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.”
He gawked. “But for how long?”
He looked like a child counting down the days to Christmas. And yet, it still didn’t sway me.
I couldn’t tell him how long because I didn’t know the answer to that question. I simply knew that right now I wanted all three of them around me. I wanted the feeling that we were a tight pack of friends and lovers and that we kept each other tethered. Maybe it would be different after we finished with The Sanctuary here. Maybe once we got back up to Asheville, it would be time for just Michael and I to be together.
But I didn’t have a timestamp on that.
So, instead of spewing all of that to him, I walked over to him and put my hands up against his chest. I leaned up and gave him a gentle kiss, then ran my fingers through his hair on the top of his head. And when I pulled back, I found that his face had softened toward me.
“I love you,” I said to him as I felt my anger melt away. “I love you even when you tried to throw me off the roof of a building.”
“That makes you sound kind of crazy,” he teased.
“It makes you sound kind of crazy too,” I jabbed back.
He pulled me against him and wrapped his arms around my back as he looked into my face. “It kills me, you know,” he said. “It kills me to see you with anyone else now, even Adam and Rob.”
I started to open my mouth in response, although I wasn’t entirely sure what it was that I would say.
