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An hour later, we were so deep into poker, I lost track of how many hands we’d played. Mac was kicking ass. My dad exchanged a look with Bash’s dad and he raised his bet.
I folded, knowing my pair of threes would not get me far.
Bash and Mac exchanged the same look with each other—were our parents secretly together? No. It wasn’t an intimate look. Just an insider look? But like they knew each other really well…I shook my head so hard Grandma Agnes eyeballed me. If they were together, I never ever wanted to know. It was a mystery I would be fine never solving.
Bash folded and Mac raised again.
He was up against our dads now. His future fathers-in-law. Bash and I exchanged worried looks, but Mac was confident as he watched them reveal their hands.
“Full house,” Collin said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back.
“Dammit, Col. Just a straight.” My dad tossed his sequential cards to the middle of the table. “I need a drink.”
Collin watched Mac, certain his win was guaranteed. Mac, as cocky as ever, flipped his cards over, revealing four tens.
My dad and Collin gawked at the four cards. Mac just kept his gorgeous, smug smile on his face and gathered all the chips in front of him.
“Let’s go down to the lake,” my dad said, grabbing his jacket.
I stood up, but he shook his head. “I need to spend some time getting to know my future son-in-law better.” He cleared his throat. “Both of them.”
Collin grabbed his hat and the four of them walked out of the door, smack talking each other about the poker game.
My heart swelled. It was everything I wanted. Maybe coming to the lake house wasn’t so bad after all.
I could have ridden that high for a long, long time. But I turned and saw my mother’s face and snapped right back to reality.
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.
