Page 99 of Joey

“You hear that?” Huck says, still talking low. “They need us.”

“Then I guess we should not disappoint them.”

“No,” he agrees. “We shouldn’t. And we won’t.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - BROOKE

Wald has his fingers between my legs. I’m lying back on the large sectional couch with my head propped up on a pillow. One foot is flat on the floor and my other leg is bent at the knee with my bare foot resting on his shoulder.

After Wald and I sorta… came to an understanding that we are a thing now—all of us are a thing now—we were quiet. We could hear Huck and Joey upstairs. There was some talking. Some laughing. Then some long stretches of silence.

I couldn’t tell what they were saying and I doubt Wald could either. But there’s only one real thing on our minds right now.

The collective. The us.

“Hey there,” Huck says as he comes around the couch. He’s looking and talking to me.

“Hey,” I say, then close my eyes. Because Wald’s fingers are pushing deep inside my pussy.

“Room for us?” Huck asks.

“There’s always room for us,” Wald says.

I don’t know what’s happening. I have no idea where this is going. Or what tomorrow will look like. But life is like that even when you’re not starting up a precarious polyamorous relationship with three men.

There was no way to know I would be kidnapped walking home in Acapulco one night. There was no way to know that a few weeks later I’d be in Europe sporting a new name and a new life doing dangerous things.

There was no way to know that the relationship I had with Miklos would turn into something real. That he would die and leave me alone. Leave me lonely. Leave me drifting.

I certainly didn’t see that coming.

I loved him. Miklos. He was a good father. Not that I had one to compare him to. Just my mother’s boyfriend growing up.

I hated him. That’s about all I remember of that asshole. I hated him.

He was probably happy when they figured out I was gone. I bet they went home to Florida and never talked about me again.

You’d think a kidnapping would ruin your life. For a little while, at the very least. Until you were rescued or you escaped.

But that’s not how it went with Miklos and me. He was just sad and I was just… nothing. I was nothing before Miklos gave me a new life.

I owe him everything.

There was no way to see these guys coming either.

I wasn’t even looking for this. All I wanted was a simple job. A reason to wake up every day after Miklos’s death. A purpose.

I’d have settled for just about any purpose.

Now I just feel lucky. But lucky is a precarious feeling. It’s unsettling and always temporary. You just never want to admit that when luck is shining down on you. You want to think you did this. You built this. It will be like this forever. But nothing is forever.

One of them takes my hand so I open my eyes and find Joey looking down at me. “Sit up,” he says.

I do. Because I like directions. Directions are easy. You don’t have to think about them. You just follow them. And ever since the funeral there’s been no one giving me directions anymore.

Oh, there was a letter for me. Telling me that decisions had been made and what to do next. To take my name back. The passport and the money. But once that was done, once I landed here, then what?

Joey slips in next to me and allows me to lie back so my head is propped up on his thighs. His hand immediately goes to my breast and he begins to massage it.