“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “It really doesn’t. Just—someone who knew about it, and they mentioned her along with a few others.”
Ian dropped his head, and his shoulders slumped. “Frankie…I don’t want to give you some kind of list.”
“Why not?” Archie asked. “You’re the one who told her in the first damn place.”
“Stop,” Coop said before I could. “We’re not turning this into a fight. She asked a question, we answered it. She needed to know…for what it’s worth,” Coop continued, focusing on me. “If…if I think you need to know because you’re getting close to someone and they were on the list, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, I don’t really want to give you that list either.”
The idea that therewasa list was nauseating enough. “I don’t want a list.”
“I want to know who told you,” Jake gritted out. “No one gets to try and hurt you like that.”
“They weren’t trying to hurt me.” Of that much, I was pretty certain.
“Who tells you something like that if they aren’t trying to get a dig in?” Archie’s challenge was fair, but…
“Because it wasn’t what they were trying to tell me. It came up in passing and without going into details…” While I wanted to ask them because what happened to Maria shouldn’t have happened to anyone, I couldn’t without betraying her. “I promise,” I said before Archie could press the point on it. “So, in a weird way, maybe it’s better that Ian told me when he did.”
Even if I’d never wanted to know.
Doubt echoed on three faces, but Ian actually gaped. “What?”
“I’m glad I heard it from one of you and not from someone else.” Blowing out a breath, I reached for another slice of pizza. “I’m sorry if I killed the mood. Like I said earlier, I kept trying to tell myself it didn’t matter, but it did. I like Cheryl. She’s…been really great the last few weeks, and as much as last summer seems to be hanging over all of us, I’m doing my best to not make it a thing.”
“It’s the past,” Jake promised. “It’s never going to happen again.”
Hard to ask that really, especially when I was still dating three of them. No, I wasn’t going to press my luck at the moment. How much of a hypocrite was I?
“I believe you,” I told him, and guilt assailed me at his harsh exhale. “I’m really sorry if I…”
“No, babe,” Archie said. “You don’t have to be sorry. Our fuck-up. We deserve the bite in the ass. And you haven’t ruined anything, especially if you feel better.”
“You do, right?” Coop caught my hand and studied me.
I nodded. I did. “Yeah. I do. Weird, right?”
“Nope,” Ian said, surprising me. “Can’t really say it’s weird when you have to ask us in the first place, you know?”
“True.” Head tilted back, I exhaled. “Okay, for the future…no more crazy sex parties.”
“Only crazy sex party I plan to have is with you,” Jake stated, and when he dropped a kiss on my lips, I laughed.
“Am I invited?” Coop teased.
“Depends,” Jake retaliated.
“On?” Archie leaned forward.
“Yeah, on what?” Not that the idea wasn’t crazy, because it really, really was—and at the same time, I had to admit, Jake’s possible responses intrigued me.
He grinned. “The venue. The hostess. The rules.”
“Venue can be arranged,” Archie said with just enough seriousness that the curl of lust in my gut immediately went taut.
“Rules can be coordinated,” Coop added, linking his fingers with mine.
“So that just leaves the most important part,” Jake finished with a wink, then gave me another kiss. The heat flash firing through me probably boiled my face like a cherry tomato. I might even have been charmed by the teasing between the three if I hadn’t been so damn turned on by the idea. The glint in Jake’s eyes suggested he had a pretty damn good idea of what he was doing, too.
And on that note…