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I’d lose not only the only woman I had ever wanted more from but my business partners. My best friends.
“I’d rather put our portfolios in jeopardy. We could make more money if we lost it. But our hearts?” I shook my head. “I don’t know if we could recover from that.”
“You want to see her with someone else?” Casey asked in a tone I didn’t recognize. He was easy and fun loving. He was hardly ever serious.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I love you, man, you know I do. We’re all like brothers here?—"
“Case—"
“But would you be okay seeing her with someone else?” he asked again but didn’t let me answer. “Because that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t do this.” I blinked, and then it hit me.
“Are you threatening me?” I asked sternly, trying to mask the fear that washed through me.
“We both are.” Jett stood up and shrugged. “You’re our brother, Mal. You know that. But this whole keeping her at arms length is bullshit, and you know that, too.”
“You better be careful, Jett. You don’t want to say something you will regret and?—"
“The only thing I could see myself regretting is sitting on my ass and watching her fall for some other asshole who would never feel like I do for her. Who will never love her like we would.”
“Love? There’s that word again. We’re not those guys!”
“You’re just scared,” Jett clipped, and it felt like the wind was let out of me. “You’re just scared,” he repeated. I glanced at Casey, but he didn’t say a word. He also didn’t step in to defend me or calm down the situation.
He just stood there, looking at me like he agreed with Jett!
“I’m scared?” I laughed, but I knew how fake it sounded not only to me but the men in front of me.
“You’re scared. But what you don’t get, Mal, is that I think we all are. You’re right. We do this, we are putting a fuck ton of things on the line, shit that actually matters. We might think she’s interested in us, and it might turn out she’s not. But we won’t know unless we make a move.”
“And you think, what? The three of us charging in like bulls in a china shop and claiming our girl, telling her, her daddies are home, is going to work?”
“Mal,” Casey sighed. “Don’t be a dick. You know what he’s saying.”
“I can’t believe you agree with this!” I looked at Casey, and his blue gaze softened.
“You know we all love her. We’ve shared women in the past, but this is different. She matters to us. She brings shit out in us. We want more than a moment. We want a lifetime. And I agree with Jett.” He almost looked defeated. “This would work better, would work perfectly, if it was with the three of us. That’s why we wanted to talk to you. But?—"
“But?” I cut him off and sat straighter, bracing for him to drop a bomb on my lap.
“But if you can’t see yourself taking a chance on her, on us, for our future… it’s okay, man.” I frowned. “We get it. But you can’t ask us to give her up, too. Not when we know what we feel is more than lust. We don’t wanna fuck her to get her out of our system any more than you want to.”
“Casey.” My voice cracked. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. He hadn’t been down this road. Putting your heart on the line and having all your plans fade off to nothing. But I had. Shit with my college girlfriend hadn’t been meant to be, and hindsight was a blessing and a bitch. We had been together for all the wrong reasons, and I was glad things never went further than they did before we graduated, but that still didn’t take away from how much it’d hurt at the time. How much it had shaped me.
“I don’t know…” I swallowed but didn’t know how to say anything else. Light blue eyes softened with empathy.
“I know, Mal. We both do.” He nodded and shot a look at Jett, who was standing up. “We talked to you about this. You can sit and think about it and let us know.”
“Just like that? Think about us going after a woman we all love and then what? What if I don’t have that in me?”
“Then you’re going to have to live with that choice,” he laid out. I didn’t like the sound of that. “When we went into real estate and finance, we took a chance together. It paid off. It’s like that.”
“But what if?—"
“Life is full of choices and risks. We could have failed when we started this business, Mal,” Jett calmly started. “And we almost did.” His lips twitched. “A lot of times. But we didn’t give up. We were relentless and kept working hard. That’s what a relationship is. That’s how we would be with Rosie.”
“Rosa is a person, not a business venture. We’ve never had a relationship?—"
