23. Hux
twenty-three
Hux
W e napped for a few hours, only waking up when the rain began pelting against the windows. Water streamed down the glass, and the chill in the air had us curling into each other. Roe ordered hot chocolates, and we hiked the blankets up.
“The rumours were partially true,” I said. Cara stopped moving, the mug halfway to her lips. “There was no cheating. But I did sleep with Minns’s wife—just not that night.”
“Oh,” Cara murmured.
I licked my lips and steeled myself to break the promise I’d made to Minns. “I was with Minns that night. I’d needed to get out of my head.” I shook my head, hating myself for going there that night. “It was Kamirah who’d arrived home, not him. But I didn’t leave because she was coming home. I’d been seeing them—both of them—for nearly two years.”
“They didn’t deny the rumours. They didn’t stick up for you,” Roe growled.
I huffed out a laugh that held no humour. “No. I knew the score—I was their piece on the side. I’d just deluded myself into thinking that we meant something more to one another than me being a convenient third when they wanted to get kinky.”
The memories of the weight sitting heavy on my chest were overwhelming at the time. I’d needed to sort through them, a low-key panic simmering inside me. I’d needed to get out of my head because I’d been overthinking everything—how did I tell them I wanted more? How did I move us to the next stage in our relationship? Turned out all I needed to do was get caught. Now, the residual feeling was disappointment—not that things didn’t work out with them, but that I’d trusted them.
The pressure on my chest had lessened in the few weeks we’d been apart. It wasn’t heartbreak that plagued me—I didn’t think it ever was—but betrayal. I was hurt. I’d been cast aside and left to the vultures. I understood that Minns didn’t want to come out. He had his reasons. I didn’t know what they were, but they definitely existed. I just wish I hadn’t been the scapegoat.
If I looked back without the rose-coloured glasses I always seemed to don whenever I thought about Chris and Kam, I could see that Gauthier was right. He’d accused them of doing a number on my confidence. In fairness to them, they weren’t the first ones who’d tossed me aside.
They were just the most recent.
Mom and Dad had done it years before Chris and Kam had. And Nan dying—even though she couldn’t help it—had only reinforced that people didn’t stick around for me.
Chris and Kam had never misled me. They’d never promised me anything other than orgasms. Minns and I were teammates and fuck buddies. He was a closeted bisexual man. I was safe. Until I wasn’t.
That was it.
I was a sex toy to them.
They weren’t emotionally entangled with me. I was the one who’d wanted more. I was the one who believed that if I stuck around long enough, they might change their minds. I’d begun leaving hints about moving our relationship forward. They’d resisted, letting me down gently. But I hadn’t heard them. I’d been living in make-believe land where we were happy and in love.
Except they weren’t.
And I was coming to realize that I hadn’t been in love with them either.
I’d settled for being treated like a possession, like a toy to be discarded when they didn’t want me anymore. The effect was insidious, but they’d never been underhanded about what I was to them.
I’d forgotten what it was to be important to someone.
But I was starting to remember. I looked across at the two people lying in bed with me, and my heart thumped hard in my chest. In the couple of weeks we’d been together, Roe and Cara had healed much of the hurt from Chris’s and Kamirah’s actions.
“Minns doesn’t want to come out,” Cara surmised.
“Not even in the slightest.”
Cara interlaced our fingers, holding my hand tight, and Monroe slipped his arm around Cara’s shoulder to squeeze mine. My throat closed and my gut flip-flopped. I was important to them. They were showing me with the smallest of gestures that I mattered. They’d dragged me onto their life raft right when my lungs had given out and darkness was clouding the edge of my vision.
“And you won’t out him,” Roe concluded.
“I promised him I’d never tell a soul. I’m breaking that promise to tell you because you deserve to know and I trust you.”
“Thank you,” Cara whispered, leaning forward and kissing me on my cheek.
“You said before that Gauthier knows,” Roe began.
“You’re the only people I’ve told, but he made it pretty clear that he suspects something was going on between Minns and I. He was speaking as if he knew what the score was between us, and he’s never once doubted me.”
Cara confirmed what I already knew. “He’s a good judge of character.”
Roe got out of bed and paced the room. He was stark naked, his soft cock hanging long between his legs. His muscles weren’t quite as cut as mine, but he was fast and strong, two combinations that didn’t always go hand in hand. I didn’t think he’d ever hurt a fly, but having seen what he could do to a punching bag, I wouldn’t want to come across him in a dark alley.
I admired the way he moved even as tension coiled in his back, his spine going rigid. “Can we go back to them not standing up for you?” Roe asked through gritted teeth. “You’ve been alone this whole time with only Gauthier and Hewitt on your side. I heard your teammates after that practice in Brisbane when Mironov tried to attack you. They were assholes about it—”
“They didn’t know the truth. You thought exactly the same thing when you saw the photos and read the spiel.”
“No, I didn’t,” Roe responded, his tone softer and more apologetic.
He moved around to my side of the bed and sat down. Then he grasped my hand, and I stared at where we were joined and begged my heart to stop going nuts in my chest. I wanted to kiss him, but I didn’t dare. Roe had given me his dick, but I wouldn’t mistake that for him actually wanting a relationship. Not again.
What kind could we have anyway? We’d been doomed from the beginning.
My time here was winding up. I was down to a couple of days.
Yet, I was already a lost cause. I’d gone and fallen for both of them.
But I wouldn’t make the mistake of assuming my feelings were reciprocated.
Monroe explained, “I lashed out as much as you did. I said it to hurt you, but I never believed it. And they should know you better.”
I shrugged, playing down how isolated I’d been after my teammates wrote me off. “Most of them just iced me out. It’s probably better than what I would have done if I were in their situation.”
“Mironov is a piece of work,” Cara said, her nose screwed up and her lips pursed like she’d tasted something foul. “And I don’t have words for how awful Minns and his wife are.”
We fell silent then, and Roe rubbed my knuckles with his thumb. “I’m sorry they hurt you. It’s not easy losing someone important to you, and it’s worse when they betray you.”
I asked, “Is that what happened to you?” before I could stop myself. Then I cringed and added, “Forget about answering that. It was insensitive of me.”
“No, it’s okay.” He gave me a small smile and began speaking. “My wife and son died, as you know. They went out one day and never came back. It was as if they disappeared into thin air. There was no trace of the yacht or them. A few days later, my son’s foot was found washed up on a beach. But that was it.” Roe clenched his jaw tight, and he held my hand like it was a lifeline.
I nudged Cara so that we could make room for Roe. When she moved, I turned down the cover and patted the bed between my legs. Roe shifted between them, and I hissed at the feeling of his cold skin against me. I tugged the blanket high over him and rubbed my hands down his arms to warm him up.
He threaded our fingers together and snuggled in closer. I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight. He leaned back and rested his head on my shoulder, breathing slowly. Cara wiped his cheeks, brushing the tears off them. She pressed her lips to his face, first his cheeks, then his forehead, and ran her fingers along his jaw. He forced a smile and spoke again, his voice barely more than a broken whisper.
“We never recovered their bodies. I never got to say goodbye to them, not properly, anyway.” He sucked in a wobbly breath and continued. “Rosa’s company went under after she died, and we nearly lost everything. I was buckling under the weight of grief and pressure. Then I found out that Rosa had debts I didn’t know about. I had to sell our house to pay them off. If it weren’t for my friend Kristie—Ry’s mum,” Roe explained to me, “fronting us the money for a rental bond, we would have been on the street.”
He was quiet for a time, and then he shook his head. “I was a mess for so long. I was barely holding it together, barely existing for Zali when she needed me most. Thank God for Kristie and Ry being there for us. Without them, Flynn, and one of the teachers at Zali’s school, I don’t know that either one of us would have survived.”
“Zali never doubted for a moment how much you love her,” Cara murmured with complete certainty. I was so grateful that she knew his daughter—she could give him the truth he needed to hear. “After having lost Rosa and Asher, she needed you to love her, and you did that. You’re a great dad to her, to Flynn and Ry as well. Both of them look at you like you’re their hero.”
Roe sighed and leaned on me, soaking up my strength. Then he threaded his fingers with Cara’s, holding onto her like he’d done with me only moments earlier. Jesus, he’d been destroyed. He’d been to hell and back and had survived through sheer grit and determination. I shook my head and murmured against his temple, “I can’t imagine.”
“He’s been gone now for longer than he was alive,” Monroe whispered, his voice cracking. “Some days I still can’t believe I’ll never see him again. I’ll hear his laugh in my head and I’ll look over my shoulder, expecting him and Ry to come barrelling into the house like they used to when they were kids. Then it’ll hit me again. I forget sometimes. But I always remember.” He sucked in a shuddery breath and dashed away his tears again.
My heart shattered into a million pieces. Tears tracked down my cheeks as I listened to the broken man in my arms confess his greatest heartbreak. In that moment I knew—I’d do anything to give him love again, to make his lips turn up in that carefree laugh he had.
I held him tight and pressed kisses to his temple and hair, rocking him as he fought back his tears. Cara climbed between his legs and curled into Roe, the two of us surrounding him with love.
“He lit up every room he walked into. No one was ever a stranger when Ash was around. He was magnetic.”
With every excruciating detail of Ash that Roe shared, the shattered pieces of my heart reformed, and it remoulded itself to be dedicated solely to Roe and Cara. I was so utterly gone for them that I was beyond fighting it. Whatever they wanted, I would give it to them. If they wanted a long-distance relationship, they’d get it. If they wanted me in Australia during my off season, I’d do it.
Roe didn’t speak much about his wife. I wanted him to be able to—he shouldn’t have to hide a part of himself from us. He’d loved her, and he deserved to be able to remember her in the way she deserved. “I’d love to hear about Rosa one day,” I murmured, but Roe shook his head.
“I don’t talk about her anymore. You should listen to the podcast for that,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry that I said such awful things about the podcast. My behaviour was inexcusable.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” he murmured.
“I do,” I disagreed. “You were hardly hiding a publicly released podcast from me. But I didn’t exactly google you when we met.” I sighed, ashamed to admit to how I’d reacted. But it was necessary, or we’d never properly be able to move past it.
“I was shocked when I saw the posts about the podcast and your family. I never imagined that something like that could have happened to you of all people.” I pressed a kiss to his temple and closed my eyes, holding him tighter. I hated myself for adding to his pain.
I nuzzled his face and rested my temple against his. “I lashed out because of the way I was feeling, not because of anything you did, Roe. I was running scared. I was feeling too much for both of you.”
I blinked open my eyes and met Cara’s sympathy-filled gaze. Her lips were turned down and her eyes were glassy and red from the tears she’d shed. I sucked in a breath and continued, needing to say the rest of it. I didn’t want there to be any more secrets between us.
“I needed to burn down the bridges between us. I wanted to hate you so I could walk away from you.” My eyes burned and I squeezed them closed. I exhaled and held Roe tighter, trying to apologize with more than just my words. “But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how wrong I was. I hate that I made your pain worse.”
Cara cupped Roe’s face in her delicate hands. “I wish I could take it all away,” she murmured. “Undo all the pain and erase the bad memories.”
Monroe rested his forehead against Cara’s and clutched her like a life preserver. But he still held my hand, and when I pulled back to try to give them some privacy, he gripped me tighter.
“I won’t betray you like Minns and his wife did,” Roe rasped. “I came out to Ezra this afternoon. I haven’t told Zali yet, but I couldn’t exactly hide my feelings the other night when I left you two in the bar.”
“What were you feeling?” Cara asked quietly. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Monroe. I need to know if I did that.”
“You didn’t,” Roe rushed to clarify before he huffed out a self-conscious laugh. “I was jealous that you two could show how you felt for each other when I was still trying to work things out.” He shrugged, trying to play off how much it had upset him. But he was failing miserably. He hadn’t called me Hux since we’d become intimate, yet he’d reverted to it the moment I’d told my teammates I was interested in Cara.
“I don’t mind PDA,” I confessed.
“Even from me?” he asked. He pulled away and turned in my arms.
I smiled, but my overwhelming emotion was sadness. “I went back into the closet for college and the NHL.” I ran my hand down Monroe’s back, enjoying how the tight muscles flexed under my fingers, and added, “I wanted to come out at the end of my rookie year, but then it turned into the end of this year when Minns didn’t want me to come out either. I figured that by the end of next season, I might be valuable enough to the team that they wouldn’t dump me because I liked dick too.”
“You deserve better than that, Alec,” Monroe murmured. He pressed his lips to my shoulder and rested his face in the crook of my neck. “You deserve people who’ll love you right.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, and my heart slammed against my ribs. “Would you and Cara love me right?” I asked before I could chicken out. I was torn, equally desperate to know the answer and terrified of hearing it at the same time.
“Yes,” Monroe answered simply and squeezed my hand, pulling me tighter against him. I flicked my gaze up to Cara and held my breath.
She was quiet, her glassy eyes darting between us. She blinked and fanned her face, then pressed her lips in a tight smile. But it wasn’t forced. It was as if she was holding it back. Cara looked like she was about to cry but was radiantly happy too.
“I’m all in. With both of you. I’ve never been happier than when I’m with you,” she whispered.
I laughed, my excitement exploding like fireworks inside me. “I’m all in too,” I promised, leaving “for as long as we can be together” unsaid. The weight of my impending departure hung heavy around my neck, but I chose to ignore it. Nothing good would come of me reminding the two people I’d fallen hard and fast for that we were doomed.
I slid my hand down Roe’s belly and followed his snail trail to his cock. It was soft, but my man groaned as soon as I closed my fist around him. He rocked his hips into my touch, and his cock hardened with every pass of my hand over his length.
“This time I want to be in Cara while you’re fucking me,” I drawled. “Then I want to watch you fill Cara up. I want to see our cum leaking out of our pretty girl’s sweet little snatch.”
Cara moaned, and I peered over Roe’s shoulder at the way he was finger fucking her. “I want to see that too,” he breathed. “Think we can come inside you from behind, Cara? You want to hold the headboard while we make you scream?”
“Yes,” she cried. She shoved the blankets off the bed and rose to her knees, facing us. With her beautiful big breasts in my face, I tugged her close and latched onto her nipple. I breathed in the smell of sex on her skin. I memorized the feel of her pert nipple in my mouth as I brushed my face against Roe’s while he sucked on her too.
“Need you,” she whimpered, and Roe and I moved as one. We had a common goal—to make sure our girl was so sated that she wouldn’t be able to walk straight tomorrow.