“Of course we won’t.” Kincade seemed astonished I’d even brought it up.
I leaned my head against Brock’s shoulder, suddenly feeling tired. “All right, now that I’ve shared some deep, dark secrets with you, why don’t you share some with me?”
“Like what?” Jessie asked. He still looked concerned about all that I had told him.
“Anything. I just want the focus to be on someone else for a change. What was high school like for you guys?”
The guys exchanged looks, and that clued me in. Three incredibly handsome, athletic men in a private school. Maybe high school hadn’t been awful for everyone. I sighed. “Don’t answer that.”
Brock squeezed his arm around my shoulder. “We do have maybe something that counts as a deep, dark secret. Or at least a secret—but I’m not sure this is the right time to tell you about it.”
“Please do,” I invited. “I want to talk about something else.”
“All right,” Brock said, but then he didn’t seem to know where to start.
“Come on,” I urged. “It’s your turn to play true confessions.”
“The thing is… this secret isn’t just about me.”
“Who else is it about?”
Brock locked eyes with the others. Then he said, “All of us.”
Now I really couldn’t wait to hear what it was.
18
Jessie
I watched Brock and Maddie uneasily. Brock had his arm around her, and she looked perfectly content snuggled up against his side, but after what she’d just told us, I felt like the three of us should give her space. Like twenty feet or so.
Her story about being sexualized at a young age horrified me. When I was a freshman, my biggest concern was making the junior varsity baseball team and getting Cindy Whitmore to go out with me. That thought—and thoughts about what might happen if she did—had consumed my every waking moment, as well as my nocturnal fantasies. And in all the time, my perverted teenage mind never thought about what Cindy might actually want. I just knew I wanted her.
I sighed and finished my wine. Ever since we’d met Maddie, I’d known that this conversation might happen, but now? After what she’d just told us? I didn’t know what Brock was thinking. Except, earlier today, he’d shown he knew better than Kincade and me what Maddie needed. I was still kicking myself for not realizing how stressful the surf lessons had been for her.
So perhaps it was best to just trust Brock’s instincts. I’d done that many times over the years, and I’d learned that listening to him paid off. He was telling her now how much he enjoyed spending time with Kincade and me, and how close we were. He was beating around the bush, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. In general, Brock was a very direct man.
“We’ve shared a lot over the years,” he told Maddie. She nodded, but I knew she hadn’t picked up on the true meaning of what he meant yet. “At times, we’ve shared everything.”
Maddie frowned, obviously feeling that there was something she was missing. “Like what?”
“Like women,” Brock said, and inwardly, I groaned. It was all out there now.
Maddie was silent as we all stared at her. Too silent. I felt the need to jump in. “It’s not something we do all the time. We’ve just sometimes done that in the past.” As I said the words, I realized how true they were. The three of us hadn’t even been in the same city at the same time in the past two years. When had we last had the pleasure of sharing a woman? It had to have been five or six years, maybe more. And that had only been once, when we’d spent a long weekend at Kincade’s hotel in Vegas. Before that, it probably hadn’t been since college.
Maddie’s cheeks had a faint pinkness to them. “When you say share, do you mean…” She trailed off.
Brock answered anyway. “Yes. Three men. One woman.”
“One very satisfied woman,” Kincade added.
Maddie still looked shocked. And then her mouth twitched and she started to giggle.
Shit, she didn’t believe us.
“I swear, it’s a real thing,” Kincade said.
But that just made her laugh harder. My heart sank watching her. Ever since I first laid eyes on her—during that bizarre moment when I’d seen her golf cart barreling down the path at me—I’d hoped that maybe she’d be into what we were into. Though I’d had girlfriends of my own, including one long-term relationship that ended a few months ago, I couldn’t imagine staying here this week with my buddies but going after Maddie on my own. I’d never do that if they were interested in her, too.
And it was clear they were.
Maddie hiccupped and managed to get her laughter partially under control. “Where’s my phone?”
My heart sank even as I hopped up and swung my legs over the side of the tub. She wanted to look this up, to see if it was an actual thing that people did. I couldn’t even imagine where that internet search would lead her—probably to some porn site that would give her the wrong idea. But I still went to the bedroom and found her phone for her.