Page 47 of Party of Three

“You kinda do, actually,” Buckley said.

“Because you lied to us,” Mateo said.

“And then you ran out of there like a little bitch. And news flash. I’m the only little bitch in this relationship.” Buckley held several pieces of paper in his right hand. “Also, you need to be better about deleting your files off shared computers. Just sayin’.”

His agenda. Christ. He’d been so nervous about risking his heart he’d just left it there, sitting on the screen. And Buckley had found it because they’d gone looking for him. But the remark did little to defuse the tension. And Jeff was caught between revealing how happy he was that they’d come and defending his decision to jet earlier that day.

“How’d it go with your parents?” Jeff asked.

Mateo folded his arms across his chest. “They’re expecting you at Christmas.”

His ears were deceiving him. They had to be. Swallowing twice didn’t dissolve the lump in his throat. His vision of the two men in front of him went wobbly. He blinked madly.

“Unless you have other plans,” Buckley finally said. “And other boyfriends.”

“Boyfriends,” Jeff whispered.

Buckley rustled the papers in his hands again, a thousand-some-odd words of Jeff’s anxious list making. He’d put it right there in black and white. He wanted them both. To himself. Then he’d made a quick getaway. Combined, both facts made him feel less like a man and more like a terrified, lovesick boy being given a chance at something he’d never tasted before.

“I thought it would be too much to ask…” he finally said, but then the words left him.

“Of who?” Buckley said.

“I don’t know. All of us. Your parents. I knew I didn’t want to do it halfway or casual. And I just… I thought it would be too much. I’ve always felt like…” The prospect of finishing that sentence hurt his chest.

Buckley was softening. Mateo was still rigid and angry, lips pursed, nostrils flaring.

“Well,” Buckley finally said, “a very wise and beautiful man said to me recently that it’s hard to walk beside someone if you’re always putting everybody else’s needs ahead of your own. I guess that applies to two someones as well.”

To Mateo, he said, “You really told your parents you’re with…two men?”

“This Father Jones thing has them reeling. I’ve never seen them this humbled. I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.”

Buckley whispered, “I kinda thought he should ask for a check, too, but it wasn’t my decision.”

“How’d you put it?” Jeff asked. “I mean, how did you describe me?”

“I told them I was in love with two men and so was Buckley, and all three of us would be there at the holidays or none of us would be.”

Jeff shook his head in disbelief. His voice was a croak. “You said that even after you knew I’d left?”

“I said itbecauseyou’d left. And I knew why.”

“Because I didn’t want to get in the way,” Jeff whispered.

“Close, but not quite.”

Still getting used to this confidence out of his former junior Marine, Jeff studied the man a few feet away.

“Your uncle, the day it was clear your parents weren’t coming back, that shitty thing he said to you and your sister…”

For an instant, it was like he was standing in the headlight of an oncoming train. A few deep breaths brought warmth to his limbs, to his extremities, and the headlight turned into a glow that haloed all three of them. He’d told Mateo plenty about his background over the years. The younger man had listened, nodding, but had rarely said anything in response, as if he thought it wasn’t his space to offer his thoughts on the older man’s difficult past. But he’d been listening to him. He’d been learning about him. He’d been loving him.

“He blamed you for breaking up your family ’cause he couldn’t face that your parents were both addicts. Ever since, you’ve made it your job to keep things together. I mean, Christ, you used to pop wood every time you used the wordsunit cohesion.But this thing, this amazing, beautiful thing, what the three of us did this weekend, you can’t keep that together by walking away.”

Suddenly Jeff was having trouble standing. Mateo and Buckley had risked being reunited with Mateo’s family for him. For the three of them. For what they’d started this weekend.

Outside of a combat situation, he couldn’t remember the last time someone had gone to bat for him like this, put it all on the line when the stakes were this high. “I lied to you. I’m sorry. I said I wouldn’t walk out and then…I walked out.”

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