Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
JESSE
O h, what fresh hell is this?
Not only had Mark shown up, carrying her backpack, but Chris was right on his heels.
And the shock on Chris’ face meant he’d processed her condition.
From this distance she couldn’t decipher Mark’s expression. Something between a glare and a scowl, if she had to guess.
Well, they’re the assholes. They have no reason to be pissed off.
She also supposed this answered her conundrum about whether or not to let them know one of them would be a father.
It was unavoidable.
She dragged her focus back to the presentation and even managed to make it through the audience Q&A. But once that ended, she’d lost sight of the men and her bravery fled. Josie had left with Brandt just after the start of the Q&A portion, likely to nurse and change him. One of the security team followed her, even though Jesse knew this was likely one of the last places they’d ever have to worry about their safety.
As long as they weren’t in the backcountry.
Once they’d wrapped and Jesse was able to finally pack her computer and leave the stage, her father following, she spotted Josie standing just outside the backstage door they’d entered through, holding the baby.
And wearing an expression that Jesse could only describe as…
Odd.
Before she or her father could say anything, Josie handed Brandt off to her dad. “Please take him to the SUV and get him settled in his car seat, okay?”
“What?” But he took the baby.
Josie hooked her arm through Jesse’s. “I need to borrow her for a moment.” She literally shooed him with her free hand. “Take the goons with you,” she said. “We’ll be fine. There’s plenty of park staff around. I’ll join you shortly.”
Her father looked as confused as Jesse felt, but he finally nodded and headed out.
“What’s going on?” Jesse asked as Josie practically dragged her down a back hallway.
“Something I should have pushed about harder from the jump,” she said, stopping in front of what looked like an office door where one of their security team stood.
Josie turned Jesse to face her, her hands on Jesse’s shoulders. “I don’t know what happened, honey, and you don’t have to tell me shit. But if I have to lock you in here until you finally have a resolution, I’ll stand here all fucking day until it happens.”
Then, before Jesse could react, Josie opened the door, shoved her inside, and pulled it shut behind her.
That’s when Jesse turned and realized she wasn’t alone.
Terrific. More fresh hell.
MARK
Mark wasn’t expecting it when one of the private security team members entered the hall through the door behind them, tapped them both on the shoulder, and motioned for them to follow him out to the corridor.
Great. She’s probably having us thrown out.
“What’s going on?” Mark asked the guy, Christopher silently following in their wake.
“I don’t know, sir. All I know is I was told to come get you.”
He led them through the hallways to a door Mark knew led to the employee-only section that also led backstage. They rounded a corner and came face-to-face with the woman holding the baby, who wore a… look.
“Mark and Christopher, right?” she asked.
Mark nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Follow me.” She turned on her heel and strode down the hall to an empty office, nodding for the security man to leave and close the door behind him so the three of them had privacy.
She didn’t give them time to ask questions. “We didn’t meet before, so…hi. I’m Josephina Klevenson, Jesse’s mom. Step-mom, but she said that she—never mind. Anyway.”
She shifted the baby in her arms. “She didn’t tell us anything that would make us think she’d get pregnant from what happened, so I’m going to ask this once and if you two lie to me, I can and will make you disappear. Understand?”
They nodded.
“Do you love her?”
Mark started to answer but suddenly found himself choked up and Christopher answered. “We do. We don’t understand why she ghosted us. She was talking about extending her stay so we could…talk more.” He met Mark’s gaze. “We figured since she literally left without saying good-bye, and then never contacted us…” He shrugged.
“Was what happened between you three consensual?”
Mark and Christopher nodded. “Unexpected,” Chris said, “but consensual, we swear.”
The woman slowly nodded. “I suspect wires got crossed somewhere. I could tell she was upset, but I didn’t want to press. Then, obviously, she told us she was pregnant. And she’s been moping ever since. Is it possible she got the wrong idea about something?”
Mark exchanged another look with Christopher. “I don’t know,” Mark said. “I mean, we were worried that she didn’t want to be with us. That she would leave and not come back. I assumed we were in her rear-view mirror as a fling. That’s not uncommon for tourists in these parts. Especially wealthy ones, no offense. And when she left without so much as telling us good-bye…” He shrugged. “We didn’t pursue her.”
“Yeah, well, you guys left her with a souvenir,” she said. “And since she talked about you in a way that convinced me she was trying not to talk about you, if you get my drift, I had a feeling there was more to this.”
CHRISTOPHER
“Is it ours?” he asked.
She snorted. “Considering that to the best of my knowledge she hasn’t gone out for coffee with anyone except you two in a year, I’d say that’s a damned safe bet.”
“We want to be part of their life,” he said, cutting Mark off when he tried to speak.
She eyed them. “It’s one or the other of you,” she said. “Why do you keep talking like this is a package deal?”
“Because we are a package deal,” Chris said. “This man is my life, and while it was nuts, we both fell in love with her and were willing to make it a permanent threesome, if she’d have both of us. Since then we got married.”
The woman slowly nodded again. “Okay. You two stay here. Don’t leave this room.” Then she left.
Chris turned to Mark. “I love her,” he said. “You love her, too.”
“Yeah, I do.” He slumped into a chair, suddenly looking ragged in a way Chris felt to his core. “This wouldn’t hurt so fucking much if I didn’t love her. I just want an explanation. And yes, if that’s our baby, I want to be part of its life.”
Chris knelt in front of him, holding Mark’s hands. “Then let’s get those answers, okay? Let her talk.”
Mark sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”
They waited nearly twenty minutes before they heard people approach. Then the door opened and a shocked-looking Jesse was pretty much shoved inside by her mom, who waggled her fingers at the men in a playful wave as she shut the door, leaving them alone.
Mark stood and the three of them stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment.
“Hi,” she finally said.
Christopher could tell Mark would be utterly useless right now, so he stepped in and caught her hands, gently squeezing. “Why did you leave?”
Her head snapped back. “ Why did I leave? Uh, because I overheard you two talking, that’s why.”
“Talking about what? We realized you snuck back, took your stuff without even telling us you were there, and disappeared.”
Her jaw gaped. “ Seriously ? When I got there, I heard you talking about how this was nothing more to you guys than a fling with a rich tourist!”
Mark’s mouth finally engaged. “Well, wasn’t that all it was to you? And I was right—you left and never bothered to call or even text us! Not even a ‘thanks for the lasagna and saving my life,’ but I guess you’re used to nameless people taking care of you. Why respond to people you see as disposable?”
Now her eyes widened to match her jaw. “ Me call you ? Why would I call someone who saw thought happened between us was nothing more than banging a rich tourist!”
“Mark, shut up,” Chris snapped. “Jesse, we never said that.”
“Uh, yeah, you did. I heard you two talking about how it was just a fling with a tourist and happened all the time. You guys were in your bathroom doing laundry and I came in and overheard you. That’s when I left.”
Now everything snapped into place as he replayed that conversation in his mind. “Jesse, Mark was talking about how he was worried you would see what happened as nothing more than a fling. We definitely wanted more to happen. Or at least have a chance to spend time with you.”
Her jaw snapped shut as she stared at him, then Mark, and back to Chris. “What? If that’s true, why didn’t you call or text me?”
“Because we didn’t think you wanted us to. When you left without saying good-bye, and then never responded, I wasn’t sure Mark was wrong. Mark said either you’d reply to the text or call, but if you were done with us we weren’t going to humiliate ourselves chasing someone who didn’t want to be caught.”
“You mean…” She sniffled. “You mean I misheard you?”
Chris gentled his voice. “Exactly.” He nodded toward her stomach. “And I think your mom meant it when she said she’d lock us in here until we settle this. Frankly, I’d rather take this conversation back to our place and have it over the pan of lasagna I’m making tonight.”
JESSE
She tried to process this development.
“But you didn’t call me,” she finally said. “And you only sent one text.”
“You didn’t call or text us, either,” Mark replied. “And it wasn’t like you couldn’t get our info.”
Her legs suddenly felt weak and she sank into the chair Mark had occupied when Josie first shoved her into the room.
She honestly didn’t know how to respond. Chris still held one of her hands, as if afraid to let go now.
“At the very least,” Mark added, “you could have told us you’re pregnant.”
“ Mark ,” Chris snapped. “Stand down, dude.”
“No, he’s right,” she softly admitted. “I should have reached out sooner.”
Chris knelt in front of her, recapturing her other hand. “That doesn’t matter now. All that matters is we need to reboot this from where it went wrong. We love you, and we miss you, and we want to be part of our child’s life even if you don’t feel that way about us now. I’m sorry that whatever you heard or misheard hurt you, but we didn’t know! From our end, you disappeared without saying good-bye. Can you understand that? We can’t fix what we don’t know is broken. I wish you had confronted us and we could have straightened all of this out immediately.”
Her vision blurred with more tears. She stared at their hands, where they were clasped together. “I thought you didn’t want me,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “And it hurt too much to make it…final.”
“Oh, sweetie.” He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her and she hated that now she sobbed, all the anguish and fear pouring out of her like spring melt on a hot day into a Yellowstone stream. “RSD’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
She sob-laughed. “Yeah, it is.”
“Okay,” he said, still holding her, now stroking her hair even as she cried on his shoulder. “Let’s reboot,” he said. “We can’t get back the last four months. Let’s start over where we are. Is the baby okay? Is it healthy?”
“Yeah,” she sniffled.
“Are we having a boy or girl?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t want to find out yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was having a rough time processing everything.”
“It is ours, right?” Mark asked.
Chris sat back. “Dude! Fucking seriously?”
She opened her eyes. Mark stood leaning against the desk, staring at the floor, his arms tightly crossed over his chest. “Fair questions, I think,” he quietly said.
Chris stood and turned on him. “Remember how upset I got that time back in our early days when you drove to Bozeman and didn’t bother to tell me? Remember you couldn’t understand why I was so upset you missed our dinner and couldn’t just take an apology? Remember how it took several weeks of working things out for you to finally understand what happened in my brain?”
Mark’s cheeks flushed. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “So?”
“Remember I explained RSD to you? How stuff like that triggers me?”
Mark shifted a little but didn’t reply.
“Well?” Chris snapped.
“Yeah? So? What’s that have to do with this?”
Chris pointed to her. “She’s a sparkly unicorn vampire, too. No one experiences things the same way, but imagine her reacting the way I did back then because her RSD was triggered. Only multiply it by everything else that happened on top of it.”
Mark’s cheeks grew redder. “How was I supposed to know she misheard what we said? We didn’t even know she was there!”
“She’s sitting right here,” she groused, looking for and finding a box of tissues behind her on the desk. She grabbed a few and blew her nose.
“With me,” Chris said to Mark, “it’s literally painful when I’m triggered hard. Like a knife twisting in my gut. I feel it as a physical sensation.” He pointed at her again. “Now imagine having just survived what we did, hooking up the way we did—on top of our rocky initial meeting in the bar and how you talked to her—and then mishearing something. Remember, you’d already triggered her RSD once and made faulty assumptions about her.”
She remained silent.
To be honest, Chris was doing a damned good job hammering that nail without any help from her. Despite her now feeling ashamed she’d run instead of confronting them, everything he’d said was spot-on.
And while she had plenty of neurospicy friends she’d discussed RSD with, and had other lesser incidents of it, she’d never personally experienced it being triggered by a romantic partner, or being triggered that hard.
“Yes, it’s yours,” she said, finally meeting Mark’s gaze. “I haven’t been with anyone except you two.”
She didn’t think she imagined he relaxed a little.
“Apologize, Mark,” Chris ordered. “ Now .”
MARK
He couldn’t stand the weight of Christopher’s anger and pain—which the average person wouldn’t have picked up from him—or Jesse’s tears.
Mark remembered all too well the incident Chris referred to. It’d nearly ended their relationship before they’d hammered out what they were to each other. He’d hated the pain he’d caused Chris and now went out of his way to make sure he didn’t repeat it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry we hurt you. That was never our intention. And I’m sorry I didn’t text or call you. I did warn you I’m a chronic foot-eater.”
At that she softly shnurfled, giving him hope. “Yeah, you did.”
“Full reboot,” Chris said. “Okay?”
Mark finally nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Full reboot.”
Chris took her hand and gently coaxed her to her feet. Then the two of them surrounded her, with her facing Mark, and held her.
God, it felt good to have her back in their arms. He’d deliberately tried not to think about how perfect everything had felt despite their situation, knowing Chris would pick up on his pain and loss and that would amplify his own.
He buried his face in her hair. “God we missed you, sweetie,” he whispered. “We missed you so fucking much.” For the first time in months he felt that dark fist in his gut finally unclench, relax.
“I missed you, too,” she admitted. “And then…this.”
He rubbed his chin against her scalp. “Can you come to the house so we can talk? I have to work until five.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll take her home with me,” Chris said. Mark opened his eyes and looked into his guy’s brown gaze. “I’d already cut out early before you called.”
“I don’t know if Daddy will let me out of his sight while we’re here,” she said. “He’s been clingy ever since we arrived. Like he’s afraid I’ll step off a boardwalk and disappear into thin air.”
“I’m more worried about your mom,” Chris said. “She’s kind of scary.”
“Josie?” She turned to face Chris. “She’s a sweetheart.”
Mark snorted. “She’s a momma bear,” he said. “If I had to choose to go up against that sow again or her, I’d pick the sow every time.”
“At least we could bear spray the sow,” Chris added.