“No,” I said.

“Tell me what?” Adam asked again, clearly getting impatient.

“Fine,” Michael snarled. “Then I will.”

I panicked, thinking that he might actually do it. But when he did, I panicked even more.

“Lisette chose me,” Michael said. “She chose me, and not you or Rob.”

Rob came around a corner with a massive frown on his face. “Is that true, Lisette?”

I gawked at him and wanted to yell at him for eavesdropping. For thinking that he had the right to pry into private conversations. But what the fuck was I supposed to do now? Keep denying it? What could I do now except tell the truth? Adam kept asking me a specific and point-blank question.

So, it was either tell the truth or lie, and I wasn’t about to lie to him.

“Yes,” I said softly. “It’s true.”

As soon as I said the word, Adam looked as if he had just taken a bullet to the chest. He looked like he was in pain. I reached out my hand to him.

“Let me explain,” I said.

But Adam took a couple of unsteady steps backward and pulled away from me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “When did you make this decision?”

I didn’t want to answer that question either.

“A while ago,” I said truthfully. “But I told Michael at the hospital.”

“You could have told me on the drive,” Adam said as his eyes became glassy. “Or even here in the halfway house, before we—”

His voice cracked and stopped short. “You could have told Rob too. But instead, you told no one,” Adam said. “You just made love to me and all the while I thought that maybe I would be the one you would choose. I let my body swell within yours, thinking that I was making love to you. But for you, it was just sex. Because you had already chosen, and you didn’t tell us.”

“No, Adam,” I said as I pleaded for him to listen to me. “That’s not it at all. I love all of you, and the choice of who to be with in the future shouldn’t affect all of us now.”

“Well it does,” he said as he turned to walk away.

“Adam!” I shouted.

He didn’t stop or even look over his shoulder. He just kept walking until he was out of sight. I felt the piece of my heart that he held shatter into pieces at my feet. And when a hand came down onto my shoulder, I whipped around and smacked it away.

Only to find Michael standing behind me with bewildered eyes and a smug fucking grin on his face.

“You…” I growled.

Michael blinked. “It’s better to tell them now than break their hearts later.”

“Yeah,” Rob murmured as he walked away, “whatever.”

And as I gazed into Michael’s shocked, but proud, face, the only thing I felt toward him was anger. Resentment. Possibly even a bit of hatred thrown into the mix for good measure.

He forced me to tell Adam that on the spot. He forced my hand when I wasn’t ready. Unlike Adam, who had gone with the flow on just about everything, he forced me into a situation I hadn’t been comfortable with.

He made me break Adam’s heart.

And as I charged past him, rushing after Rob, I knew I’d never forgive him for it.

8

I was positively livid with Michael. He forced my hand, and it was uncalled for.

When we got back to the Sanctuary building, I avoided Michael entirely. I tried to go and talk with Adam, but unfortunately, he was avoiding me too. The whole thing was a hot mess, and that was thanks to Michael. When the time was right, I could have handled this much better. I was sure of it. Adam went to relieve Rob and take over his shift watching my Aunt Naomi.

“You good?” Rob asked when he walked out of the hallway and into the common room where the deliveries were starting to pile up.

“I’ll talk about it later,” I murmured.

I didn’t want to get into it with Rob right now, too, even if he was doing a good job of keeping a lid on it.

Fortunately, he wasn’t too tuned-in on the volatile dynamic that was going on because he got distracted by the mattresses that had just been delivered.

Rob started fiddling around with them. “Do you want me to start getting the —”

“Yes,” I answered, before Rob had a chance to say anything else at all. “Whatever you can get set up would be amazing.”

I smiled at him in the hope that it would convince him just to drop his curious questions I saw rushing around behind his eyes about the tension going on, and it worked. Or at least he was happy to let it work. Rob got busy dragging mattresses and bedframes into rooms as I started putting some of the food away in the kitchen cupboards. Michael followed me in there, carrying a box of food in his arms as if I thought he would actually want to help, and that it wasn’t just some ruse to cover up for the fact that he wanted to talk to me about what happened at the halfway house.

I did not want to talk about it.

Especially since Adam wasn’t even speaking to me at the moment. I just wanted to quietly put away all of this food and be left to my thoughts so that I could figure out how to fix the situation with Adam and break the news to Rob before he heard it from someone else, without sending him spiraling as well.

“I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me,” Michael said as he set the box of food down on the counter next to me. “I’m the one that should be mad.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked as I whipped my head around to face him.

So much for not getting into it right now.

“I’m being honest,” he said. He looked like he was being honest too, but that didn’t make me any less mad at him. “You chose me.”

I scoffed. “Yes, I know that I chose you. And I would choose you again a million times over, even when you’re acting like an ass.”

Michael rolled his eyes at me. “Then why wouldn’t you just want to tell Rob and Adam the truth: that you’ve already chosen me and that you just want to be with me?” he asked.

The look on his face was completely earnest and he looked more wounded than angry.

“Michael,” I said as I stopped putting things away in the cabinets and turned to look at him. “I do choose you as the man that I want to be with forever, but that doesn’t mean that right now I don’t also still want and need all three of you.”