Page 128 of Piece Us Together

“I love you, Mais. I really do. But your brother is almost ridiculously beautiful. He’s got the whole thin and pale with big blue eyes and black messy hair and pink lips thing going for him. I’d bet my life that there was at least a fifty percent chance those guys wouldn’t have walked away after spotting him. Maybe they’d have just taken him for themselves for a night or for good. Maybe they’d have given him to the man they worked for. Who the hell knows?”

“Well, there’s a one hundred percent chance he was at that auction and brought into that horrific world because of me.”

“One hundred percent chance he was saved because of you, too.”

“Nol…”

“Me too, you know.” I give him a tight smile when he frowns at that. “If it wasn’t for your operation, I wouldn’t have been saved. I’d still be a slave. Or I’d be dead.”

He shakes his head. “That has nothing to do with Carter.”

“I didn’t say anything about Carter. I said it about the operation.”

“They would have found someone else to run it, if I had turned it down.”

“Maybe. Maybe that person would have been good at it. Or maybe they would have fucked it up and gotten the operation blown, gotten Travis and Jake killed, lost the chance of saving the thousands of slaves you’ve already saved. Lost the chance of savingme.We’ll never know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I try not to flinch, but I must not be able to contain it completely because his expression shifts into panic. “Wait, no, of course it matters—of course saving you, saving them, saving all of—of courseit matters, baby, I didn’t mean that. I just—it doesn’t matter when it comes to Carter. That’s ruined. Me and him. It’s ruined.”

“If it’s ruined, it’s on the both of you.” He tries to look away, but I stop him with a hand on his chin again. “You don’t ruin things. Okay? You make things better. You save people. You protect and you care and you love so much you end up hurting yourself. Hunter and I are so fucking lucky to have that. To haveyou. And I’m not going to let you talk yourself out of that, okay?”

He ducks his head against my neck, breathing me in with a shaky inhale as his arms wind around my back. “Promise?”

“Promise.” I run my hands through his hair, hating what I have to ask next but knowing I need to. “Do you want him? Do you want the three of us?”

His arms tighten around me, his voice hoarse and soft as he finally admits the truth. “Yes, Nol. I’m—I’m in love with him.”

I can’t help the sigh of relief that slips out at the confirmation. I don’t think I even realized just how badly I wanted that—wanted the three of us—until now, until I have permission to hope for it. It almost hurts, how good it feels. Like the final pieceof a puzzle snapping into place. It’s a stinging relief. A good kind of ache.

There are a million things to ask now. A million things to figure out. I start with the most important thing, though. The third piece of us.Hunter. “Does he know?”

“Think he has a good idea.” He pulls his head back, his laugh watery as he meets my eyes. “I—well, I came here ready to tell him, then saw his friend, Wells, and his sub, Jax, here and assumed he’d either moved on or he was fucking around the whole time we were doing our thing with him.”

I wince. “Shit. How bad was that?”

“I may have threatened people. May have done some yelling. Crying.” He smiles, all wry and charming. It’s not him brushing it off, though. It’s him feeling comfortable about how it all turned out. I have the strongest feeling that’s because Hunter handled the situation. I wish I could have seen that. I wonder how far Maison let him push. I wonder how much farther he’ll allow, moving forward. “I tried telling him I didn’t care. Telling him I don’t want anything to do with him. Which, looking back now, was really just a terrible fucking attempt at a lie. I mean, I was literally crying on his floor.”

My heart tugs at the thought of him doing that, me not here to help him through it. “I wish you’d told me you were coming.”

“I didn’t know, until—” He stops, shaking his head. “I didn’t know I was coming.”

“Until what? What changed?”

His lips twist in a rueful smirk. “I talked to someone. An old buddy of mine. I think it helped, talking to someone not connected to any of this. Someone I could just lay everything out to and get a perspective on it all. Plus, he’s not one to sugarcoat. He sort of told me to get my shit together, which was fair.”

I try not to smile, but I think he sees through me.

Then he adds, “I’m glad I was by myself, though. This—it felt like something that I had to do alone, you know?”

“I don’t,” I say honestly, trying not to be hurt by that. I tilt my head, eyebrows pulling in. “Can you try to explain it? I’m not mad, I just—I don’t know why you felt like that…”

“I guess—” He pauses, seeming to search for the right words. I have to fight a smile at how adorable he looks with his face all concentrated like that. I don’t manage to fight the urge to press my thumb to his furrowed brows, though, swiping across until he softens them. He kisses the inside of my wrist and we both smile. He’s still smiling when he starts talking again. “Since the beginning, Hunter has been your thing. In my head, at least. I sought him out because he was a dom and you needed a dom. Because I needed to find a dom I trust with you and he was the closest thing. When I approached him in the store, when I met him at the bar to talk, whenever I came to the house—it was all about you and how we could work together to give you what you need. Even lately, as things changed, our interactions still revolved around you. And I’m not complaining about that. I’m not—it’s not a bad thing, not at all. And I know there was room to change it, room you both made clear was open. But when I safeworded and dragged you out of here that night, I was Maison, your boyfriend.Justyour boyfriend. But tonight, when I came here, even when I was upset—I came here as me…forme. To apologize for my behavior and to tell him how I feel and to tell him that I want him, want what he offered me before, want the three of us together. Was that—does that make sense?”

I smile. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”

“I have no fucking idea how the three of us will even work,” he admits.

“I bet we can figure it out.”

---