Chapter 35
Chapter
Thirty-Five
DARWIN
Ifeel like I’m being edged with the way they refuse to fuck me because of my head injury. Liam took out the sutures yesterday, but I’m apparently still too fragile to be fucked. Which is torture as I watch them in all kinds of threesome configurations.
This morning was no different. “I’m going to break up with all of you if you keep leaving me out,” I announce as they gather me between them and hug me tightly. My hard dick is frustrated, aching, and sensitive, desperately needing to empty my full balls.
“I’d like to announce that I’ve now killed two people,” Matty says. “That means I’ve fulfilled the requirements of No Face and I can leave the island.”
The irritation at being left horny—though I know they’ll absolutely take care of me before long—leaves me like I was just punched in the stomach, forcing the air from my lungs. I’m not the only one who seems to have that reaction to Matty’s sudden statement.
“Matty…” Liam begins, and I’m sure he doesn’t know what to say first.
“You aren’t a prisoner,” Zephyr says. “I have no intention of letting you stay here when we leave.”
“Are you taking me with you, Zeph?” Matty asks teasingly.
It’s a far more loaded question than his tone makes it sound. Something I’m sure even he knows. Matty is a sly fucker when he wants to be, and I’m sure that was intentional.
“I guess maybe we have some things to talk about since Paisley and Moll will be here in a week,” I say.
“We do,” Matty agrees. “Darwin, want an orgasm first or after?”
My cock is still pissed off that we’ve been ignored again, but I shake my head. “After. I also demand to be fucked. No more of this leaving me out because I’m in a fragile state. Fuck that noise. I’m fine. My head is fine.”
Zephyr laughs. His hand runs down my stomach and wraps around my angry cock. I grunt. I can be easily swayed either way at this point, as long as I’m fucked.
“Alright,” Matty says, pushing himself up so he can look at us. “I demand that we’re together. I want three boyfriends, and I want us all to leave here together and go home to the same place where we can live happily ever after forever.”
“Is that all?” Liam asks.
Matty grins at him and turns his attention to us.
I’m breathless, though it’s not entirely because Zephyr’s hand is still wrapped around my cock, even if it’s still.
“Are you going to tell us that you’re not cut out for this still, Zeph?” Matty asks.
“I’m not sure I am,” Zephyr says, “but I’m also not willing to… let you go.” His arm around me tightens. “Any of you. I love this.”
Zephyr releases my cock and reaches up to grip my chin, turning my face so he can look into my eyes. “I love you.”
My breath catches, and, surprising us all, tears immediately begin falling down my cheeks. I’m so startled by the tears that I start laughing. I twist and wrap my arms around him, bringing my mouth to his.
He wraps me tightly, kisses me as intensely as I am him. “I love you too,” I say as the stupid tears keep coming. I’m pretty sure we’re both tasting tears in our kiss. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“I do,” he says. “You and I, we have a lot in common, like our constant feelings of being left behind. That ends now. We’re in this together, Darwin.”
I close my eyes, trying to let the truth of his voice settle inside me and simultaneously force the emotion it brings up back down where it belongs.
“This sounds suspiciously like you’re only talking about the two of you,” Matty says. “That’s not acceptable.”
Zephyr grins. He kisses my lips again and then rolls us until he can yank Matty down. He comes with an oomph. “I love you too, doll.” I don’t miss the way his eyes move beyond Matty to Liam, though he doesn’t extend the sentiment to him. I have a feeling it includes him, nonetheless.
Matty sighs. “You don’t need to tell me you love me if—”
“Shut your pretty little mouth,” Zephyr says and covers Matty’s mouth.
I grin. “In a way you can never possibly understand, you are the heart of this entire relationship, Matty Gates.” Matty’s shaking his head behind Zephyr’s hand.
“You’ve been healing us all since you moved upstairs, where you belong. ”
Matty pushes Zephyr’s hand away. “Not possible. I’m the most broken! I can’t heal anyone.”
Liam sighs as he pushes himself up so he can wrap around Matty.
“I think maybe we were all a little broken, but in different ways. The emotional baggage we’ve all carried for different reasons has steadily chipped away at our strength over the years, and so it left us all broken.
It made us all behave in the ways we did to hide all the cracks we carried. ”
Matty’s eyebrows are knit together in concern as he looks at us. “I get that,” he says slowly. “But I don’t understand why you think I’m the heart of this.”
“You brought us together.”
“Not true. You were fucking without me before I interfered,” Matty argues.
I laugh. “It was just sex, Matty. You know what that’s like.”
I’m not sure Matty believes that.
“I’m not saying that maybe it wouldn’t have grown into something else,” Zephyr says, “though I’m seriously skeptical of that.
It would have resulted in a friendship. I have a feeling that we were both wrapped up in our own shit, even as we shared those troubles with each other, that it would have taken us years to realize and acknowledge that perhaps this is more than just a hookup. Proximity.”
I’ve been nodding along as he spoke because I think he’s right. Without Matty’s soft vulnerability suddenly there and needing us, I’m not sure either of us would have opened up to exposing that part of ourselves.
“You needed us,” I tell Matty and reach for his hand. “And because you needed us, we allowed ourselves to…” I struggle to find the word I’m looking for. I end up shaking my head.
“Yes, that,” Zephyr agrees. “You needed us, and I think we responded in a way that we wouldn’t have otherwise if it were just the two of us.
The more time we spent with you, the more we got to know you, the angrier we became on your behalf.
The more we tried to chase away the darkness that seemed to cling to you.
The more we resented Liam. But in all that, we were lowering our walls to let you in because that’s what you needed. ”
“Your need became more important than ours to protect ourselves,” I add.
Matty sighs.
“It’s also through you that we began to concede that Liam is human. He struggles with the situation he forced you into as much as you did. Maybe we’ve all grown over the last few months, but Liam has grown in leaps and bounds,” Zephyr says.
Liam shakes his head, but he doesn’t interrupt the conversation.
“In becoming what you needed, we opened up to each other and let each other in too,” I say. “So yeah, I think Zeph’s right. You’re the heart of this strange foursome we’ve created.”
“It’s not so strange,” Zephyr says. “My parents are in a very happy and healthy foursome. While I can’t say I ever pictured that for myself, it feels just as natural as I imagine being with a single person would be.”
“That’s not how I meant strange, but I’m still glad we have an example to follow,” I say.
“So… that means yes, right? We’re going to be together, even when we leave here?” Matty asks.
The four of us look at each other, our gazes moving around the group. Trying to see what everyone is feeling. Where we’re at.
“I have to tell you that I need to go home after this,” Zephyr says.
Matty’s face falls. “I promised my brother that I’d help him with something important to him if he promised to live for himself these last few months while I was here.
He’s kept his end of the deal, so I need to fulfill my promise.
” He pulls Matty down. “If you want to, you can come with me.”
“But do you—”
“Yes, Matty. I want the three of you to come with me. I don’t know how realistic that is since we have lives spread across the country, but I will be absolutely miserable without you, my sweet doll.”
Matty grins. “Well, I don’t have a life anymore, so I’m free. And Liam works remotely, so he can come with us too.”
Zephyr and I look at Liam. He’s been quiet during this conversation. “I think maybe it’s time to hear what Liam wants and how he feels,” I say.
“Feelings,” Liam mutters as if it’s a bad word.
Matty grins. “Come on, Liam.” He elbows him playfully. “Spill your heart.”
Liam sighs. “I think I’m going to quit my job. With two rich guys to mooch from, I don’t think I should have to work.”
I shrug in time with Zephyr.
Liam snorts and shakes his head. “I do think I’m going to quit my job, but I was just… seeing what you’d say to that.”
“Why do you want to quit?” Matty asks. “I thought you liked your job. You always liked your job.”
“Because I need to let go of that life. I don’t belong there anymore. Not in that job. Not in the apartment where the shit I did to you haunts me. That entire life feels like a dark cloud looming ahead, ready to pull me back in and… I don’t want to go back to that place,” he says quietly.
“See?” I murmur. “We were all a little broken.”
Liam nods in agreement. “It was difficult to stop the same routine of self-deprecation.” He touches Matty’s jaw.
“I don’t think I’ll ever fully forgive myself for the situation I forced upon you, but it’s not so dark anymore.
I don’t feel like I’m trapped in one of our wells here, struggling to keep my head above the water. ”
Matty sniffs and wipes his eyes.
“Darwin told me I needed to stop focusing on me and make you my priority, and I realized that he’s right.
I thought I was doing that already, but I wasn’t.
I was too busy trying to escape the awful way I felt that I ended up abandoning you here on top of the shit I forced you into.
Changing my perspective was fucking hard right up until Darwin was hurt, and something inside me just clicked.
The way I felt was suddenly no longer the loudest thought in my head, but the well-being of the three of you were. ”
“Glad I could help you grow,” I deadpan.
He grins. His hand rests over my heart for a minute. “I’ve lived through some scary shit since bringing Matty here, but besides fighting with those bitches to spare his life, seeing the way you were just… not there, truly terrified me.”
“I think we all thought you were going to die,” Zephyr says. “Liam’s right. That’s the scariest shit I’ve ever lived through.”
I nod. It was. I wasn’t sure I was going to live either. Not with the way my head spun. The intense pounding in my skull nearly had me begging for death.
“Anyway, I think going back to our apartment that we once shared together, and the job with my family down the road,”—Liam shakes his head—“will prevent me from healing. The life that I’d once loved more than anything has become really dark because you were no longer in it, and we’re not the same people we were three years ago.
I don’t think we can step back into that life and make it our own anymore.
We’re different. Our relationship is different.
But the life we left there is no longer ours. ”
“So we go with Zeph?” Matty asks, turning his attention to Zephyr. “Is that okay? We can all come with you?”
Zephyr nods. “I bounce between a small studio apartment and my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house most of the time. Or Jude’s, depending on where he is, but… probably not that anymore.”
“You have a studio apartment?” I ask, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “You?”
He laughs, nodding. “I never truly felt like anywhere was home, so I never settled.”
“Then we can find one together,” Matty says, grinning. “In Arizona, so we can help your brother.”
“We?” Zephyr asks.
“Yes, we,” I agree.
Zephyr smiles. “Thanks. Erez will appreciate that, I think.”
“What about you, Darwin? Where is your home? Can you just leave?” Matty asks.
“I didn’t work, and I lived at home with my parents.
Granted, they have an enormous house and estate that has been passed down the Dayne family line since the beginning of time.
Or maybe more accurately, since Michigan became a state.
Just a warning, though, I think my parents will probably move closer to wherever I am, eventually.
I’m their only kid, and I’ve gotten the impression they haven’t enjoyed having me so far away for so long. ”
Zephyr grins. “They haven’t, huh?”
I grin, thinking about the conversation he probably is. The one where I confessed that I didn’t think my dad Azure truly wanted anyone but my other dad, Enoch. I’m actually really happy to think I was wrong about that.
“Good,” Matty says, grinning. “I like your parents.”
Silence settles around the room.
“So that’s it?” I ask. “This is the plan? We’re staying together, just like this, and leaving together.”
Once again, we look at each other. I can feel the anticipation, the excitement, and maybe a little bit of anxiety as it circles around us. The unknown. A future together.
“Yes,” Zephyr says. “That’s the plan.”
Matty grins. I’m surprised when it fades. “Are they going to let me leave?”
Unlike Clark at Chokecherry, we don’t have a president.
We have a governing body, so to speak. There are half a dozen active members who remain very involved and active.
But generally speaking, we act as King Arthur’s Round Table.
Everything is a discussion. Everything tends to be agreed upon as a larger whole.
If the Van Doren brothers hadn’t been here for the takedown of Chokecherry and observed Matty over the course of a few days, I’d question whether we could get away with stealing Matty out of here.
I still would’ve done it. I’d have fought whomever the fuck I needed to.
But now that the Van Dorens have witnessed Matty outside of his bedroom and knowing that the Van Dorens not only make up almost forty percent of the Society of the No Face and that they stick together, regardless of whether they all have an opinion on the same matter…
I’m comfortable that Matty can leave without too much fuss.
“They will,” I say. “I’m sure.”
I’m not opposed to stealing him, even if they say no. Matty’s life sentence ends now.