Her Four Cowboys

“Yeah, it’s the same woman,” Adam said. “We’ve—” He cleared his throat. “We’ve been trying something new, and it’s been working really well.”

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“About… a week and a half? Two weeks?” Adam looked at Andy for confirmation, and Andy nodded. “It’s pretty new, but I think we’re all happy. We’ve been communicating openly, and there hasn’t been any jealousy so far.”

I still felt a little bit like my mind had been blown open with a stick of dynamite, but the shock had dissipated, and I felt a little bit like I was beginning to understand it more. I’d heard about polyamory—I’d even met a few people in polyamorous relationships who made it work and were incredibly happy—but I’d never imagined it would be the lifestyle for my brother, much less two of my brothers.

Much less two of my brothers in the same polyamorous triad.

Jesus. Maybe I was judging a little. I would be damned, though, if I’d let my brothers see that.

I shook my head, slowly, allowing the idea to settle in my mind that this was their relationship. This was where they were happiest, and I should accept it.

“Well,” I said, “I hope this girl is really pretty.”

“She is, but why do you say that?” Andy raised an eyebrow.

“Because she must not be that smart, given what she’s getting herself into with the two of you,” I said, my voice dry.

The two of them rolled their eyes before giving sarcastic laughs. “She’s gorgeous, and believe me, Lucy’s plenty smart,” Adam said, crossing his arms as he leaned back against the beam that supported the barn roof.

The words seemed to come to me through a mile of water, and I felt like my skin had gone numb. My hand felt like it had lost all feeling, and I had hold my clipboard close to my chest to keep it from falling to the ground.

Lucy? The woman that both of my younger brothers were dating, were sleeping with, was Lucy?

27

AUSTIN

It had taken me a little longer than I’d been expecting to do my checks on the horses in the far barns, making sure to spend a little bit of extra time with Briar once I’d done so. With the storm coming in, I didn’t want to take any chances with potentially leaving her stranded out there while she was still injured.

She was healing beautifully, though, and had come a long way from where she’d been the day after she’d been savaged by that mountain lion. She was back to the sharp personality that she had before the attack, and I’d been thrilled when she’d come over to me and stuck her nose into my hand to get the treat that I’d had there for her.

I counted all the supplies that we had in the barn quickly, knowing as soon as I saw the feed pile that we’d need to bring more bags out here from the recent delivery and fill all of the troughs ahead of the storm. Depending on how hard it hit, we might not be able to get out here for a few days.

As I walked up to the barn door, I focused only on the sky and trying to find any hints of the storm rolling in. There was still a bit of snow sticking to the ground from the last storm, but I knew that there would be a whole hell of a lot more in the next few hours.

Given my concentration on the sky, I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in the barn until I got right up to the door and heard the raised voices of all three of my brothers on the other side. I couldn’t hear the exact words that they were yelling, but it was enough that I could hear them fighting.

I was shocked. We weren’t a family that fought. We hadn’t had a fight like this since we’d been kids, and Aaron had saved up for a Nintendo 64 out of his allowance.

The rest of us, being jealous little shits, hadn’t reacted well, and had acted like exactly what we were.

I shoved the door open and ran in, looking around to take in Aaron where he was standing at the far side of the barn, his face beet-red. That in and of itself should’ve given me a clue that whatever was going on was next-level; Aaron was the most even-keeled out of all of us, so to see him looking as furious as that made all of my muscles lock up. I looked over at where Andy was facing him with, distressingly, a wrench in his hand, and looking somewhere between screaming and passing out due to sheer fury. My head whipped around to find Adam, who had his hands clenched into a fist and looked a bit like he was pulling his arm back to throw a punch.