Knockout (Tapped Out 4)

“You talking about your dad or Emerson?”

“Both. But right now, Em.” I lifted my phone. “Dammit, I’m going to make him open up. I’m not going to back down until he does.”

JC laughed softly and shifted back toward the wheel. He turned the ignition before I even asked him to. “All I gotta say is that boy’s in some serious trouble.”

I threw back my shoulders and hit the speed dial for Emerson’s number. “You bet your fine ass he is.”

Thirteen

The first thing I did when I walked in the door of my apartment was head straight into the shower. I stayed in there longer than the hot water held out, mainly because I couldn’t wash away the voices in my head or the combined scents clinging to my skin. Lily and JC had imprinted themselves on my flesh in a way that mere soap and scalding water could never erase.

The semi erection I’d had since the locker room still hadn’t abated. I’d come so hard in the shower that there was absolutely no reason I should be tempted to rub one out.

Except for the fact that I’d watched JC fuck Lily and I’d wanted to be part of it. To share that moment.

I wanted him to fuck me too, while Lily wrapped around us both.

But that probably wasn’t going to happen. They were a couple. Even Lance was on board. If there had ever been a place for me with them, I must’ve screwed it up somehow. Or else I’d lost them by not putting my cards on the table.

Too bad I didn’t fully know what those were.

It wasn’t a matter of caring about them. I didn’t know how to make it work. Standing up to the guys in the gym and admitting I was with a girl and a guy… Yeah, that might cause me a few bad moments, but overall, I could handle it. Those opinions weren’t the ones that counted. Letting down Lance was what kept me up at night.

The man had taken me in when I’d been at my lowest point. Though I’d technically still had a home with my mother, she’d never been much of an emotional support. When my father passed, she retreated entirely. We saw each other at holidays and on special occasions and that was pretty much it. Lance and Lily were my family, the one that I viewed truly as mine. If I lost Lance by declaring I was not only in love with his daughter, but that I was part of a triad that included her, I didn’t know how I’d survive it.

Especially now that I had even less faith that Lily and JC wanted me to be a permanent part of them, anyway.

I hadn’t imagined what had occurred between the three of us the last few weeks. I definitely hadn’t made up how JC had approached me after the fight. How the three of us had come together. But sex was sex, and love was love, and maybe what they felt for each other just didn’t extend all the way to me.

Fuck, I loved them. Them. Why had it taken so long for me to realize?

Not when it came to Lily, of course. Being in love with her was like taking a full breath and realizing you still had the capacity for more. She’d filled me up in so many ways for so long that her absence, even for a few hours, caused my aches to multiply. If I had to watch her be with another man, a man I’d fallen for too, I didn’t know if I could do it. Not because I was jealous.

They were all I wanted. Both of them. I don’t know when I’d fallen for JC, but there was no denying it now. No pretending I could go back to my old life and dismiss my interest in him as simple attraction. The man beneath the surface fascinated me as much as the arrogant asshole façade he occasionally wore that made me want to punch him in the face.

Or fuck him silly.

I dropped my forehead to the tile wall and let the cool water pound over my aching neck and shoulders. As much as I wanted to stay in there all night, I had a phone call to make.

Just because I wasn’t sure if I was truly with Lily and JC anymore—if I ever had been—didn’t mean I didn’t have to stand up and admit what I’d done. If that meant I’d end up absolutely alone, well, so be it. I couldn’t live a lie any longer.

I finally got out of the shower a few minutes later and snapped a towel around my waist. My phone was going off where I’d dropped it on the kitchen table, but by the time I got there, it had stopped. A quick check showed me Lily had called.

Three times.

Hope surged in my chest, blanketing the despair that had crowded out everything else. Maybe she wanted to—

What? What could she possibly want? JC had said he’d told Lance he was in love with Lily and wanted to date her. There was no room in that scenario for me. If there had been, he would’ve talked about it with me first, not sprung it on me in the middle of a table of our friends. He wouldn’t have said it so gleefully, almost daring me to challenge him. To say anything at all. And Lily hadn’t said a word.

I couldn’t deal with the pity thing. Truthfully, I couldn’t deal with Lily at all right now. I was too goddamn raw.

Ironic, then, that I had to deal with her father.

A quick glance at the time on the oven told me it was late. Past twelve. I shouldn’t be calling now. But if I didn’t do it right this second, I’d chicken out, I knew it. Better to say it clean and set things in motion. And if I got his voice mail, well, I’d consider it a lucky break.

I hit the speed dial and waited through several rings. When Lance answered, I was pretty certain my heart contracted hard enough to burst through the walls of my chest.

Pussy. Man up already.