17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
Emily
“But who will you marry?”
“Both of them,” I repeated for the sixth time, studying my mother intently. How was she not getting this?
“Legally, Emily. You can’t marry two men. It’s illegal.”
I clenched my fists and hung them by my side, hiding them beneath the table. “We know that. Two of us will be legally married, but we’re having a commitment ceremony for all three of us to pledge—”
Alicia snorted. “So my son will be shit out of luck if the two of you decide to leave him behind.”
My fingernails dug into my palm, and I bit the inside of my cheek. Anything to keep myself from lashing out.
“We haven’t decided which two of us will get married—”
Alicia rolled her eyes. If Mac thought Bash was surly and grumpy, he was no match for his mother. But I’d been dealing with her most of my life. I was a little nervous, but she didn’t truly scare me.
If being with Bash meant jumping this hurdle, I could do it.
“We don’t need a piece of paper—”
“That piece of paper will make it a lot harder for someone to leave you.”
My stomach flopped, and I didn’t know what to say. If I legally married one of them and they didn’t want to be with me, it wouldn’t matter. It would break my heart just as much as if one of them wanted to leave and there wasn’t any paperwork involved.
How could I convey that to my mother, though? Or to Alicia?
We needed to have a final discussion about which of us would be legally marrying each other. To us, it didn’t matter. But to the rest of the world, it was apparently a big deal.
“Keep it to yourselves all you want. Marriages are public record, so we’ll know—”
“Alicia, I can see that you’re worried about Bash.” Ava’s soft voice cut through my future mother-in-law’s smug comment. I could’ve kissed her. “We need to focus on the important parts, though. He and Em have found love and in today’s dating landscape, that’s an incredible thing.” She gave me a knowing look. “Can we be happy for them and let their relationship play out how they want it to?”
Alicia opened her mouth, and I braced myself, knowing it wouldn’t be good. Before she could actually answer, Ava adopted even more of her nanny voice and clasped her hands. “Oh, the guys are back. Who’s ready for s’mores?”
“S’mores?” Alicia muttered, slightly dazed, as if she didn’t know what Ava had just done to her, but she knew she couldn’t come back from it.
“S’mores?” my dad repeated. “I’ll get the fire going.”
He clasped Bash and Mac on the shoulder, sandwiching himself between them. “The roasting sticks are in the shed.”
“This piece looks good.”
“Put it on top.”
Bash added a log to Mac’s growing pile of wood—we had already exhausted all the jokes we could think of two minutes into collecting branches for the fire.
Bash found another decent-sized piece and added it to the stack.
I walked a few steps behind them, wondering how to bring up the topic of legal marriage. In an ideal world, the three of us could lawfully wed each other and carry on with our lives. But this wasn’t an ideal world and our love was largely frowned upon if the articles and our parents’ reactions were any indication.
“What’s on your mind, Pink?”
Mac’s gray-green eyes were grayer in today’s cloudy weather, especially now that the sun was going down. It was supposed to be hot weather at home, but we were so far north, the weather was drastically cooler. The break from the heat was nice, but the lake house wasn’t providing me with any sense of relief. Not like it used to.
Bash had stopped walking and the two of them were watching me. Waiting for me to speak. But I didn’t want to talk. It was a conversation we’d have to have eventually, but I wasn’t sure if feelings would be involved and how those feelings would play out.
Glancing around to make sure no one had followed us as we gathered firewood, I sat on a stump and dropped my head in my hands.
“Woah, what’s wrong, Em?” Bash squatted next to me, his hand resting on my knee.
“Our moms—”
The concern on his face switched to anger without warning. “What did they do?”
“They brought up a really good question.”
“Which was?” Mac asked, shifting the wood to the side to see us better.
“Which of the two of us are going to legally get married? If any?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Mac admitted.
“Me either.”
“I have,” Bash said softly.
Both of us whipped our heads toward him, waiting for him to elaborate. He smiled at me and then at Mac. And I knew.
“You think I should marry Mac?”
He nodded.
“How’s that fair to you?”
“It’s not about fair.” He took the bundle of sticks and logs from Mac and lowered them to the ground. Pulling me to my feet, he grabbed our hands, and we stood in a small circle.
“I trust both of you with my life. I know that we’re end game. And that’s exactly what I want in life. But—”
“But? But what?”
He smiled gently at me, replacing my nerves with a full-body heat. “But Mac is a professional hockey player and we want to have kids. If you’re married to him, you’ll have full access to the team’s doctors and great insurance and—”
“But you have access to all of that, too.”
“And so do you—while you’re working for the team. Mac’s going to be in hockey until he retires. You and I might not be.”
“So?”
“It comes down to practicality.”
“What if I don’t want practical?”
Bash shrugged and tucked my hair behind my ear. “We’re living in a fairy tale—the three of us have something most people don’t even know is possible. If this one area must be a compromise that’s more practical than romantic, I’m okay with that.”
“And you won’t feel left out?” Mac asked, his brows furrowed.
Bash shook his head and laughed. “I’ve been with the two of you long enough to know you couldn’t survive without me.”
“What if we could?” Mac smirked and backed up as Bash stalked closer to him.
“Yeah. I’m not letting that happen.” He pinned Mac against the nearest tree and kissed him so deeply I gasped.
He nipped Mac’s lower lip and backed up like he was totally unaffected. Meanwhile, Mac had to readjust himself, clearly as turned on by that kiss as I was.
“They’re going to wonder where we’re at. Come on.” Bash grabbed half the stack of wood and took off before we could even catch our breath.
“That asshole,” Mac muttered, grabbing the rest of it.
“He’s right, though. We’d be lost without him sometimes.”
“All the time.” Mac smirked. “And I kind of like that.”
“Oh, me too. But we can’t let him know that. He’s already smug enough.”
“Never.” Mac straightened up his stack of wood and looked so cute my mouth went dry.
My whole life, I wondered who I would marry, and I didn’t have to wonder any longer. I stared at Mac, drinking in the sight of him. His blonde hair that was unruly from his nap, his gray-green eyes that were unlike anything else on this planet. I couldn’t have dreamed him up, but he was perfect. And he was mine.
And we had Bash. Bash was everything the two of us weren’t and my body flushed with fresh heat as I thought of our fiancé. Our relationship was unconventional, and it felt like the entire world was currently against us, but we had each other. Maybe we could change that, though. Our parents just needed some time and we could show them that this was serious. None of us were going anywhere, so they’d have to get used to it.
“Are you going to kiss me?”
I blinked and hesitated. “What?”
“You were staring…”
My cheeks burned, and I bit my lower lip.
“I really want to kiss you, but I can’t get to you unless I set this down, Pink.”
“Noted.” I leaned up and pressed my lips to his.
He tasted like Bash, and my heart raced. “I can’t wait to be your wife,” I whispered. “And I can’t wait for Bash to be our husband.”
“Good,” he murmured against my lips. “Me either.”
The fire was roaring, and I slipped into the seat next to Bash. He loaded up a roasting stick with a marshmallow and passed it to me. I scooted closer to the flames and looked around at our somber group.
The atmosphere was vastly different from the last time we’d made s’mores. With James and Susan’s family, it had been so lighthearted and fun. I could tell my parents were doing their best to make everyone feel welcome, but it was falling flat. So flat.
It didn’t help that this place was filled with memories of Rob. Normally, I welcomed any place that reminded me of him, but this was too much today. If he was there, he would be in our corner, cheering us on and standing up to our parents. But he wasn’t there, and every spot that reminded me of him also reminded me of that fact.
I looked at Bash, who was frowning, no doubt caught in his own storm of memories.
“Emily!” Ava’s panicked voice cut through my thoughts and I suddenly realized my hand was hot. Like really hot.
“Drop the stick,” Mac ordered.
I was sucked out of my memories so fast my head spun. My hand was burning. The blistering heat finally caught up to my brain. I dropped the roasting stick, hissing from the searing pain.
Bash jumped out of his chair and cradled my hand. “We need to get the first aid kit—”
“Where is it?” Mac asked.
“Under the sink,” Alicia said.
“On it.” Mac jogged away, but I wanted him to come back.
I was hurting, and I wanted both of them.
“Mac?”
“He’s getting the first aid kit. Okay, Em?” Bash’s soothing voice helped. If he was calm, I could be calm.
It hurt so badly, though.
Mac was back so fast, his cheeks were red, and he was slightly out of breath.
Bash looked up at him through his thick eyelashes and mouthed, “Thank you.”
“Here’s some ice, Pink.” He wrapped the coldest thing I’d ever felt around my palm and I winced. “I know. It doesn’t feel good, but it’s going to be okay. We’ve got you.”
I nodded and tried to slow my breathing. I trusted them with my whole life. A minor burn was nothing, even if it didn’t feel minor.
“Do you need help?” my mother asked.
“No. They’ve got me,” I muttered.
She put her hands up and sat back down.
After the ice took some of the heat out, Bash applied burn cream and kissed the—not burned—back of my hand. “Want to stay out here or go to our room?”
Aware of everyone’s eyes on me, I leaned close to him and lowered my voice. “The room, please.”