Chapter 37
THE OPPOSITE
Ivy
Really, this is too much. But I’ll take their too much any day.
We’re at Stefan’s place. Usually we go to Hayes’s.
We’ve been cautious. But tonight feels different.
But there’s also nothing wrong with three Avengers staff hanging together after a game.
Kelsey checked on me as promised and declared me good to go.
Now, Hayes, Stefan and I are stretched out on Stefan’s king-size bed—it’s an Alaskan king, and it makes me never want to go back to anything smaller—and he’s massaging my neck while Hayes holds the ice pack on my wrist. Roxy’s curled up at my feet, keeping a watchful eye on both men, occasionally growling low in her throat while staring at them like say the word, Ivy, and I’ll handle them for you.
Seriously, we don’t deserve dogs.
The guys insisted I take it easy, and so we’re relaxing with an episode of The Adventures of Mister Orgasm on the big-screen TV at the foot of the bed. Sometimes an animated show about a superhero dedicated to pleasing women is just what the doctor ordered.
I felt better after their apology. Also, I saw Stefan’s text message when Briar brought me my phone in the athletic trainers’ room. He’d replied right before the game saying: I’ll be there, and I can’t wait.
But the thing is, I don’t know if that means he wants me with or without Hayes—and I don’t know how all in Hayes is anymore.
I glance at the guy on one side of me, wearing a gold band that matches mine.
Hayes’s dark hair is messy at the top, and his scruff has become scruffier.
On my other side, the guy with the lighter eyes and even fairer skin hasn’t stopped working out knots in my shoulders and neck.
And yet…
We need to talk more than I need to be coddled.
When the episode ends, Hayes turns to me. “Want another, baby?”
I shake my head, and he turns off the Chromecast. “Want to go to sleep?”
A stupid lump forms in my throat. Annoying thing. I swallow it. “No. I want to know what happened. You guys went radio silent.” I hand him the ice pack then gently bat Stefan’s hand away.
Hayes sets the ice pack on a towel on the nightstand and drags a hand over his beard. He does that when he gets frustrated with himself. “It’s my fault.”
“Not true,” Stefan corrects.
“It is,” Hayes counters.
“Nope.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re fighting over whose fault it was that both of you shut down?”
“Yeah, but it was mine. I was spinning out the other night. I dragged him into it.” Hayes’s eyes are full of contrition.
“How so?” I ask Stefan.
But Hayes clears his throat and answers for them. “I said if he wanted to go after you on his own, I was fine with it.”
I freeze.
Hayes looks like he just drank battery acid.
I feel that way. Roxy must, too, since she emits a warning bark. Don’t mess with my person.
“You…said that?” I croak.
Hayes frowns. “I just…I…fuck,” he mutters, then drops his head back against the pillow.
Roxy sits up, reading the room, and fires off another warning bark.
My chest aches. I can feel the hurt coming on, the final blow, but I square my shoulders, standing my ground. “If you’re ending this, just end it,” I say. “I told you I’d tell Jessie. I told you I’m fine with it. I meant it.”
Don’t mess with my heart.
Hayes straightens, reaching for my forearm, squeezing gently as if he’s trying to send me a message. “No, I don’t want to end it. Any of this,” he says, gesturing to his friend and me. “I just didn’t expect to…” He groans again, scrubbing a hand over his scruff once more.
“You’re impossible, Hey You,” Stefan says, rolling his eyes, then turning to me. “He’s taken by you just like I am. Okay?”
A joyous laugh bursts from me. “That’s it? That’s the problem?”
“Yes,” Hayes mutters.
“Yes,” Stefan says with a laugh.
They’re so similar and so different.
I hold up my palm. “Let me get this straight. You ghosted me because you like me?”
Hayes nods, resigned to what he did. “Yes. I screwed up.”
“We both did,” Stefan adds. “Neither one of us was any good at talking to you. He told me what was going on, and I should have pushed him to talk to you, but I didn’t. I froze. I didn’t know how to do this without him.”
This. But what is this? What are we? Am I pushy to ask? Fuck it. I’m asking. “What are we doing?”
Hayes scoots closer, rubs my arm some more, then shrugs. “I don’t honestly know, Ivy. But I know this—I don’t want to mess it up. However long it lasts.”
“I don’t either,” Stefan adds, reaching for my hand and linking his fingers with mine.
That seems like something I can get on board with. But Hayes clears his throat, going on. “I’ll do better. I promise. I was a callous jerk. I hate that I treated you that way. My ex-girlfriend said I was aloof and distant, and it killed me tonight when I realized I acted that way with you.”
I didn’t expect that—Hayes confessing all, sharing past wounds. I watch him, waiting for him to say more, hoping he knows it’s safe to tell me.
“We dated in Seattle, and she said all I cared about was my career. Maybe that was true, in hindsight. I felt like a total ass when I was traded to Los Angeles and she didn’t even want to try to stay together long-distance.
She said I was cold.” He blows out a breath.
“Maybe I was. But the thing is,” he says, meeting my gaze, vulnerability rimming his eyes, “with you, I don’t feel aloof.
I don’t feel distant.” Then, like it pains him to say, he adds in a barren whisper, “I feel the opposite.”
My heart doesn’t hurt anymore. It grows.
“And I don’t honestly know what to do about it,” he says. His eyes are big and helpless and it’s so endearing to see this controlled, intense man a little lost.
“Let’s just keep doing this,” I say.
For a moment, Hayes is quiet, contemplative. Then he says, “Yes.”
I turn to Stefan, asking the same. “And do you want that too?”
The man on the other side of me flashes a big, sexy grin. “Sweetheart, I’ve wanted you from the start. I just want you more now.”
I can’t fathom more than this, not when I still feel tender, not when I feel softer for them than I ever expected. But maybe for the rest of this arrangement, we can be all in.
We’ll have to start with this new wrinkle. “I felt weird tonight at the wives’ and girlfriends’ and husbands’ and boyfriends’ suite,” I admit.
“Because we’re married but not really married?” Hayes asks, sounding remorseful for putting me in this position.
“Yes, but also because…” I turn to Stefan. “I wanted them to know I’m not just a wife.” I draw air quotes, hoping it masks the sudden slam of emotion in me. “But I’m also a…”
Stefan drops his forehead to mine. “A secret girlfriend.”
Hearing those words from him both thrills me and saddens me.
“Yes. Because they invited me to dinner and board games. With Hayes,” I add.
I pull back to meet Stefan’s gaze. His expression is hard to read.
There’s a bit of a wall up in his eyes. “I want you to go. Is there any way you can?” I ask impulsively.
I haven’t worked out the details. I haven’t planned this at all. I just feel he belongs there with me. With us.
I tell him the date. He thinks on it for a beat, but then he sighs. “Wish I could, but I have a thing that night. A dinner with one of my sponsors.”
He sounds disappointed to miss the get-together. I’m sad he can’t come too. But at least he knows I wanted him there. It seems a good start to what we’re forging tonight.
He strokes my hair. “But the rest of the time, we’ll be here. I’ll be here,” he adds. “Every night we’re in town, right, Hey You?”
“Fuck you, dickhead,” Hayes growls. But when he turns to me, his face softens, and he brushes a kiss onto my cheek. “I won’t let you down again.”
I still don’t know what happens when Hayes takes off that ring—if they’ll continue to want me together or if Hayes will walk away. If Stefan will want me to himself. I turn back to my secret boyfriend. “So what did you tell him? When he asked if you’d pursue me by yourself?”
“He said nothing,” Hayes answers for his friend.
Stefan flips him the bird now, but to me, his expression fully open and genuine. “Pretty sure you’d be impossible to walk away from.”
My heart flips as I let those words wash over me. The strength of them. The passion of them. The promise.
But as good as they make me feel—and they make me melt—I don’t know what I want at the end of this arrangement.
What I want right this minute, though, is a little more…throuple time. I gesture to the TV screen. “Want to watch something else? You two can pick your favorite shows since I already picked mine.”
“Schitt’s Creek,” Hayes says, like he’s calling shotgun.
“What’s yours?” I ask Stefan.
He just chuckles and shakes his head, saying nothing.
I poke his side. “I really need to know now.”
“Yeah, what is it?” Hayes goads. “Salty Licorice or Bicycle Men or, I dunno, Viking Thieves?”
Stefan snort-laughs. “Those aren’t shows.”
“Bet they are,” Hayes says.
“I’ll have you know Danish TV is quite excellent.”
“I’m not going to let this go,” I warn him.
With a beleaguered sigh, Stefan relents. “Fine. But I’ll show you.”
I give Stefan the remote control. He picks a thriller in a fishing town at the top of Denmark, and then translates the first few spoken Danish lines before adding the subtitles to the screen.
“That was such a flex,” Hayes teases.
Stefan turns to me. “Yes, yes it was,” he says.
In French.
Then he whispers something else in my ear in that language, and it feels like he’s saying, I’m so glad you’re here.
Me too.
* * *
But in the morning, something nags at me. Something that’s been nagging at me since I saw Xander and Simone a few days ago. I try to shake the irritating feeling as I research a post for Birdie. But soon it’s an incessant drumbeat and I can’t let it go.