Faking the Play (Hot Mess Harems #2)

18. Ethan

Chapter eighteen

Ethan

T his still didn’t seem quite real.

When Logan came back to the apartment a couple days ago and told Ryan and me that he’d talked to Amelia about us sharing her, I’d been expecting a rejection. Hell, I’d thought the best-case scenario would be that she at least wanted to stay friends. Instead, he’d said that she was willing to think about it.

Which was how I’d ended up in a booth at a little ice cream shop, sitting across from Amelia, discussing how sharing her would work with the same sort of casualness that most people used when talking about things like where to go for dinner.

“What would we do if, say, all four of us decided we wanted to go out for ice cream?” she asked.

I thought for a minute before answering. The few times the three of us had shared a woman, it’d basically been just sex, even when it was more than once, and Logan had handled the logistics. With Amelia, though, things were different. We wanted to date her. Even though us guys had talked about having a poly relationship, it had seemed so impossible that we’d never really talked about how it would work.

I didn’t know about Logan and Ryan, but when I’d pictured it, I only thought about us being at home, even if it wasn’t sexual. Sitting on the couch, one of us holding her hand, her feet on another one’s lap. That sort of thing. I realized now that was stupid, because of course we weren’t going to spend our entire lives locked away.

“I guess we’d come get ice cream and see what we felt comfortable doing in public,” I finally answered. “If you wanted to hold my hand, but not the other guys, that’s what we’d do. If you wanted to have Ryan’s arm around you, then that’s how it’d go.”

“And if I wanted both?” she asked quietly, her cheeks pink. “If I wanted to hold your hand while Ryan’s arm was around me?”

“Then Logan will have to carry your ice cream,” I said.

Just like I’d hoped, she smiled. “You guys really are okay with this, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “It just feels right, you know? All of us being together?” I reached across the table and took her hand. “But we don’t want to pressure you into anything. If this isn’t going to work for you, you tell us, okay? Because if we’re not all on the same page, we shouldn’t be doing this.”

She nodded and squeezed my hand. “I really am thinking seriously about it. I’m not just stringing you guys along.”

“Thought never crossed my mind,” I said honestly. “And if you want some diagrams of how things might work in other instances, just say the word. I’m a pretty good artist.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. “I remember that picture you drew of Mr. Caldicott in sixth grade after he made half the class cry. It was the first penis picture I’d ever seen. And still the only one I’ve ever seen with a hat.”

“A cowboy hat,” I clarified. “And his balls had spurs on the sides.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right! I forgot about the spurs. How could I have forgotten about those?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Logan and I must’ve argued for twenty minutes about whether or not I should’ve given him cowboy boots.”

“So you’ll argue about if a penis should have cowboy boots instead of spurs, but you’re not going to argue about who gets to sleep with me on any particular night?” She was half-teasing, which made me more than half-hard.

“Why argue when we can just both sleep with you?” I watched her face as my words sank in.

Her eyes widened, but I could see the heat in those deep blue irises. She wasn’t opposed to that sort of sharing either. Thank fuck. The three of us would’ve kept things separate if that was what she wanted, but we’d shared enough women for sex to know how good it could be. I had a feeling, with Amelia, it’d be fantastic.

My phone chose that moment to start ringing. Frowning, I fished it out of my pocket. No one called me unless it was an emergency. The moment I saw the word “Hospital” on my screen, all of the ease and humor I’d been feeling disappeared.

“I need to get this,” I said to Amelia even as I answered. “Hello?”

“Is this Ethan Blake?” A woman’s voice came through.

“Yes, I’m Ethan.”

“Are you related to a Mia Blake?”

“She’s my mother.”

Amelia put down her spoon, her focus completely on me now.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but she’s been brought to Poudre Valley with severe injuries resulting from an assault. She is conscious and she requested that we call you.”

“I’m on my way,” I said. “Thank you.”

I ended the call and turned my attention to Amelia, preparing to tell her that we were going to have to cut our date short. I’d take her back to her dorm, of course, but then I needed to go.

“Is she okay?” Amelia asked.

I nodded. “She’s in the hospital, but it sounds like she’s going to be okay. I just have to go.”

“ We have to go.”

I paused before standing. “What?”

“I’m not letting you go back there alone.” Her chin had that stubborn set to it that I recognized all too well. “You’re not dealing with this by yourself.”

“Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll call Logan and Ryan if you’d rather they go, but one of us is going with you.”

I didn’t ask her why. I didn’t need to. My three childhood friends were the only people who knew the full truth about the shit that went on with my mom and the assholes she dated. The burn scar on my arm where one of those boyfriends had burned me with his lighter when I was six wasn’t the only permanent mark on my body. Until I hit my growth spurt at fourteen, there hadn’t been a week when I didn’t have a bruise or something else.

Sometimes, it wasn’t just the boyfriends.

Mom had struggled with drugs and alcohol for as long as I could remember, but never bad enough that I was ever taken away from her. I’d been good at hiding things, including the bruises she sometimes gave me when I was too loud or too messy or too whatever. She tried to get clean more than once, but those boyfriends had always pulled her back in. The most recent one was the same as all the rest of them, and I had no doubt he’d been the one to put my mom in the hospital.

A hand on my arm startled me, and I realized I’d been staring off into space for a few minutes.

“Do you still keep a bag of clothes in your car?” Amelia asked.

I nodded.

“Okay, then we can leave from here,” she said. “We’ll go straight to the hospital, and we’ll stay as long as you need to. Then we’ll go back to my house. My parents are spending a couple weeks with my aunt in Louisiana because she—” Amelia made a dismissive gesture. “Not important. What is important is that we can stay at the house and not worry about having to get a hotel or anything.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, unsure if I was talking about her coming with me or her offer for us to stay at her parents’ house. Or maybe I was talking about something different altogether.

Maybe I was the one who wasn’t sure about anything.

“Come on.” She held out her hand and I clung to it as we made our way to my car. “Keys.”

“What?”

“I’m not letting you drive like this,” she said. “You can text the guys on the way, and if you need to reach out to your coach, you can do that too. That way, when we get to the hospital, you can focus on your mom.”

While Amelia adjusted the seat to fit her much shorter body, I watched her, loving how calm and capable she was. She’d forgotten that part of herself with all the shit that was going on. I made a promise to myself that I’d make certain she found that again, that she remembered what an amazing person she was.

But first, there was something I didn’t want to wait to tell her.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’d do it for me,” she said. “If something had happened to one of my parents—”

“Not for coming with me,” I said. “Or, not just for that. No, thank you for not trying to tell me that I shouldn’t care about her after everything she’s done.”

Amelia turned toward me and put her hand on my cheek. “She’s your mom. I’m not going to tell you how to feel about her.” She paused, and then added, “But if she says anything mean to you, I will kick her ass, even if she’s already in the hospital.”

I smiled, which I knew was what Amelia wanted. Then, she leaned forward and brushed her lips across mine in a quick kiss before turning her attention back to the car and our trip.