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“Don’t give a shit. Sounds like he needed to be taught a lesson. Any chance your husband will let him come back?”
Debbie stood a bit taller, and Tony recognized the same spine of steel Jess possessed. “No. I told my husband it was me or Mario. He likes the way I cook too much to test me on that.”
Tony smiled. “Good. I’ll take coffee. Black.”
“You guys need a menu?”
Rhys shook his head. “No. We’re just having coffee tonight.”
Debbie turned to fetch the coffeepot and a mug. They waited in silence as she returned and filled the cup for Tony.
Once she was out of earshot, he said, “So…”
“What are we doing with Jess, Tony?” Rhys leaned forward, not shying away from asking the million-dollar question.
Tony didn’t hesitate. “I want to build a future with her.”
“And in this future of yours…I’m there?”
Tony nodded. “Yeah. You are. I don’t know how to explain why this works. God knows I never imagined this kind of relationship for myself. Marriage and kids was something that just kept getting pushed to the back burner. I’ve been blaming work for that, claiming my career came first, but I can see now, I just hadn’t met the right woman.”
Rhys ran his finger around the rim of his coffee cup. “I’ve been blaming my career too, so convinced that trying to have it all wouldn’t be fair to whomever I married. With you there too…I don’t know how to say it. It feels as if this is the answer to a prayer I wasn’t praying. Jess and Jasper showed up on our doorstep and for the first time, I realized I wasn’t the happy bachelor I thought I was. She shone a light on something I couldn’t see. My loneliness.”
Tony felt every single one of Rhys’s words, though he never would have been able to speak them so succinctly. “It was the same for me.”
“What we’re thinking about doing,” Rhys said. “It’s not going to be easy. It’s definitely uncharted waters for all of us. You and I have zero experience with committed relationships, and Jess has zero experience with…well…pretty much everything. She’s younger than us.”
“Do you think that’s a problem?”
Rhys shook his head. “No. I don’t. Life has forced her to grow up a lot quicker. She feels older than twenty-five.”
“Yeah, she does,” Tony agreed.
“Even so…a threesome,” Rhys mused.
“It’s not like we haven’t seen the same type of relationship up close and personal. Layla is making this work with Finn and Miguel because they’re all committed to the relationship, to each other.”
Rhys glanced out the large plate-glass window, his gaze unfocused for a moment. “They are. But their relationship is different from ours.”
Tony sighed. “Because Finn and Miguel are in love with each other, as well as Layla.” Layla’s lovers were bisexual, the three of them a true trinity. That didn’t hold true for him and Rhys.
“I love you like a brother, Rhys,” Tony said. “But I don’t…” He waved his hands around, letting the gesture speak the words.
Rhys chuckled. “I don’t either. Do you think that adds a wrinkle? Makes this harder?”
Tony considered that. “Do you feel jealous when I touch Jess?”
“Not at all. Which is something I’ve actually been struggling to understand. I would never have considered sharing lovers in the past. With you and Jess, it’s hot, a turn-on. But Sunday night, after the party, when you came into the kitchen and saw me kissing Jess…wereyoujealous?”
Tony recalled that flash of anger when he caught them. “No. It was something dumber than that.”
His response amused and confused Rhys. “Dumber?”
“I meant what I said. I felt left out. But the knee-jerk reaction passed quickly. If we move forward with this, I know there are going to be times I’ll be with Jess alone. And times you’ll be with her alone. I don’t have a problem with that. Ireallydon’t,” he stressed when Rhys looked slightly skeptical.
“The sex,” Rhys started, not bothering to finish. It wasn’t necessary. Tony figured his descriptions matched Rhys’s perfectly.
Sex with Jess and Rhys was mind-blowing. Earth-shattering. Incredible.
