a beer, handing it off to him before sitting down on the coffee table between his knees.
I gave him a wiggle until he turned his attention from his beer to me.
“This weekend I took Smith on a date,” I told him. “We had pasta and then we took a ride up Mulholland, and we watched the stars. Afterward, I dropped him home and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since.”
“Good for you.” Damon gave me a weak smile. “I know it doesn’t sound like I mean that, but I do. You deserve that.”
“Deserve what?” I asked.
“To be happy.”
“So do you,” I said.
He frowned. “Being happy with a man is different from being happy with two men and a woman.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Yeah. Why?” I asked.
Damon opened his mouth and tried to speak but no words came out. He chased whatever was there down with a swallow of beer, and I waited him out.
“It’s not normal,” he finally said.
“Who’s to say what’s normal?”
“It’s not like I could take them home to meet my parents at Christmas,” he snapped. “Hey, Mom, this is my girlfriend Athena, and she’s also my Domme, and this is her boyfriend—”
“Our boyfriend.”
Damon narrowed his eyes at me. “Our boyfriends, Wes and Grant.”
“And your parents are dead,” I reminded him.
Damon downed the rest of his beer and then gave me the finger. I took the empty bottle out of his hand and set it down behind me on the table, then I took his hands in mine and squeezed his fingers.
“A wise man once told me it’s okay to do things for yourself.”
He pursed his lips, knowing full well he was the wise man, and it was advice he’d given me while I sat on a couch and he on a table between my legs, a life insurance check with too many zeroes for my liking on the cushion beside me.
“That was different,” he argued.
“No, it’s not.”
“That was the rest of your life.”
“And this is yours.” I stood up and took the bottle into the kitchen, tossing it into the recycle bin before washing my hands. “If you don’t want the mess of being with three people, then don’t be with three people. But don’t not be with them just because you think that’s what other people expect.”
I went back to the couch and sat down beside him, rucking up his shirt and counting my way up his ribs until I got to the fourth one where I knew he had a tattoo of two bees with sheets over their bodies, wings and eyes poking out from holes cut into the cloth.
“You have a pair of boo-bees tattooed on your ribs.” I shoved my fingertip into them, then walked my hand up toward another piece on his shoulder blade. “And I don’t even want to talk about this abomination.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is since when have you cared what anyone thinks about what you do?”
I pinched him and jumped up from the couch before he could smack me, but at least the change in topic had gotten him smiling a little.
“It’s not that serious,” I promised him. “And if it is that serious, then it’s worth it.”
“I know you’re right.” Damon stood and scrubbed his hands down his face, grunting into his palms before squaring his shoulders and nodding his agreement. “You’re right.”
“I just want you happy.”
He closed the space between us and folded me into the safety of his arms. I rested my chin on his shoulder and returned the hug.
“I want you happy too.”
“You went on an actual date?” he asked.
“Actual date.”
“So it’s serious with him?”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “Very.”
“You deserve that.”
“So you said.” He paused and added, “And so do you.”
Damon made a tired sound and shoved me off of him. “I don’t want to talk about me anymore.”
“Alright.” I laughed. “Then I’ll go back to work.”
He sobered somewhat, a rare flash of honest emotion on his face.
“Thanks, Riggsy,” he said under his breath, like it cost him more to say out loud than the rest of it had.
Thankfully, I’d known Damon long enough to know the thanks wasn’t the issue, but the fact he’d been distressed enough to show up on my doorstep needing my ear.
“You have done more listening to me than I’ll do to you,” I reminded him.
The nights after Ev’s death had been long, the days after the funeral even worse. Damon had never left my side unless it was to get food or clean clothes. He’d done more for me in those first months than I’d ever be able to repay.
“It was nothing.”
“So is this,” I said.
Another rough exhale, and he inclined his head toward the door. “When do I get to properly meet your new boyfriend then?”
“I’ll talk to him this week.”
I hadn’t talked to him at all the day before, short of a quick good morning text.
I’d been too tired and lost in my own head and knew I wouldn’t have been a good conversationalist, but Smith didn’t press my silence.
He had a way about him, so easygoing and accepting of everything about me, but I found myself wondering about the things he wanted for himself. He obviously wanted me, but what else?
“I look forward to it.”
“And you?” I prompted, opening the door and standing aside so Damon could step out onto the landing. “Are you going to talk to your throuple this weekend?”
“I fucking hate that word.”
“Me too, but they won’t be a throuple much longer if you get involved with them, so you’re doing all of us a favor.”
Damon closed the door behind him and trailed me down the stairs to the stop.
Merrick was still talking, going on about a trip he’d taken to Japan after high school and how it sparked his interest in tattooing.
Holden was bent over his station, arranging bottles of ink by color, nodding along as Merrick talked.
“Happy first day, boys,” Damon said, raising a hand in greeting as he slipped back under the pass-through and into the lobby. “Best of luck and all that.”
Something in Holden’s stare wavered as he took a look at Damon, but it was gone as quick as it had been there.
“Thanks, man,” he said.
Damon stared back at him, swallowing hard before nodding at Merrick and scratching the side of his head.
“This week?” he asked me.
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and swiped through to Smith’s name in my contact list.
“This week,” I promised.
Damon stared at me as I typed out a message, only leaving after I put my phone away.
When can I see you again? My best friend wants to meet your properly, but more important than that, I think your tattoo is finally healed.