“He lit up every room he walked into. No one was ever a stranger when Ash was around. He was magnetic.”
With every excruciating detail of Ash that Roe shared, the shattered pieces of my heart reformed, and it remoulded itself to be dedicated solely to Roe and Cara. I was so utterly gone for them that I was beyond fighting it. Whatever they wanted, I would give it to them. If they wanted a long-distance relationship, they’d get it. If they wanted me in Australia during my off season, I’d do it.
Roe didn’t speak much about his wife. I wanted him to be able to—he shouldn’t have to hide a part of himself from us. He’d loved her, and he deserved to be able to remember her in the way she deserved. “I’d love to hear about Rosa one day,” I murmured, but Roe shook his head.
“I don’t talk about her anymore. You should listen to the podcast for that,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry that I said such awful things about the podcast. My behaviour was inexcusable.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” he murmured.
“I do,” I disagreed. “You were hardly hiding a publicly released podcast from me. But I didn’t exactly google you when we met.” I sighed, ashamed to admit to how I’d reacted. But it was necessary, or we’d never properly be able to move past it.
“I was shocked when I saw the posts about the podcast and your family. I never imagined that something like that could have happened to you of all people.” I pressed a kiss to his temple and closed my eyes, holding him tighter. I hated myself for adding to his pain.
I nuzzled his face and rested my temple against his. “I lashed out because of the way I was feeling, not because of anything you did, Roe. I was running scared. I was feeling too much for both of you.”
I blinked open my eyes and met Cara’s sympathy-filled gaze. Her lips were turned down and her eyes were glassy and red from the tears she’d shed. I sucked in a breath and continued, needing to say the rest of it. I didn’t want there to be any more secrets between us.
“I needed to burn down the bridges between us. I wanted to hate you so I could walk away from you.” My eyes burned and I squeezed them closed. I exhaled and held Roe tighter, trying to apologize with more than just my words. “But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how wrong I was. I hate that I made your pain worse.”
Cara cupped Roe’s face in her delicate hands. “I wish I could take it all away,” she murmured. “Undo all the pain and erase the bad memories.”
Monroe rested his forehead against Cara’s and clutched her like a life preserver. But he still held my hand, and when I pulled back to try to give them some privacy, he gripped me tighter.
“I won’t betray you like Minns and his wife did,” Roe rasped. “I came out to Ezra this afternoon. I haven’t told Zali yet, but Icouldn’t exactly hide my feelings the other night when I left you two in the bar.”
“What were you feeling?” Cara asked quietly. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Monroe. I need to know if I did that.”
“You didn’t,” Roe rushed to clarify before he huffed out a self-conscious laugh. “I was jealous that you two could show how you felt for each other when I was still trying to work things out.” He shrugged, trying to play off how much it had upset him. But he was failing miserably. He hadn’t called me Hux since we’d become intimate, yet he’d reverted to it the moment I’d told my teammates I was interested in Cara.
“I don’t mind PDA,” I confessed.
“Even from me?” he asked. He pulled away and turned in my arms.
I smiled, but my overwhelming emotion was sadness. “I went back into the closet for college and the NHL.” I ran my hand down Monroe’s back, enjoying how the tight muscles flexed under my fingers, and added, “I wanted to come out at the end of my rookie year, but then it turned into the end of this year when Minns didn’t want me to come out either. I figured that by the end of next season, I might be valuable enough to the team that they wouldn’t dump me because I liked dick too.”
“You deserve better than that, Alec,” Monroe murmured. He pressed his lips to my shoulder and rested his face in the crook of my neck. “You deserve people who’ll love you right.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, and my heart slammed against my ribs. “Would you and Cara love me right?” I asked before I could chicken out. I was torn, equally desperate to know the answer and terrified of hearing it at the same time.
“Yes,” Monroe answered simply and squeezed my hand, pulling me tighter against him. I flicked my gaze up to Cara and held my breath.
She was quiet, her glassy eyes darting between us. She blinked and fanned her face, then pressed her lips in a tight smile. But it wasn’t forced. It was as if she was holding it back. Cara looked like she was about to cry but was radiantly happy too.
“I’m all in. With both of you. I’ve never been happier than when I’m with you,” she whispered.
I laughed, my excitement exploding like fireworks inside me. “I’m all in too,” I promised, leaving “for as long as we can be together” unsaid. The weight of my impending departure hung heavy around my neck, but I chose to ignore it. Nothing good would come of me reminding the two people I’d fallen hard and fast for that we were doomed.
I slid my hand down Roe’s belly and followed his snail trail to his cock. It was soft, but my man groaned as soon as I closed my fist around him. He rocked his hips into my touch, and his cock hardened with every pass of my hand over his length.
“This time I want to be in Cara while you’re fucking me,” I drawled. “Then I want to watch you fill Cara up. I want to see our cum leaking out of our pretty girl’s sweet little snatch.”
Cara moaned, and I peered over Roe’s shoulder at the way he was finger fucking her. “I want to see that too,” he breathed. “Think we can come inside you from behind, Cara? You want to hold the headboard while we make you scream?”
“Yes,” she cried. She shoved the blankets off the bed and rose to her knees, facing us. With her beautiful big breasts in my face, I tugged her close and latched onto her nipple. I breathed in the smell of sex on her skin. I memorized the feel of her pert nipple in my mouth as I brushed my face against Roe’s while he sucked on her too.
“Need you,” she whimpered, and Roe and I moved as one. We had a common goal—to make sure our girl was so sated that she wouldn’t be able to walk straight tomorrow.
