13. Party Roles
Chapter thirteen
Party Roles
Micah
There are certain conversations Ronan and I apparently only know how to have while slowly poisoning ourselves on the back porch.
It started a long time ago—before Cami, before Dex and I stopped pretending we were just friends who occasionally looked at each other like we wanted to climb inside each other’s skin.
Back when most of our problems were easier to ignore because nobody had started fucking anybody else in the house yet.
Now there are five of us, overlapping relationships, and Ronan has been staring at the same cigar for long enough that the ash finally drops onto his jeans.
He brushes it away.
I take another drag and wait, the December morning air cold against my skin.
Ronan usually waits until he’s ready to talk—so do I.
I don’t push him, and he doesn’t push me.
Finally, he says, “Griffin surprised me.”
I turn my head.
There are about seventeen directions that statement could go after what happened last night.
“Good surprised?”
“Very.”
That answer comes quickly enough that I smile.
Ronan notices. “Don’t.”
I take another drag. “You fucked my girlfriend with him. I think I’m allowed to be a little curious.”
He gives me a flat look, but the corner of his mouth twitches.
“So?” I prompt.
Ronan looks up at the clouds again. “I expected him to be more hesitant.”
“Griffin?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you expect that?”
That earns me a look.
“Okay, stupid question.”
“He was nervous beforehand, I think. Not about Cami, or even particularly about me.” Ronan taps ash into the tray between us. “More about not knowing what his role was supposed to be.”
That makes sense.
Griffin likes knowing where the exits are before the building is on fire.
“So you gave him a role?”
“I gave him parameters.”
I laugh quietly. “Of course you did.”
“It worked.”
“I’m shocked,” I deadpan.
“Fuck you.”
“Anytime.” I grin around my cigarette.
Ronan doesn’t bite, but goes quiet again. I can see him working through something in his head.
“He let me lead… for a minute,” he says finally. “Which is mostly what we discussed. He watched. Took cues.”
“Also very Griffin.”
“Exactly.” Ronan pauses. “And then at some point, he stopped needing me. He stopped needing cues.”
There’s something almost pleased in his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“He started making decisions.” Ronan looks at me.
“Not exactly competing with me. That’s the part that surprised me.
There was kind of a game there, a friendly competition where neither of us was actually trying to win.
I thought there might be some instinct to reclaim territory once things became real. ”
My mouth twists. “You thought he’d go caveman.”
“I thought it was a possibility.”
I contemplate and nod.
“But he didn’t.” Ronan takes another drag. “He just… stepped in. He led. Not in a dominant way, just in a leadership way.”
The smile he tries to suppress tells me considerably more than the words do.
I laugh. “You liked it.”
“I respected it.”
“You liked it.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
That makes me laugh harder.
Ronan shakes his head, but he’s smiling now too.
“He understood what Cami needed. He also checked in with her, but also with me. Frequently,” he admits. “And when he decided he wanted something from her—or to do something to her—he didn’t look at me for permission.”
Something about that catches.
Not because I think Griffin should have needed Ronan’s permission.
Because a few days ago, Ronan had been worried Griffin might make him lead the whole thing or make him feel like he was borrowing Cami.
Apparently Griffin soothed those concerns—easily.
“That’s good,” I say.
“It was.”
Ronan stubs his cigar out, then immediately reaches for another.
My eyebrows raise. Somehow, that’s when I know he didn’t want to just talk about last night.
I wait until he lights it.
“What are you thinking?”
He exhales smoke toward the yard. “I think we need to talk.”
“We are talking,” I tease.
“All of us.”
I lean back against the step. “About?”
“Structure.”
The word makes me laugh before I can stop myself.
Ronan frowns. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just the most Ronan possible word for whatever the fuck we’re doing.”
“What would you call it?”
I consider that, then smile. “Whatever the fuck we’re doing.”
He rolls his eyes. “Very useful.”
Then his expression sobers.
“I don’t want us to keep relying on everyone intuitively knowing when to step forward and when to get out of the way.”
That kills most of my amusement.
Because we have been doing exactly that.
And mostly, it has worked.
Mostly.
Griffin gives Cami space to be with any of us, and I pull Dex away when Griffin needs Cami. I’m pretty sure Ronan knows when I need Dex. Cami somehow seems to know when one of us needs something before we’re willing to ask for it.
We’ve gotten good at moving around each other.
But that’s not the same thing as having rules or having structure.
Or even knowing what happens when two people need contradictory things.
Ronan watches me realize it.
“Yeah,” I say quietly.
“I also think sometimes we’re conflating two completely different things.”
“Which are?”
“Relationship hierarchy and power hierarchy.”
I stare at him.
Then point my cigarette at him. “There it is.”
“What?”
“That’s why you’re talking to me first.”
Ronan’s expression changes.
Barely.
But I know him.
“Yes,” he admits.
I look toward the house.
Dex is somewhere inside. Probably still asleep, considering I left him facedown across half my bed with one leg hanging off the mattress.
My boyfriend.
My partner.
My person, in a way that doesn’t diminish what I feel for Cami or what Ronan means to me.
And also… someone who sometimes kneels for me.
Those things intersect, but they aren’t the same.
“I think you’re right,” I say.
Ronan nods slowly.
Then I add, “But if we’re doing this, everybody talks. Nobody silently agrees.”
“Obviously.” He looks at me with confusion.
“No.” I look directly at him. “I mean everybody. Griffin too.”
His brow furrows. “Of course Griffin.”
“Because I can already see where this could go.”
“Where?” he asks, genuinely curious.
“You, me, Dex, Cami—we have a power structure that’s starting to make sense. We have mostly defined it, but we haven’t officially named the whole thing yet.”
Ronan stays quiet.
“But Griffin isn’t part of that,” I add.
“No, he’s not.”
“And I don’t want us talking about the hierarchy in a way that accidentally turns into ‘the four kinky people have rules, and Griffin is Cami’s husband who occasionally visits.’”
Ronan’s expression tightens thoughtfully.
“Agreed. That’s part of why I know it needs to happen after last night.”
I nod. “And Cami is beginning to complicate it anyway.”
That finally makes him smile. “She’s getting toppier with Dex?”
“She’s getting much toppier with Dex. Only, I think she doesn't fully realize it.”
He grins.
I laugh. “You look proud of her.”
“I am proud of her.”
“Of course you are.”
He takes another drag, then looks at me through the smoke. “So.”
“So.”
“Tonight?”
I glance toward the house and think of five people with five sets of needs. More relationships between us than I can count with drawing a fucking diagram.
And somehow, that doesn’t feel terrifying.
It feels like something worth doing correctly.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Tonight.”
By the time we actually get everyone into the living room, I’m reconsidering every decision that led me here.
And not just because Ronan brought his fucking notebook.
Dex notices it at exactly the same time I do. “Oh, absolutely not.”
Ronan looks up from where he’s settling into the chair. “What?”
“You brought the notebook.”
“We’re having a discussion.”
“We’re having a meeting. You brought office supplies.”
Cami laughs as she drops onto the couch beside Griffin. “To be fair, this isn’t even our first relationship meeting with a Ronan notebook.”
“Which makes it worse,” he groans.
I sit on the other end of the couch, and Dex immediately drops down between Cami and me.
Ronan looks at the four of us on the couch. “Can we begin?”
Dex raises his hand.
“No.”
His hand drops. “Oppressive.”
Griffin laughs quietly, and some of the tension eases.
Good.
Because this needs to be serious.
But it doesn’t need to feel like a court hearing.
“Ronan and I were talking earlier,” I begin, before he can turn this into a quarterly business review, “and we realized that while we did have conversations before, we’ve gotten pretty good at making this work without actually defining much of what this is.”
Cami’s eyebrows rise. “That sounds ominous.”
“It isn’t,” Ronan assures her.
“That sounded ominous too,” Dex points out.
I bump my knee against his, then look to Ronan. “Let me try.”
He gestures for me to proceed with exaggerated patience.
“We aren’t having a meeting because something’s wrong. We’re having one because things are going well enough that we’re making assumptions now and we don’t want those assumptions to step on anyone else’s needs.”
That changes the room.
Griffin leans forward slightly, forearms on his thighs.
Cami’s hand rests on his back as she looks between Ronan and me. “What kind of assumptions?”
“About who gets prioritized when,” I say. “What relationships have obligations attached to them. What happens when two people need different things. And also the power structure when we’re playing together, because that’s becoming more… complicated.”
Dex glances at Cami.
She grins.
“Because Cameron is discovering a life of crime,” he says.
“I tied you up once.”
“And you’ve been drunk on power ever since.”
“I have not.”
“You threatened to buy your own rope.”
“Because apparently I need supplies.”
Ronan’s mouth twitches.
Griffin squeezes Cami’s knee to draw her attention. “You tied him up?”
“We’ll circle back.”
“We absolutely will.”
I laugh. “And that is actually kind of the point. Because there are two different hierarchies happening here, and sometimes we talk about them like they’re interchangeable.”
Griffin looks at Ronan. “You said something similar before.”
“Relationship hierarchy and power—dominant and submissive—hierarchy,” Ronan clarifies.