Page 121 of Secret Baby for My Brother's Best Friends

“Me too,” Adam says.

“Yes, but you guys wouldn't have fucked up as badly as I did. You would have found a way to get James on board. Especially you, Adam. He likes you. Hell, he might not have even minded if it was just you and Sam."

They don't respond to that because saying otherwise would be a lie. They know I'm telling the truth. James has a very unique hatred for me, and I'm not sure he's ever going to get over it. "What if he’s never able to accept this now? What if I’ve ruined their relationship forever?”

“I think you think too highly of yourself," Adam says, sounding amused. "James is mad, furious even, but he's not going to abandon his sister over you."

"Yes, but....didn't you hear what she said?"

"I did. You also saw how badly she was doing all night. They'll make up. They'll figure it out, or I'll make them figure it out because we don't have a choice."

"None of us are letting her go," Sam says and adds with a smile, "And I guess she's not letting us go either."

I offer them a weak smile and go back to my workout.

Hitting the punching bag isn't doing much to clear my head, but it does give me something to do, even as Adam's words echo in the back of my mind. They make it seem so simple. It'll work out, they say, as though things always work out.

As though people don't get abandoned every day.

“You're still jealous of her being with us?" Sam asks.

I think about it. The answer is, not really. It probably wasn't even jealousy per se that I felt, because when it’s all of us together, I’m fine. I also don't mind when she's off with one of the others alone, because I know at the end of the day she still comes to us. I have a share of her affection, and she wants me to.

But in times of trouble, like now, there’s a feeling I can’t shake, a sense that she might decide that all of this is just too much for her and that being with Adam or Sam might be enough. Maybe they'll have me around for a fun time now and then, but ultimately, I'm not the one she wants by her side full time.

When I told her I love her, there was a flash of panic in her eyes. I don't know if it's because she was concerned that my love confession was a plea for her to dump the other two. It wasn’t, at least not really. It was a plea for her not to dump me.

Was the panic because she didn't love me back?

Despite how devastated she looked at my getting hurt, maybe that was just her humanity on display. Maybe she doesn't care about me at all.

My rational mind tells me that I'm going off the deep end, but it's hard to beat back years of conditioning.

It's pathetic of me to be so insecure, and eventually it's going to eat into this relationship and ruin everything.

I finally stop and lean my head against the punching bag. "I’m going to have to suck it up and see a therapist, aren't I?”

“Probably,” Adam says.

"Definitely,” Sam concurs.

"I don’t have a good experience with those," I say. My experience with a therapist was my mother taking me to one when I went to see her. The one time I acted out and yelled at her, thanks to my feelings of abandonment, she was so sure I would turn into my father that she took me to someone who talked at me for an hour and told me how inappropriate my response was and how I should be more careful with my anger.

Of course, now I know that she was probably out of line, but it didn’t incline me towards the profession.

"The one I saw after I got out of the military was pretty good," Adam says. "I'll introduce you."

I nod. "Thank you."

"Sure. What are friends for except sorting out your crazy?"

I grin, but I know that over the years these men have stopped being just friends to me. From Adam, letting me move in with him because he knows how much I hate being alone. And Sam checks on me whenever he gets out of his own head. They've become like family.

Maybe we really will be family sometime very soon.

I can't stop thinking about it now. Of her accepting all of us, and loving all of us, and just being with us, like how things are now.

Could that ever happen? Could she ever accept that?