“You’re not kidding. I thought we were all holding it together pretty well with our schedules. But tonight I got a chance to see Evan at work. She’s wearing herself down, man,” Andre said between bites of cereal. “She fell asleep in the car on the way home and said she wasn’t feeling well.”
Jace straightened, that tidbit raising his concern. “Is she sick?”
“Not sure. Maybe. Even if she isn’t, she’s running herself down.” His gaze darted toward the doorway as if to make sure Evan hadn’t appeared. “I want to talk to her about it and suggest she take a break, but I also don’t want to come across like a controlling asshole.”
Jace turned, the worry in Andre’s voice becoming his own. Telling Evan to slow down would be a risky conversation. She liked to stay busy. She’d suffered from depression in her past, and Jace got the feeling that always being on the move and staying occupied were her ways of making sure it never returned. He wasn’t convinced she trusted happiness yet. Every time she’d had a glimmer of it before, it had been yanked away. So he understood that it would take some time for her to fully believe that what she, Jace, and Andre had was real and lasting.
But he also didn’t want her driving herself into the ground in the meantime. Because unlike in the past, she had him and Andre for support now. If any bad feelings tried to claim her again, they would be there for her and help her through it.
But straight up telling her she needed to take a break probably wouldn’t be very effective. Evan did a beautiful job submitting to him an
d Andre in the bedroom, but God help the man who tried to dictate things outside of it. Jace would have to approach it from a different angle. “Has she taken a weekend off since that Saturday we spent at The Ranch?”
A few weeks ago, they’d all gone to the private BDSM resort they belonged to and had spent the entire day and night indulging in all the kink resort had to offer. He’d even gotten Andre to play submissive alongside Evan, which was a rare occurrence. Andre was a switch and could enjoy both sides of the fence, but usually he had a hard time resisting the fun of topping Evan.
“I don’t think so,” Andre said. “And I didn’t realize how intense doing weddings can be. She’s all over the place, carrying around that equipment, dealing with highly emotional people. I feel drained from just following her around, so I can’t imagine how she must feel doing two or three of those a weekend. And for money we don’t even need.”
Jace swallowed another gulp of water and shook his head. “I swear, sometimes I wonder if she thinks we’re going to up and leave her. It’s like she’s determined to build some nest egg just in case. If I thought it would help, I’d take my damn bank account and sign it over to her.”
Andre grunted in agreement. “I know, but can you blame her? She grew up being bounced around in foster care, and our relationship isn’t exactly the picture of traditional stability. She’s too smart not to prepare for every possible outcome.”
Jace sniffed. “If this isn’t stable, I don’t know what is. We love her. We’ve collared her.”
“I know. But it’s not that simple.” Andre looked pensive, staring down at his cereal bowl. “I ran into Martine tonight.”
Jace blinked, startled for a moment by both the shift in topic and the news. “Your ex?”
“Yeah. She works with the groom,” he said, not looking at all happy by that turn of events. “And she saw me with Evan, so I told her about our relationship, since I’d given Martine the impression that I was gay. But when she heard that I’m also with a guy, I could tell she viewed the whole thing as a whim. That’s what everyone thinks—we’re on some kinky adventure that we’ll get out of our system before we grow up and set up actual lives.”
“That’s bullshit,” Jace groused, even though he knew that was what most outsiders thought. The vanilla world didn’t understand what collared meant. They didn’t understand what to do with people who didn’t match up in neat pairs.
“It is. But regardless, I’m not sure Evan doesn’t still have a little of that doubt in her mind, too. Hell”—he set down his bowl and made a frustrated gesture with his hand—“even I feel insecure about it sometimes.”
“What?” Jace said, the admission punching him flush in the gut. He set down his water bottle.
Andre grimaced at Jace’s tone. “Look, I don’t doubt that we all love each other, or that we aren’t all committed to this. Because God knows, you two are everything to me. But come on, Jace, worry has to cross your mind. I mean, sometimes I look at y’all together, and I wonder if I’m just in the way. You two could be perfectly fine without me, and damn, how much easier would that be on you both? You could get married and no one would ever look at you two sideways.”
“Okay, now you’re just pissing me off,” Jace said, stepping forward, arms crossed. “If you think we’d be fine without you, you’re not paying much attention. You are not the spare tire on this road trip, Dre. And you fucking know it.”
Andre sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just—I don’t know. I want us all to feel secure. I do. But wanting it and having it actually be so are two different things. So don’t think that the same thought hasn’t crossed Evan’s mind. If she comes home and finds the two of us in bed together, you don’t think she wonders if we’d be okay without her in the picture?”
“No, I hope she’s thinking, Hey, I’m here in time to join in.”
Andre smiled at that. “Well, knowing her, she thinks that, too. But we can’t pretend that not having that piece of paper or the law saying we’re married doesn’t play some role. None of us are traditional, but we live in a society that is, and we have all grown up knowing that saying I do is the seal on that deal. And our girl has to see those I dos every weekend. I saw one tonight, and even I, who hasn’t thought about weddings since my engagement, had a little kick of jealousy that I can’t go back home to the church I grew up in and stand in front of God and my family and commit myself to the people I love. There’s something sacred in doing that, the finality of it. And we don’t get that privilege.”
Jace laced his hands behind his neck and blew out a breath, the weight of all that Andre had said making him feel heavier than he had a few minutes before. He hadn’t thought about things like legal papers and church weddings making any kind of difference. Those things weren’t part of his orbit. He’d been in the kink world so long that, frankly, he couldn’t give a shit what the legal system said about his relationship status. And he’d seen firsthand how “sacred” those marriage vows were when his dad had cheated on his mother. And when his ex-wife had cheated on him. Marriage seemed like a sucker’s bet.
But he hadn’t looked at it from Andre’s and Evan’s points of view. Andre had grown up in a strict Catholic household with parents who’d been married since they were young. And Evan had been in foster care, where papers and the legality of relationships meant everything. So Jace could see how their commitment could feel less secure in their eyes.
And, of course, he couldn’t magically make the laws of the land or of the church change. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t do something to make it better. They’d had their collaring ceremony privately. None of them had wanted an audience that day. But afterward, they’d never celebrated their commitment in a public way. And they didn’t refer to each other as husband and wife. But saying boyfriend and girlfriend did seem empty now that he thought about it. Temporary.
The last thing he wanted was for either of his lovers to feel like their time together was limited. Jace had waited too damn long to find this kind of happiness, and he wasn’t about to let the two people he cared most about in the world feel like anything less than the very center of his universe. It was his fault for not recognizing the insecurity sooner. He needed to fix this.
An idea began to form in his head and he stepped forward into Andre’s space. Andre didn’t protest when Jace moved between Andre’s knees. “I hate to break it to you, Dre, but you’re not getting out of this. You try to bail on us, and I will hunt you down like some psycho stalker.”
Andre smirked. “I’m the cop, remember. I do the hunting. I’m not the hunted.”
“Sorry, Detective, you don’t get to pull rank around here. And Evan would be after you, too. I bet she was ready to take Martine down tonight.”