Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
EMMETT
“Do you need to…”
“No,” Cosimo said very quickly. He obviously knew what his husband was going to ask. “I’m so far away from all that right now.”
Emmett sighed and turned on his side, watching as Cosimo finished stripping down.
His nipples were red from clamps, his lips a little chapped, and he was walking with a slight limp from the plug that had been tormenting him all day.
But he was soft between his legs, and his slightly red ass disappeared when he pulled his pajama pants over it.
“Mo?” Emmett knew his voice hadn’t sounded that small in a long time. Cosimo turned to look at him. “I know tonight was a lot, but I’m…I need…” He hated asking his husband for the comfort that he struggled to give.
Cosimo didn’t make him finish his sentence. He didn’t wait for him to ask, or beg, or bargain. He slipped under the sheets, turned off the bedside lamp, then took Emmett into his arms. His broad chest was warm, fuzzy, and perfect against Emmett’s front.
“Amore mio,” Cosimo murmured.
Emmett closed his eyes and finally—now that he was safe—let the pain wash over him.
Cosimo had been crushed that Miles thought Emmett was capable of hurting him, but Emmett was devastated.
He was flayed raw and damn-near ruined because the man he wanted to cherish and keep thought—even for a second—that he could hurt the man he loved.
He realized he was shaking when Cosimo’s arms tightened around him.
“I’m so sorry,” Cosimo murmured. “I’m so fucking sorry. I should have been better. I should have waited?—”
“No.” Emmett squeezed tighter. It was a little hard to breathe, and he was pretty sure the sensation rushing through him was a panic attack, but his husband was keeping him grounded. “That was not your fault. We’re going to fix this. Fix us.”
Cosimo pulled back and cupped his cheek. “We are not broken.”
Emmett looked at him for a long beat. “We’re not broken, but we’re also not…whole. Not together. It’s not enough.”
“I know,” Cosimo whispered, ache in his voice.
“I want it to be enough. I want to be able to turn this feeling off and be happy just as we are.” He pressed his hand to Cosimo’s sternum.
Shaking his head Cosimo reached between them and tipped his chin up. “This isn’t on you. If I could pretend—if I could put on a mask and give you what you need—I would. But you deserve something genuine. Something real.”
Emmett shuddered, and he knew Cosimo was right.
It wasn’t the same for him. He did like being able to reduce Cosimo down to a mess.
He loved watching him shake apart, and beg, and kneel.
He wasn’t wearing a mask when he was with Cosimo.
But he was missing other parts in his life that could give him the comfort and attention he was seeking outside of his relationship with his husband.
“Listen to me,” Cosimo said softly. “He doesn’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
Cosimo met his gaze. “Miles doesn’t know about us. He doesn’t know our marriage is open for a third. But I’ve been paying attention to the way he looks at you, amore. He wants you, and he hates himself for it because he thinks he can’t have you.”
Emmett let out a trembling breath and thought back to Miles’s confession. Everything Miles wanted was everything Emmett was desperate to give. But was it actually possible? The biggest roadblock was the fact that their daughter was the one who had tormented Miles.
How could they reconcile his past life with a future one with them?
They couldn’t cut their daughter off forever…could they? He wanted to have hope she’d learn and get better and try to be the person they’d raised her to be. He didn’t want to lose his child.
But how could he have both?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Cosimo murmured as he stroked his fingers through Emmett’s hair.
He blinked up at his husband. “How can this possibly work?”
“What we do—who we love—is not her business. And she has no say over who Miles is with. Not ever. She has zero moral high ground in this. It’ll be up to her to accept it. Even if she’s sorry—even if she does better—she still doesn’t get to ask us to choose. Not with him.”
“I can’t give up on her,” Emmett said softly.
“No. We won’t ever give up on her, but you deserve to be happy.”
Emmett closed his eyes in a long, slow blink, then asked, “What about you? You know the rules. Even if he can give me what I want, he has to mean something to you too.”
“He does,” Cosimo said very softly. “I like him too.”
It wasn’t as deep of a confession as Emmett had given, but Cosimo had never been fully open with his feelings. Not in the same way Emmett had. He loved fiercely and profoundly, but also very quietly. So the fact that he was admitting it at all was important.
“Tomorrow,” Cosimo said when Emmett didn’t say anything else. “I’m going to take care of financial stuff with Selene’s account. I think you and Miles should have a day out.”
“We did that already,” Emmett said, leaning over to rest his cheek against Cosimo’s chest. He was soothed by the steady heartbeat against his ear.
“So do it again. Test the waters. Flirt with him. Set the mood so when you talk to him, none of this will be coming out of left field.”
Emmett knew that was fair. Maybe a little tricky, but this situation wasn’t normal, so they had to do what they could. “Kiss me, please,” he murmured.
Cosimo let out a hum, took Emmett by the jaw, and kissed him until his body relaxed…except his toes, which curled happily into the sheets.
Emmett’s plans were foiled the next day by Miles getting a migraine.
He kept the shades down in the room and accepted soup and water, but it was obvious the poor man was in pain.
Emmett was disappointed, but it gave him an opportunity to show Miles what it could be like with them when he was having bad days.
When Cosimo got back from his errands, he looked a little harried and uncomfortable which told Emmett that he’d had a run-in with their daughter.
“She said a lot of nasty things,” Cosimo said, falling onto the sofa beside Emmett. He leaned against his husband. “She had that gym douchebag with her. I forgot to tell the staff she wasn’t welcome, so Debbie let her into my office, and that dickhead was strutting around like he owned the place.”
Emmett wrinkled his nose. The two were quite the pair.
“She’s still going to Ibiza,” Cosimo went on. “I guess Jake bought her ticket.”
Emmett sighed, feeling disappointment rushing through him. He couldn’t prevent her from finding someone with money to take care of her the way he and Cosimo had been though, but he had a feeling that would get old pretty quick.
“She said she’s cutting us off until we turn all her cards back on,” Cosimo told him, reaching forward to steal a drink from Emmett’s mug.
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” he said, then leaned back and closed his eyes.
Cosimo began to massage his scalp gently. “How’s Miles?”
“Still in pain. I’m hoping to try again tomorrow.”
“I won’t be here,” Cosimo told him. “I got a call asking me to take two of Andrew’s patients. He slipped a disc and can’t reschedule these because they’re both emergent. One’s at eight tomorrow morning, and the other’s at five.”
Emmett opened his eyes and grimaced. “You’re going to be exhausted.”
“Yeah. I might crash at the hospital and come back in the morning since I won’t be done until close to midnight.”
Emmett sighed, but that was his life. Cosimo wasn’t as busy as he used to be when they were younger, but he’d spent plenty of nights going to bed with one side cold. Maybe that wasn’t going to last forever.
“Kiss me,” Emmett said softly.
Cosimo leaned over and he did. “I think it’s going to be okay.”
He could only hope his husband was right.
It was almost a miracle, seeing Miles appear the next morning, just as Emmett finished making a fruit plate. He was bleary-eyed but looked in a lot less pain than he had been. He managed a tentative smile as he walked over and leaned his hip against the lower cupboard.
“Can I help with anything?”
Emmett smiled and shook his head. “You can have a seat while I serve you breakfast. Are you hungry?”
Miles hesitated before he pushed away and walked to the little breakfast nook, taking the seat that had the best view of the yard. The storms hadn’t moved on yet, so the patio was full of little puddles all over the deck.
“I’m starving, actually. I always get really hungry after a stress migraine.”
Emmett’s stomach twisted. Stress migraine. Because of them, obviously. He couldn’t go back in time and fix it, but he could make up for it. He plated some turkey bacon, fruit, and some toast, setting it in front of Miles.
He’d seen him choose that more often than not when serving his own plate, and his face bloomed with a huge smile when he looked down at it.
“This looks so good.” For the first time, he didn’t hesitate when digging in.
Emmett carefully slipped a cup of coffee—also the way he’d seen Miles take it—right by his hand, then sat down with his own fruit and began to nibble.
“So. I was thinking we might go out today.”
Miles’s brows flew up. “Oh. I mean, we did go out already the other day, so…”
“Well, there’s not like a quota that you’re going to hit with me. I like being out in the summer. My workload is small and being at home makes me feel like a house-husband.”
Miles snorted into his coffee, then drained half his mug with vigor. “Where did you want to go?”
Emmett leaned his elbow on the table and smiled at him. “Hmm. The aquarium, maybe?”
Miles’s back straightened. “Oh. I like looking at fish.”
Emmett grinned wider. “We can go to the beach, maybe buy useless things at boardwalk shops and then have some lunch.”
He could see Miles fighting off happiness—almost like he was too afraid to embrace it. But after a slow fight, it was clear his desire to go out had won. “Yeah, okay. I can wear my new shorts.”
“You’ll look good in them,” Emmett said softly.