28. Everything
Everything
Bex
San Francisco, California
Six Months Later
“ T hat was the last box, girl.” I smile, taking out my favorite throw pillow and setting it onto our brand new leather couch. “We’re officially moved in.”
Lady Marmalade swims to the side of her fishbowl that’s closest to me, and I sit on the couch, placing my finger on the glass. My goldfish “kisses” the tip of my finger through the see through wall of her house.
“I think I’m going to shop for a nice fish tank for you.” I tell her. “Now that we have the space, we could even get you a boyfriend.”
Lady M swims away, leaving me to wonder if she’d like some company or if she’s content being single.
“ Meow !” Poonani saunters into the living room and immediately makes herself comfortable inside the box I just emptied.
“Poonani,” I shake my head with a chuckle. “I don’t get your fascination with boxes. You have your own personal bed in this room, in Keene’s bedroom and in my room, without counting our beds. Yet, you keep getting into boxes. The box can’t be that comfortable.”
“ Meow !” is the answer.
“What are my two girls talking about?” Keene steps into the room followed by Connor and Jamie.
They carried something big and rectangular wrapped in brown packaging paper.
“I was just asking her why she keeps getting inside every box in sight. I’m surprised she didn’t get shipped by the movers at the rate she kept doing it while we were packing our condo.”
Keene shrugs, a mischievous smile on his handsome face. “It’s a cat thing; they love boxes. But even if it wasn’t, Poonani is a girl. I’ve given up trying to understand girls a long time ago.”
“Shut up.” I roll my eyes because I know he’s provoking me. Keene and I stopped fighting a long time ago, but my boyfriend loves to start playful little debates with me. It’s his love language.
“Or what?” he smirks right on cue.
I try to keep a serious look on my face, but it’s hard. “Or the first thing I might do in our new house is to spank you.”
His smile widens. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, kitten.”
He’s right; it would be a good time. Keene’s ass is a work of art thanks to all the skating he does. The same can be said about Jamie and Connor. Hockey players have amazing butts and thighs; not that the rest of their bodies have anything I could ever criticize.
“If you two are done with your foreplay,” Connor teases. “Have you given any thought to dinner? We’ve been working all day bringing in the last few things, and I’m starving. I need to eat before we start packing.”
“Packing? Do you mean unpacking, Con? We just got here.” I say, confused.
If Connor’s sheepish look weren’t enough to make me suspicious, the way Jamie elbows him in the ribs, trying to shut him up, tells me there’s something going on.
“Guys? What’s up? And don’t try to pretend you aren’t hiding something from me; it’s written all over your faces. What is it? Is it Aisha? Is she ok?”
Jamie offers me his hand, pulling me up from the couch and into his arms. “Aisha is fine, baby. She isn’t due for another month, and you know better than me that her new husband is taking excellent care of her and will call you the second she goes into labor.”
It’s true. I spoke to her a couple of days ago, and Tim promised he’s going to call me and book me a flight to be with my best friend for the birth of her baby.
“I know. I just want to be with her. I’m the only family she has, aside from Tim.”
Keene takes my hand, bringing my knuckles to his lips. “But you know he’s good to her, and she’s happy, right?”
I do know that. “Yeah. Their wedding was something out of a fairy tale. Aisha kept saying it should have been my wedding if she hadn’t ended up doing that reality show instead of me.”
“Wait a minute,” Connor objects. “I disagree. It’s true that she met Tim filming the show; but Aisha was single when she joined. If that had been you, you’d have been very taken, anyway.”
He’s cute when he gets possessive. All three of my guys are, but they trust me and they would never try to keep me from living my life or getting the career I want because of jealousy. They trust me as I trust them.
“True.” I can’t resist the temptation to provoke him a little. “But think about it. If I hadn’t left Bridgeport last year and if I had gone to the reality show as planned, now I could have been married to the Cowboys’ QB.”
Jamie chuckles, his warm, minty breath tickling my ear. “How sad. Why have one football player when you can have three hockey players?”
When he puts it that way…
“The truth is,” I say, with a shudder. “That if I hadn’t left Bridgeport, I would probably be in Hartford with Kurt now. I’d be married to him.”
Keene laces his fingers with mine, placing another kiss on the back of my hand.
“But you left, and found us. And because of your bravery, Aisha gets to live her happily ever after, and every single one of Byron’s clients received some of the earnings they were owed when his estate was liquidated.
So while it’s awesome that Aisha found love, she would have been able to support herself and her baby with the high six-figure payout she got. ”
I nod. “It’s true. Look, I’m just relieved that things worked out the way they did, and that Kurt didn’t put up a fight when Aisha’s lawyers requested that he sign away his parental rights to her.”
Connor crosses his arms over his chest. “Yeah. Not that he could do much parenting from a maximum security prison. He has to serve twenty years before he’s eligible for parole. So by then his daughter will be an adult.”
That’s definitely another silver lining in Aisha’s situation. “Am I a bad person for hoping that Kev gets the same kind of sentence when he’s convicted?”
Jamie’s lips touch my temple. “Not at all. He deserves that and more.”
He’s right, and my therapist has been telling me the same thing.
The past six months have been tough, but I think the worst is over. The nightmares I was having straight after the police stormed the Pure Shine compound have almost completely disappeared.
Luke and I have been having the same feelings about our father’s death.
We both felt relief rather than grief, and with that, came a lot of guilt.
We’ve both been working through that with a therapist, and we’re starting to accept that it’s ok to feel the way we do.
That it’s ok to grieve the parent we wish we had rather than the one we actually had.
There are easier and harder days, but I know in my heart that his actions define him, not me. I’m not a victim of his creepy cult; I’m a survivor.
“Right.” Connor pulls me away from Jamie and into his embrace. “Not to be insensitive, but what about dinner?”
His question reminds me that he just said something about packing. “We’ll order dinner in a second. Don’t think that I forgot the way you guys looked at each other when you said you should be packing. Are you guys going somewhere?”
“Well done, Con. You ruined our surprise.” Keene sighs.
Before I can press him for more information, he spills the beans. He knows that I’m not going to let this go until they tell me.
“It was meant to be a surprise, but since Connor can’t keep his mouth shut… we rented a house in Hawaii and we’re flying out tomorrow.”
I cover my mouth with both hands. “Hawaii?”
“Yeah, since we’re all moved in and we don’t have to report to summer training for five weeks, we thought, why not?” Connor explains. “We know you want to start looking for a job, but we’re hoping you can start online and send your applications from the beach?”
Excitement bubbles in the pit of my stomach, and I plant a noisy kiss on Connor’s cheek. “Or I can start looking when we come back.”
Like Aisha, I received a substantial check from my father’s estate.
It was just part of the earnings he cheated me out of but even so, it was way more money than I’ve ever seen in my life and enough to contribute to renting a penthouse in this high rise building one block away from the Paladins’ arena.
Of course, the guys tried to argue, but I want to pay my share.
Ten minutes ago I was exhausted, but now energy is coursing through me at the thought of flying to paradise with my three hot boyfriends.
“Con, order whatever you want. I want to start packing right away. Hold on a second,” I stop in my tracks. “What are we going to do about Poonani and Lady M? We can’t just leave them.”
Keene reassures me that our pets are going to be taken care of.
“The housekeeper we hired agreed to come to feed Lady M. Poonani is coming with us. We’ve been planning this surprise for a couple of months now, so I got everything we need to avoid quarantine, and we rented a private jet, so she can just fly on my lap or in her favorite carrier bag.
She’s a seasoned traveler after she came back to my last duty station from deployment and then to Star Cove. ”
“Oh my God.” I squeal. “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii. Since the apartment is all set up, let’s go packing.”
Keene stops me in my tracks. “Just one more thing before you start, kitten. There’s one last item we need to find a place for.” He points at the big package they just brought up.
“What is it? I can’t remember anything of that shape and size in our condo. Did you guys buy something new?”
There’s a glint in his eyes. “Not exactly. Why don’t you open it?”
Curiosity has the best of me, and I walk to the large rectangular item. “Do I just tear the paper off?”
“Have at it.” They all smile.
It takes me a few seconds to understand what I’m looking at once the first large piece of brown wrapping paper is torn off.
It’s one of the paintings Keene and I made the day we met at the art center after hours.
It isn’t one of the two pieces Keene made by skating into the canvas. I look at the impression of our bodies—mostly mine—in pink paint.
“You kept that?” I’m surprised. “And you had it framed?”