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But before I’d even fully processed what had happened, JC had erupted like a volcano of stupid and I hadn’t even had a chance to jump back before he’d spewed molten-hot lava all over me too.
If I hadn’t feared embarrassing Emerson by discussing the whole sordid situation in front of our friends, I would’ve ripped JC a new one right away for how he’d told everyone about us. The last thing I wanted was for Em to be hurt. I also didn’t want to violate his privacy by talking about things in public he didn’t want talked about.
So I’d bided my time and waited until I could kick JC’s fine ass in private.
Result? Emerson had shut down almost entirely for the rest of the night, and then he had gone home alone. I’d tried to convince him to come over to JC’s for a little while, just to try to reconnect—though I was pressing it with my father by staying out so late again—but he’d claimed he was sore and exhausted and really needed some sleep if he was going to make it to work the next morning.
It was all BS. He’d completely dominated that fight, and he’d been in a great mood until JC had divebombed his battleship.
For God’s sake, Emerson had practically gone mute after JC’s table revelations. He’d talked to Gio and Carly, and Jenna and Dan, but only if spoken to. He didn’t initiate anything. When we all got up to dance again, he consented to dance with me once then disappeared. He’d finally emerged at the end of the night, probably sensing I was about to send out a search party for him.
I didn’t know what he’d been doing during the time he’d been MIA—or with who. He was a faithful guy, but maybe he didn’t have any reason to think he needed to be faithful to me.
I slanted a look at JC, noting his rigid posture and iron grip on the wheel. Or us.
“You shouldn’t have sprung the conversation with my dad on him like that.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes and tried to drag my ragged temper back in line. “It wasn’t fair.”
I expected JC to lash out at me, to insist that Emerson had been the one who’d screwed up by discounting our opinions about his greatness and not immediately declaring to the world that we were…doing what people in a threesome did. Early and often.
Okay, so I supposed I still had a few hang-ups too. I hadn’t quite wrapped my mind all the way around the reality of having two boyfriends. Two men to call mine who were totally into me and into each other. As awesome as it was, it was also all-encompassing.
Just a few weeks ago, I’d been very single. Now I was practically anti-single. Or I had been before JC had stuck his giant Nike in it.
Again.
“It bothered me, all right? That he could be with us, be frigging naked with us, then just act like our opinion wasn’t as important as Giovanni Big Shot Costas’s. We were trying to build him up, to make him see what we see when we look at him, and he ignored it until Costas validated it.”
Hurt laced JC’s voice, and since that was something I rarely heard from him—something he rarely allowed to show, even to me—I just reached for his hand and tangled our fingers together. Maybe calling him out wasn’t the right course. It hadn’t been earlier tonight when he’d tried the same tactic on Emerson, that was for sure.
“What do you see when you look at Em?” I asked softly, rubbing his knuckles.
He hissed out a breath as he flipped on his turn signal and made a sharp right. It had started raining while we were in the club and the streets were gleaming with puddles. Not that JC slowed down any. He drove like he did everything.
Fast and recklessly.
“I see a guy who’s too proud and stoic to admit what he wants. Maybe who doesn’t even know.”
“And that pisses you off because…?”
The corner of his mouth curled. “You sound like my psychiatrist.”
I frowned. “You have a psychiatrist? How come I didn’t know this about you?”
“Had. Not anymore.” He guided the car around a group of tourists gawking up at the glittery skyscrapers and hung another right. “When I was five, my parents nearly divorced. They sent me to a shrink to make sure I was handling things okay, because I was acting out.”
“You, acting out?” I tightened my hold on his hand. “I’ll never believe it.”
His lip twitch turned into a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I know I can be a dick. But God, babe, after tonight, I guess I couldn’t believe he didn’t want to shout from the rooftops like I do that we’re together.”
“Tonight was amazing.” I smoothed my fingers over the calluses on his hand. His hard work showed up all over his body, in the marks and scars he wore like armor. “But you tried to force his hand by telling him about what you said to my dad. He probably wasn’t ready to acknowledge we were together yet.”
“Why?” The simplicity of his question broke my heart. Or at least chipped it.
If only Emerson could see this side of JC. He wasn’t always the cocksure, overconfident man Emerson thought. There was a confused, attention-starved little boy inside JC, and every now and then, hints of him sneaked out.
“I think there may be a couple reasons.” I bit my lip as he eased the car to the curb a block up from my apartment. I hadn’t shared all of my past with JC, but I needed to. He deserved to have all of that information.
He let go of my hand long enough to turn off the ignition, then shifted toward me. “Like what?”
