“Sure, but also being here with you two.” She adjusted the napkin in her lap. “I have to be honest. I keep bouncing from feeling like I’m with friends to feeling like
we’re all on a date to feeling like an interloper between you two. It’s scrambling my brain a little.”
“If you’re an interloper, then I am, too,” Keats said with a shrug. “You two were together first.”
Colby sipped his wine, then set it down. “I think there are a lot of blurred lines at this table, and trying to label them right now is a pointless exercise. God knows every time I try to draw a line with this one”—he tipped his head toward Keats—“the guy bounds right over it.”
Keats smirked. “Boing, boing.”
“But know”—he reached out and gave Georgia’s hand a squeeze—“there are no expectations. We’re here because we wanted to spend the day together. There’s no pressure for anything beyond that.”
She let her hand curl into his.
“He’s right,” Keats said, his amused expression sobering. “I know I was out of line kissing you like that this morning. I acted first, thought second. Kind of a bad habit of mine. But I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to horn my way in on what you two have going on. Just because Colby’s a total manwhore who’s fooling around with both of us—”
“Hey now, watch it, smartass,” Colby said, narrowing his gaze.
Georgia bit her lip, trying not to smile.
“All I’m saying,” Keats continued, “is that I’m not going to interfere if you and Colby want to do your own thing.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, not exactly in a place to figure out how she felt about the whole thing, much less Keats individually. But she couldn’t deny that the kiss had made it hard to focus on the reasons why she shouldn’t want Keats. “Same goes for me. Last thing I want to do is get in the way with you two.”
Colby looked between the two of them, a sly smile touching his lips. “Eat, both of you. We’ve got the whole afternoon ahead of us.”
Keats lifted his glass. “Here’s to George’s first day out of prison! May she make this day her bitch.”
Georgia laughed and lifted her wine. “Hear, hear.”
They all clinked their glasses together, and Georgia closed her eyes, tasting the freedom in the moment.
Maybe she could win this battle after all.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Colby and Georgia had been in his bedroom way too long. Colby had said they were going in there to find a movie for all of them to watch, but that’d been half an hour ago. Keats tried not to feel left out as he sat sprawled on the couch, strumming his guitar. Their day out had been more successful than he’d expected after everything that had happened this morning. He’d been worried that it would be too much for Georgia, that the outing would overwhelm her. But she’d been determined to fight today and she’d kicked ass.
They’d kept it low-key. After Sawgrass, they’d gone to a quiet suburban shopping area and picked out new coffee cups to replace the ones they’d demolished. Georgia had had one rocky moment in one of the shops when a dark-haired man in a suit had brushed by her. She’d seized up and her fingernails had dug into Keats’s arm. Apparently, the guy had resembled Phillip. But Colby had swooped in and steered her out into the fresh air, leading her through some breathing exercise all the while, and calmed her before her anxiety took her off the rails.
Keats had been fascinated watching Colby slip into therapist mode, seeing that uncanny ability to morph his hard-edged dominance into this gentle but firmly reassuring presence. Georgia had responded to it instantly, and Keats had been glad it had been so effective. But while watching the two of them huddled together, he’d also felt his age and inexperience acutely for the first time. He could make women laugh, he could turn them on, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to be such a steady rock for someone, like Colby was. Colby was solid—the kind of guy built for marriage and fatherhood and all the hard stuff. The stuff someone like Georgia would eventually want. The stuff Keats wasn’t sure he was capable of.
So right then and there, Keats knew that even if something happened between all three of them, Keats would eventually become the bonus prize at the bottom of the cereal box—a fun thing to have around but not the stuff that nourished you. He was the expendable one in this equation. And he needed to keep that in the front of his mind going forward. He couldn’t lose himself to it. He’d already left himself too open by singing to Colby last night and letting some feelings show. That shit needed to stop. This was temporary fun, and he needed to enjoy it for that. Otherwise, he was going to get himself crushed.
After the day out, they’d come back to Colby’s. They’d ordered pizza and Georgia had managed to make it through the rest of the evening without any panic attacks. During dinner, they’d all shared a few beers, and Keats had finally been able to relax a little and find some peace in his role. They’d laughed and told stories about this and that. It’d felt warm and laid-back and like they all had been hanging out forever. And for a little while, Keats had felt a part of something instead of sitting outside the borders. But then Georgia and Colby had gone off to Colby’s room, reminding Keats of his place in this group, and the chill had settled in again.
Keats released a long breath and focused on strumming the notes for the song he was tinkering with. If nothing else, the last few days had provided a crap-ton of fodder for new songs. Nothing like your entire world and what you thought of yourself rearranging beneath you to inspire new material. Though the song he was fooling around with right now would get his ass beat down in most of the honky-tonks around town since it was clearly about a dude. Maybe he could go to open mic nights in gay bars.
Gay bars.
He shook his head at the thought. He’d have no fucking clue how to navigate those waters. When this all ended with Colby, would those be the kinds of places he would go? Now that he’d ventured down that road, would he crave men in the same way he craved women? All he could picture was one of the gay clubs downtown that looked like it was trying to revive Studio 54. So not his scene. Or what if he found that he couldn’t do without the kink? Where the hell would he seek that out? He sure as shit couldn’t afford the place Colby belonged to.
Suddenly, he had new understanding for how tough it must’ve been for Colby growing up in the middle of backwoods Texas and not just bi but deeply dominant and craving kink. What a fucking nightmare.
His fingers played over the strings with no real direction now, and he shifted on the couch, considering getting up and going to his room. He’d spent last night and this morning with Colby; he should let Georgia and Colby have some real time alone. But right when he set his guitar aside, the two of them walked back into the living room. Colby had his arm around Georgia’s waist and his button-down flannel shirt looked wrinkled. Georgia’s halo of hair was even more wild than usual. Almost fucked. That was the look. She wore it well.
Heat pooled low, Keats’s body waking at the sight of the two of them. Hell.
“Found what you were looking for?” Keats asked, trying to sound nonchalant.