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As if to punctuate that thought, she noticed the kitchen had gone deathly still around her, neither men saying a word. Looking up, she found them staring at her. Cannon was aghast. Fury painted Hawk’s features.
Hawk set his fork on the table much harder than necessary.
“No,” he growled through his teeth.
Just…no? He just planned to dictate what would happen with no discussion? That pissed her off and raised her hackles. “It’s not up to you.”
“No, it’s not just up to me. Damn it, Devon!” he yelled. His chair scraped back across the kitchen tiles as he shot to his feet. “We’re together now. All three of us. We’re in this together!” He gestured around the table. “Any decisions affect all three of us. They affect our family, and they need to be made by everyone. Not just you.”
Cannon got up and walked over to the sink. He dropped his plate into it before gripping the counter. His knuckles were white on the edge while he stared out the window. But he didn’t say a word. Didn’t make a sound. Family was a sore topic for him. He’d lost his. She and Hawk were his new found family.
Her heart ached, knowing she was hurting him. Hurting them both.
Swallowing hard, she looked between his rigid spine and Hawk’s outraged expression.
Slowly, she also stood. Breakfast was definitely over. “And are you going to tell me what decision to make?” she asked in a low voice. “Is that how you’re thinking this will work? I’m an equal partner here.”
“Yeah. A partner,” he rasped. His hand indicated back and forth between them. “That means you’re not alone. You don’t make decisions alone. You don’t…make…”
He closed his eyes for a moment as pain skated across his features, as well, gone so fast she could have imagined it. She hadn’t.
“You don’t make dangerous choices alone,” he finished.
“It’s just a phone call.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, and she steeled herself against how adorable he looked when he was frustrated. It definitely was not the time. There would probably never be a time when she could call him adorable out loud, but now, he was really upset with her. She hated that he was angry, but she wouldn’t let him steamroll her.
“You know he’s right,” Cannon said, coming back and standing beside Hawk. Was this how it would be? Two against one? “None of us—you, me, Hawk—none of us is alone. Hawk rescued me when my family rejected me, when they were going to do something downright evil to ‘save’ me.”
“And you rescued me.”
“I never thought you’d admit it,” Cannon replied with a sad half-smile at Hawk. “You’re the one who managed to pull himself out of a gang when it was all you’d known since they dragged you in when you were eleven.”
“Yeah, but you saved my soul. I was spiraling toward a dark, lonely place.” Hawk’s anger seemed to seep from him as he pulled Cannon toward him and kissed his temple, in such a tender caress it cracked Dev’s heart. Her men loved each other so much.
Hawk turned toward her and her pulled into a three-way embrace before she realized what he was doing. Tears burned in her eyes. She wanted to be part of this forever. Not an outsider. Not alone on the road, hoping she’d outrun danger.
“You’re part of us,” Cannon whispered. Anything other than a quiet tone would have been too much. “That means we are here for you through everything. We’ll rescue you, too, however we need to. Just like Hawk saved me. Just like I saved him.”
“This is different,” she argued, matching his hushed tone. “My problem isn’t the same.”
“Sweetness, look… When we were talking about the holidays, you pointed out that we’re a family. You already know the truth in your heart. Like Hawk just said, we’re. A. Family. And families talk about decisions and make them together.”
“But this is my decision to make,” she argued, digging in her heels. “I can’t get you more involved in this mess.”
“Hell, no,” Hawk ground out, dark and dangerous. “I swear to God, Dev, if I have to chain you to our bed, I will.”
She wilted. She didn’t actually have the fight in here for this. “I didn’t say I planned to leave. I just need to talk with Hugh.”
“You don’t need to talk to him. Jax already told us all we need to know,” he returned, unwilling to listen. She wanted to smack him, but she supposed she’d be the same way if she’d been hit with a barrage of overwhelming information about him and it all said he was in dire danger.
The new information from Jax about the Baranovs and trafficking, and then Hugh showing up yesterday, reiterating the danger she was in, had broken free something primal inside Hawk. Cannon, too, if she were honest. They’d always been dominant, but last night, it was as if they‘d had to prove their claim, that she was theirs, over and over.
Apparently, it had carried over to this morning, to right now. The sex had been phenomenal and earth shattering. In the bright sunlight filling the kitchen at the moment, her body still aching from the aftermath of their loving, she realized desperation edged their possessive posturing.
Not that they were desperate, per se. They thought their lives together, their days as a threesome, were slipping through all their fingers like sand. That they were losing her.
They weren’t. Not if she had a choice.
