Chapter 33
Lauren
I was staring at the ceiling of Kevin’s bedroom, my head resting on his chest. His heartbeat was steady under my ear, but I could feel the tension in his body.
“You’re thinking too loud,” I said softly.
Kevin gave a quiet laugh. “Sorry.”
“What’s on your mind?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Then, “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“Have you…” He paused. “Have you noticed anything different lately? With Jackson?”
I’d been trying not to think about it. The way Jackson’s gaze lingered sometimes. The way my heart raced when he smiled at me in that particular way.
“Different how?” I asked carefully.
“I don’t know. He’s been… distant, maybe. Like he’s pulling away.”
I lifted my head to look at Kevin. “You think he’s upset about something?”
“I think…” Kevin stopped, his jaw tight. “I think he might have feelings. For you.”
My heart hammered. “Kevin.”
“And I think you might have feelings for him too.”
The words hung between us.
I could deny it. I should deny it. But lying to Kevin felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.
“Would that bother you?” I asked quietly. “If I did?”
Kevin was quiet for a long moment.
“That’s what gets me. It doesn’t. Or… not in the way it should.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Kevin sat up and ran a hand through his hair. “Christ, this is going to sound insane.”
“Try me.”
“When I see you two together, when you laugh at his jokes or touch his arm or light up when he walks in, I don’t get jealous. I just…” He met my eyes. “I want him to be part of this. Part of us.”
My breath left me all at once.
“I’ve been sitting on this,” Kevin said.
I went still. “Yeah.”
“I think about him being here.” He looked at me. “Not instead of you. With you. Both of you. I’ve been thinking it, but I never said it.”
“Me too,” I said. Barely. “I didn’t know how to. I didn’t want to make things worse.”
“Would it have?”
I let out a breath. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”
A pause.
“Kevin. I love him.”
“I know.” A beat passed as we sat there in silence, thinking, agreeing. “Me too.”
“So we say it to him,” I said finally.
“Yeah.”
“Some people make it work,” Kevin said quietly. “I’ve been reading. Looking at how people actually do it. How they make it real instead of just…” He stopped. “I needed to understand what I was feeling.”
I looked at him sharply. “You’ve been researching this?”
“Yeah.” His mouth curved a little. “And what do you want?”
I closed my eyes. “I want you. And I want him. And I want that to not be impossible.”
“Same,” Kevin said. “But it is impossible. Because even if we were brave enough to tell him, there’s no way he feels the same way about us.”
I thought about the way Jackson looked at us sometimes. The longing I’d caught in his eyes before he turned away. The way he’d been pulling back lately, putting space between us.
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said slowly.
“What do you mean?”
“I think…” I chose my words carefully. “I think maybe Jackson wants something he believes he can’t have. And I think he’s trying to protect himself by staying away.”
Kevin went quiet, processing that.
“You think he has feelings for one of us?”
“I think he might have feelings for both of us.”
The possibility hung in the air, terrifying and electric.
“We need to be sure,” Kevin said. “Before we say anything to Jackson, we need to be absolutely sure this is what we both want.”
“What if it is?” I asked. “What if we’re both sure, and we tell him, and he says no?”
“Then we respect that. And we stay friends. And we figure out how to move forward.”
“And what if he says yes?”
Kevin met my eyes. “Then we figure out how to make it work.”
I leaned in and kissed him, soft and sure.
“I love you,” I said.
Kevin’s throat moved. He still wasn’t used to hearing it without bracing for the other shoe to drop.
“I love you too,” he said.
I gave him a shaky smile. “Even with all this?”
“Especially with all this.” He brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “I’m done loving you only when it’s easy.”
We held each other in the darkness, the truth of what we wanted finally spoken but nowhere near resolved.
Kevin
Bill Taylor showed up at my house on a Tuesday evening without calling. His truck was in my driveway, and his fist hit my front door hard enough to make the frame rattle.
Lauren was upstairs changing after her shower. I had pasta boiling on the stove and a headache from spending ten hours telling people to take their blood pressure medication while knowing half of them wouldn’t.
When I opened the door, Bill looked past me before he looked at me.
“She here?”
I didn’t move. “Good evening to you too.”
His mouth flattened. “Kevin.”
“Bill.”
He was still in his work boots, jeans dusty, flannel sleeves rolled to his elbows. He looked like Jackson in twenty-five years if Jackson let anger do all the talking.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Then talk.”
His gaze flicked over my shoulder again. “Privately.”
“No.”
That stopped him.
I crossed my arms. “If this is about Lauren, you can say it with her in the house.”
Bill’s jaw worked. “Fine. This is about my son.”
“Funny. You asked if Lauren was here.”
“It’s all the same problem now, isn’t it?” He stepped closer to the threshold, but I didn’t move back, so he stayed outside. “Jackson’s bar is barely steady. He finally gets the insurance mess under control, finally gets people coming in regularly, and now this.”
“This?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. Half the town knew what happened before I had my morning coffee.” His voice dropped. “Your girlfriend and my son. At the bar.”
My stomach tightened, but I kept my face still.
“That’s not your business.”
“The hell it isn’t. I own that building.”
“Jackson runs the bar.”
“Under my name, with my money tied up in it, and with an insurance policy I had to co-sign because he couldn’t get it done alone.” Bill pointed at the porch boards. “You remember the condition. Revenue drops, problems follow her, she goes first.”
I stared at him.
He knew exactly where to press.
“Lauren didn’t cause this.”
Bill gave me a look. “Kevin. You’re the smart one. Don’t insult both of us.”
Something moved upstairs. A quiet shift of floorboards near the hallway.
Lauren could hear him.
Bill heard it too. His eyes went toward the stairs through the open doorway.
“She’s bad for him,” he said. “And she’s bad for you. I don’t know what kind of arrangement the three of you think you’re sneaking around with, but Fairview isn’t stupid.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “Careful.”
“No, you be careful.” He pointed at me now. “You have a reputation. A clinic. Patients who trust you. You think they won’t talk? You think they won’t wonder what kind of man their doctor is?”
“The kind who doesn’t toss people out because the town needs something new to gossip about.”
His mouth twisted. “This isn’t noble. It’s embarrassing.”
I stepped onto the porch and pulled the door mostly closed behind me.
Bill looked pleased for half a second, like he’d finally gotten me outside where we could talk without witnesses.
Then I said, “Get off my property.”
His expression changed. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Kevin, I’m trying to save you from making a fool of yourself.”
“No. You’re trying to control Jackson through me because he stopped letting you control him.”
Bill’s eyes hardened.
I kept going. “Lauren stays. What happens between me, her, and Jackson is ours to figure out. Not yours. Not Mrs. Henderson’s. Not the whole damn town’s.”
“You’ll regret this.”
“Maybe.” My voice stayed calm, even though my pulse was beating hard. “But it’ll be mine to regret.”
Bill stared at me for a long moment. Then he gave a short, bitter laugh.
“Your father would be proud.”
He put my father in it. That was what got through.
I stepped closer. “Say one more thing about my father, and I’ll forget how much respect I used to have for you.”
For the first time, Bill looked away.
He backed down the porch steps, shaking his head. “Don’t come crying to me when this blows up.”
“I won’t.”
He got in his truck and slammed the door.
I stood there until his taillights disappeared down the road. My hands were shaking by then, so I shoved them into my pockets and breathed through it.
When I went back inside, Lauren was standing at the bottom of the stairs in one of my shirts, her hair wet, her face pale.
“You heard.”
“Kind of hard not to.”
I shut the door behind me.
She looked toward the driveway, then back at me. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”
Her eyes went shiny. “Kevin.”
I crossed the room to her, slow enough that she could step away.
She didn’t.
I touched her cheek. “I’m not letting him talk about you like you’re a bad business decision.”
Her mouth trembled once before she got it under control. “This is going to make things worse with Jackson.”
“Maybe.”
“And Bill.”
“Definitely.”
She gave a wet little laugh.
I kissed her forehead. “Dinner’s probably ruined.”
“Your pasta died for a good cause.”
She leaned into my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her.
The pasta kept boiling in the kitchen until the water hissed over the side of the pot.
Lauren pulled back first and wiped under one eye with her thumb. “Your dinner’s committing suicide.”
I let out a tired breath that almost turned into a laugh. “Yeah. Sounds about right.”
She followed me into the kitchen, still quiet and pale, but she stayed close.