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Roe stood silently, his stare unflinching until he finally relented and stepped aside.
“Thank you,” I mumbled as I walked past him. It had been a long time since I’d felt like a child, but in that moment, I was six years old and getting scolded by my parents for some harebrained scheme I’d thought up.
There had never been any awkwardness between us until now. He was standoffish, and I was anxious and a whole lot scared. My palms were sweaty, and my knees were knocking together. Roe and his friendship meant the world to me, and I’d be a poorer man if I lost him. I’d rehearsed a whole speech, the opening a walk down memory lane of the times we’d been there for each other, the middle arguments why we should still be friends, and my conclusion an olive-branch-call-to-action that I’d hoped would make him realize my sincerity. But standing here in his living room with all those memories smacking me in the face, my practiced words escaped me.
It was a good thing too. Roe would never stand for something so trite. He would expect something more than a prepared speech. He would expect honesty. The truth. Absolute sincerity.
The same things he always gave me.
“You’re right to say that I broke your trust in me,” I started, twisting my police-issue cap. “You shouldn’t have found out like you did, and I should never have taken the leap to begin with.”
I paused, mulling over my words. The thoughts that had been jackrabbiting around in my brain were silenced all at once. I was left with the overwhelming knowledge that my words were wrong. I was sorry he’d been blindsided, but how could I regret one moment with Zali, Flynn, and Tristan? How could I say that I was wrong for choosing them, for following my heart after all this time?
“No, that’s not right,” I corrected myself. “I am sorry I betrayed your trust in me, and I’m sorry that you found out the way you did—that I didn’t speak to you first—but I don’t regret choosing Zali. I couldn’t ever regret that. I’m in love with her, with Flynn and Tristan too. I hate that I’ve potentially destroyed our friendship and your trust in me and that I’ve hurt you, but I can’t say that I would take my actions back.”
I huffed out a laugh that held no humour and scrubbed my hands over my face, groaning at the realizations hitting me like a ton of bricks. “That’s not right either. I’ve been so caught up in trying not to hurt anyone that I’ve managed to hurt everyone.” It had to stop. I had to stop. “That’s the part I’d take back.”
Roe sighed and gestured to the couch. “Take a load off, Ez.”
He sat in his usual armchair, leaving the three-seater for me, and rested his elbows on his knees. He looked like he’d aged a decade in a matter of days, weighed down with worry. “I’m sorry I jumped to the conclusion that you were a paedophile. I know you, and that means I should have known better than to accuse you of that. Zali gave me a dressing-down and pointed out how wrong I was to accuse you. She was right.”
“I can understand why you jumped to that conclusion though, especially knowing that I’d been with both Zali and Flynn as well as Tristan. Two older men in positions of authority with two younger people? It doesn’t look good.” I dropped my gaze, staring at the floor. I was glad I couldn’t see into his mind in that moment, but at the same time, I wanted to. At least that way, I’d see the right hook coming. But that sort of reaction was the absolute antithesis of everything Roe stood for. He was a lover, not a fighter.
As much as he hated me, he’d never try to hurt me like that.
It was why I needed him to understand.
“I promise you, Roe, I never, ever thought about either of them like that until well after they both turned eighteen. Zali and Flynn were both adults when I saw what was in front of me, and like Zali said, nothing happened between us until very recently. She, Flynn, and Tristan have been together for a little while longer.”
“Are you and Tristan together now?” he asked, his blue-eyed gaze piercing mine.
“I want to be with him,” I admitted. “I’ve been in love with Tris for a long time—longer than even Zali and Flynn. You know part of his story, but not the whole lot. Suffice it to say that by the time I was ready to reconsider what our relationship could look like, I’d fallen for Zali and Flynn too. He deserved better than a quarter of my heart.”
“But Zali doesn’t?”
“That’s not what I said, and you know it.” I exhaled, closing my eyes and forcing myself not to get defensive. He was my friend, and he was looking out for his daughter. I could empathize with how difficult this was for him.
“You know that if you reserve a quarter of your heart for yourself, it’ll never work?”
I gnawed on my lip, and he added, “Spill.”
“It’s for Ryder.”
Roe groaned and scrubbed his hand over his face. “Bloody hell, you sure do pick ’em, don’t you? Ry doesn’t exactly strike me as the type to share—”
“Or be into men?”
“Well, no, but I don’t like to assume either. Maybe he hasn’t felt comfortable coming out or he hasn’t met the right person. Or people, I suppose.” Roe flipped his hands over and held them palm-up, giving me a half shrug.
“Yeah, I can’t see Ry ever being into me either.” I shrugged, trying to play off the disappointment of knowing I had no hope with the man. But no matter what happened between us, it didn’t change the way I felt about Zali, Flynn, and Tris. I met Roe’s gaze once more and put it all on the line.
“I’ve been resisting all of them. I want us to be together, but I’ve been too scared to reach for them. I keep letting go. Then I can’t keep away either. The whole cycle keeps repeating itself over and over. I’m hurting all of them every time I do it.”
“Maybe that’s telling you something,” he suggested with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, that I’m being a coward. I need to step up.”
I’d been hovering on the edge, not committing. Not because I didn’t want to. I wanted it more than anything. I always had. But I was holding myself back because I knew it would destroy my friendship with Roe. The cat was out of the bag now, though, and I might lose him anyway. The only thing I’d succeeded doing in keeping the people I loved at arm’s length was to risk my relationship with all of them. I didn’t want to keep hurting Tris, Zali, and Flynn. Sooner or later, they’d get sick of me walking away and give me an ultimatum—be in it for real or fuck off. I’d pushed Tris away because I’d fallen for Zali and Flynn. But they’d found one another. They were together because they wanted to be, not because I couldn’t choose. I wasn’t giving them a quarter of my heart. I could give them the whole thing and they’d share it, keep it safe. They deserved that too.
