Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jett
The burger place smells like fryer grease, stale beer, and whole lot of what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-here.
It’s the wrong kind of bright inside. Fluorescent and buzzing.
I haven’t eaten since before the arrest, and now I’m here, walking into a chain diner, like this is fucking normal, with the two men I’d most like to throw through a plate glass window.
Benji holds the door open like it’s a date.
Rhys is already at the booth, back straight, watching us approach with that clinical, disappointed-father look he gives me in therapy. Yeah. Go ahead. Analyze this shit.
I slide into the booth across from him. Benji sits beside me, the bench shifting under his weight. Cozy. Are we the “Team Delilah” delegation now? The ones who’ve… fuck. No. Don’t think about that.
I don’t know who I want to hate more. Rhys, who gets her trust and her secrets. Or Benji, who gets her body. Her voice cracking on his name. Her smile soft around him. Her chaos turned to goddamn devotion.
And he’s nice.
I want to hate him. I do. But he’s the kind of man who probably says “bless you” when a stranger sneezes and carries extra pens for people who forget theirs.
A waitress comes. Rhys orders a cheeseburger and fries like a guy who doesn’t spend his nights analyzing trauma or dodging inappropriate thoughts about his patients. Benji gets the same, but adds waffle fries and a side of cheese sauce like some kind of dairy hedonist.
What kind of man orders extra cheese sauce for a cheeseburger when the woman he loves is behind bars?
I ask for a burger and onion rings. No commentary. No substitutions.
I can feel Rhys mentally assigning personality profiles to each of our meals.
“Another pitcher too,” Benji adds, looking at me, then Rhys. “We’re gonna need it.”
Fucker might be right.
The waitress nods and walks off, and I’m left sitting between Lawful Good and Mister Sunshine, both of them tangled in her orbit like I am.
Delilah’s in a cell. And I’m here, eating goddamn onion rings with her cock entourage.
None of this is normal. None of this is okay.
But I sit there anyway, breathing through it. Pretending like the taste of betrayal doesn’t hit harder than the beer ever could.
“What’s the plan?” It comes out gruff, but it’s not a real question.
It’s a challenge. A demand. Because this isn’t about us.
Fuck that noise. There is no us. There’s her, and she’s in a goddamn holding cell, and I’m sitting here with Captain Kindness and Dr. Boundaries trying to talk logistics like we’re a fucking PTA board.
Not that she needs an us anyway. I could give her everything.
No. No the fuck I can’t.
I don’t do soft. I don’t do safe. Not like Benji. He probably tucks her in and kisses her temple and makes her pancakes.
I don’t do wise, either. Or patient. Rhys does that shit. Understanding her, reading her like she’s an academic case file.
All I know how to do is burn.
“I can post bail,” Benji says. “But I gotta be at work first thing in the morning.”
Responsible, reliable. Like his dick’s just another tool on a keychain.
“I’ll post the bail,” I say. “You already paid my tab. I’m not adding to it.”
Benji nods, soft and sincere. “Thanks, man.”
He means it. Fucking Boy Scout.
“It’s all about Chad. That’s on me,” I add, as if it matters. Everyone here already knows I’m the fuck-up in this equation. “I don’t have a client in the morning. I’ll pick her up. I’ll wait in the lobby the second they open.”
I’ll sit in that sterile fucking hallway like a goddamn dog waiting for his girl to come home.
Rhys drains his beer, the third wheel in a slow-motion rom com crash.
“There are more charges,” he says, flat.
“It’s only because I have access to her file that I know.
But it’s going to get more complicated before the final hearing.
They’re calling in her ex and his girlfriend as witnesses. The ones with the restraining orders.”
I drain my beer too while that settles like concrete in my gut. “Fuck Hank,” I say. Because seriously. Fuck him. “I’ll knock his fucking teeth in if he so much as breathes near her.”
“No,” Rhys says, and it’s that therapist tone that makes me want to wrap my hands around his throat. “That’s not how we move forward.”
I laugh. Loud and mean. “You think there’s a forward? You think she’s coming out of this untouched?”
Benji’s trying to be Switzerland over there, sipping his beer like it might give him neutrality. “If they’re witnesses, what are the new charges?”
Rhys meets his eyes. Holds for a second then drops the next grenade with surgical precision. “A woman related to you is filing harassment. Delilah left her a… gift.”
Benji’s face shifts. “Fucking Margo?” His voice goes sharp. “I’ll talk to her. She won’t go to court. She’ll drop it.”
“It’s not best if you threaten her,” Rhys warns.
“I said talk,” Benji snaps. “I only slept with her once. It’s not some bitter ex thing.”
“You don’t know women,” I say, finishing the last of the beer like it can cauterize the hole in my chest. “Delilah’s gift was a statement. And if Margo’s smart, she’ll take the hint and fuck off.”
Rhys looks at me like I’m the biggest threat at the table. He’s not wrong. Because the truth is, I don’t care if I have to go back behind bars to protect her.
Let them try me. Chad. Hank. Margo, whoever the fuck she is.
The food comes and none of us say a word. We just eat like animals trying to pretend we’re men. Pretend we’re fine. But this isn’t how men behave. Not real men. Not when she is locked up and the air tastes like blood and guilt and betrayal.
She’s mine.
Benji dips his cheeseburger in the cheese sauce.
The fuck? Wasn’t that for the fries?
But now I can see it. Him feeding her like this is a Hallmark flick with a secret praise kink and no felony record.
She’d lean in, all warm eyes and wicked mouth, giggling like a goddamn siren as he spoons up cheese-drenched burger bites served from his fingers.
Fucking fingers I could break in one squeeze.
One little crunch.
And of course she’d lick them clean, wouldn’t she? Because she’s like that. Filthy and sweet and starving for affection.
And he’s the kind of bastard who’d give it to her without making her beg.
My onion rings are delicious and I hate them. I hate me.
She’d want extra ketchup.
My brain flashes to that night. Me snapping, red fucking everywhere. Ketchup. Rage. Her voice cracking.
I scared her.
I bet Benji’s never even raised his voice. Not once. Not even when she told him she fucked me, too.
Rhys is chewing slowly, watching me with that calm, clinical gaze, waiting for my internal collapse to reach the surface.
Fuck you, doc.
Does it eat him alive, knowing I’ve been inside her while he’s out here playing paper dolls and pushing worksheets? He could touch her. He could change the game.
But he won’t. Because he’s a coward.
He doesn’t deserve her.
Maybe I don’t.
Benji might.
That’s the worst fucking part.
“You decide about the drawing class?” Rhys asks, like we’re just three guys shooting the shit.
“No,” I grunt. “Drawing naked people doesn’t fix shit. Is it a man?”
Rhys shrugs. “It is sometimes.”
Benji perks up. “Wait, you draw naked people?”
“Yeah, he does,” I say, chewing rage with my onion ring. “Doc thinks it’ll help me be less angry. I think it’s just his kink.”
Benji’s whole face lights up like someone handed him a praise sticker. “Where’s that at? I didn’t know we had sex clubs in town.”
Rhys chuckles. “It’s not a sex club. It’s at the art center. Only the model is nude.”
Benji dips another bite of cheeseburger in his goddamn cheese like he’s not the devil. “So you sit there in a suit and sketch while someone’s just naked up there? That’s kinda kinky, doc. You gotta admit.”
“It’s not,” Rhys says.
“The fuck it isn’t,” I say.
“Kinky,” Benji grins around his bite. “I like it.”
Great. Fucking great. So now it’s not just tender smiles and sweet-boy safety he’s offering her. Now he’s got kinks. Now he’s interesting. Exciting. Probably lets her tie him up and calls her ma’am.
Would it be a felony to smash my plate into his face? Just a little?
“You should come too,” Rhys says to Benji.
The fuck he just say?
“Okay, what the hell is happening here?” I snap. “Did the air get weird or did you two just start fucking without telling me?”
“What does it feel like?” Rhys asks, tone maddeningly calm.
“Screw you,” I growl. “It feels shitty and I want to break your nose and his hands.”
There it is. The truth. Right in the open.
Rhys remains too relaxed. “Do you want to sit with that or talk about it?”
Benji, fucking Benji, nods solemnly. “It is uncomfortable,” he says like he’s announcing the weather. “You wouldn’t get it yet. You haven’t fully invested in her.”
“I haven’t?” Rhys tilts his head, brow arching. “It’s my job to invest in her.”
No, I think, it’s my job to protect her. And you’re both in the way.
“Not the same,” Benji says, calm as a bomb that hasn’t gone off yet.
And fuck him. We are not on the same team.
I don’t care if he agrees with me or wants to hold hands and sing hymns about how we all love the same girl.
I thought I could handle this. Thought I could sit here, eat my fucking onion rings, and act civilized.
But I can’t. “I’m gonna need you to stay the fuck out of my space.
Don’t touch her. Don’t breathe on her when I’m around. ”
Benji lifts his hand like he’s telling a kid to slow their roll. “No.”
“No?” I repeat. “Excuse me?”
Rhys folds his hands pretending he’s just a fucking therapist instead of the reason I fantasize about punching drywall. That smug little lean-back in his chair, that deliberate patience like he’s watching an animal snarl behind glass. Safe.
“Yeah, you too, doc. Because I catch you with your hands on her…” I start.
“You feel uncomfortable about how you left things with her,” Rhys cuts in, all quiet authority and monk-like bullshit. “How do you come to terms with this?”