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“Ally—” Sam began.
“No, you listen here.” She whirled around and pointed at us both. “You decided how this was going down without even talking to me. Without even letting me be involved in a decision that directly affected me. How long ago did you decide that for me?”
“Within a few weeks of us getting here.” I didn’t hesitate to give her my answer. My confession would change our dynamic. I’d quite possibly lose her friendship forever, but if I owned up to it, maybe Sam would be protected from the brunt of her anger. It was time to finally have this conversation. “It was my idea, Ally.”
“Stop protecting him,” she shouted at me. But it wasn’t rage in her eyes. It was betrayal. And her tone was like a slap to the face. “Stop bloody protecting him! I trusted you. Both of you.” She rubbed her forehead and fought back a sob. “Twelve years, damn it. Bloody hell, nearly thirteen. I trusted you to tell me the truth. You promised me you would.” Angrily dashing at the tears leaking from her eyes with short swipes of her hands, she squared her shoulders and stared down at us still sitting on the couch.
“I thought the two of you were together. I’ve wanted you both for over a decade. I was young and stupid, and I spent all that time trying to be strong and independent and yet wanting you both. I tried dating and that clearly didn’t work. All I wanted was for you to see something in me. But I understood that I wasn’t what you wanted.”
She waved her hand in the general direction of town four hours away and her voice fell to a pained whisper, tears trickling down her cheeks as she spoke. “I heard the rumours, but I dismissed them. How could you sleep around on each other when you were committed? But then I kept hearing them. I cried for you. Do you have any idea how much I hated hearing people talk?” She shook her head and looked away, wiping her chin with the heel of her hand. “I kept thinking how hard it must be hearing the lies. Then I thought maybe you were doing it to protect each other. Knowing you were getting intimate with women just so you could keep your secret broke my heart.” Her shoulders sagged and she seemed to fold in on herself. “Thinking you’d have to go through that when you were committed to each other… the despair you must have felt flayed me.”
My heart cracked in my chest at the same time as her voice broke and she let out a sob. “The whole time I wished you’d just tell me. I wanted to be there to protect you. I would have made up a bloody relationship with you just so you didn’t have to share yourselves with anyone else.” She covered her mouth with her hand, as if she was physically trying to hold back another sob. “It would have destroyed me. But I would have done it. For you. I would have sacrificed what I wanted for you. Written myself out of the dating pool—not that there’s much of one—but I would have done it for you. The joke was on me though, wasn’t it?” She huffed out a laugh that held no humour and shook her head. Then she whispered, “You ruled me out of contention. I never even had a chance.” Her lashes were wet with tears, her lips turned down and shoulders slumped. “I was never enough, was I? Not even worth the risk.”
Sam and I were on our feet and standing before her in a split second. “Ally.” Sam touched his thumb to her chin. “We never meant to hurt you. We wanted to protect what we had with you. It’s not that you weren’t worth the risk; it’s that we were too scared to chance losing you. We thought loving you from afar was the best thing we could do.”
“So if I found a bloke—if Phil and I had worked out—you would have been okay with that? You would have just stood by and never even made a move?”
“He would have had to have proven himself.” My tone was defiant. Even to my own ears I sounded petulant.
She shook her head. “I saw you, Craig. I saw the dick measuring you two were doing with him. You go all caveman and scare everyone away.” Disappointment and disbelief and a healthy dose of anger coloured her words. All I felt was shame. “How many times have you been content to love me from afar while sticking your nose in and chasing away any man who shows one iota of interest in me? No one was ever intimated by my gruff brother. No, they were always worried about my two pit bulls growling every time a bloke got close.”
“We’ve never done that.” My protest, while vehement, was an untruth. I’d done exactly that on more than one occasion. She didn’t respond, just looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, okay,” I admitted. “I wasn’t doing it to keep you for myself though, or for us. Or even for you to stay single. I wanted you to end up with a bloke who’d treat you right. One who’d treat you like we wanted to.”
“Yet you didn’t show me the courtesy of something as basic as being honest with me after I made it clear that was the one thing I expected.” Her words had the force of a kick to the chest from a horse. The crushing pain in my ribs was a physical ache, not just an emotional one.
“No, we didn’t,” Sam agreed slowly. Quietly. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know I can speak for Craig and say he’s sorry too. What we did was fucked up. It was immature and stupid, and we have no excuse for letting it continue as long as it did. We should have explained how we felt, how we feel. We didn’t though and that’s unforgivable no matter what our reasons were.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Remember your birthday that first year we were here? The first time we went to the billabong?” He smiled sadly. “You were finally comfortable with us. It was as if you realized we wouldn’t take advantage of you.”
She pushed past us and sat on the footstool again. “That was the day I started thinking you were together. The way you looked at each other then. It was so full of love. I thought you were gay.” I didn’t have any idea what look she was talking about, but she’d clearly seen something that wasn’t there. I sat back down on the couch, leaving the seat between Sam and I free. She looked at me and added, “You dragged him out of the water, pushing him up the bank and getting him as far away from danger as possible without any care for yourself—”
“Your croc joke.” The memory came back to me, and I realized she was right. There was something between us in that moment. Terror had curled its bony claws around my throat and squeezed, stealing my breath. I’d been robbed of coherent thought. I reacted on instinct, trying to get Sam to safety. To protect him. The relief that had surged through me when Ally reassured us there were no crocs in the water had nearly brought me to my knees.
“You remember, don’t you? You know exactly the moment.” Her question was directed to me, and all I could do was nod. It was true. I did love him. I wanted to protect him and keep him safe. But it didn’t mean I wanted to fuck him. That’s not what blokes like us did. We were mates. We shared an unbreakable bond. But it wasn’t sexual, no matter what my traitorous dick had thought more than once over the last few months. It’d just wanted some action.
She continued. “What about the rumours? They’re true, aren’t they?”
“We’ve both been with a few of the women in town, but I haven’t slept with anyone in…” I paused to think back, unable to remember the last time. “At least a year.”
“Three for me,” Sam added, and my gaze shot to his. He shrugged like it was no big deal and he turned to look at Ally. “Didn’t feel right when I knew who I wanted.”
“Purely physical for me,” I added, agreeing with his sentiment. “I never wanted anything more than a one-night stand. Felt like I was cheating on both you and them.”
Ally nodded and scrubbed her hands over her face. “I… I have a lot to think about. I didn’t expect this and I dunno what to do now.”
“The ball’s in your court, Ally.” Sam reached for her hand and threaded his fingers with hers. “I wish I could undo the hurt we’ve caused. If I’d thought—if either one of us had thought—for a second that you wouldn’t castrate us for making a suggestion like the one I’m just about to make, we would have fessed up a decade ago.” He looked to me and I nodded, encouraging him. “We want you. Both of us. We want to date you; we don’t just want to fuck. I dunno how we’ll work out the logistics, but whatever you decide, I’m willing to go with it.”
“I am too,” I added. “If you’re prepared to share any part of you, I’ll take it and we’ll cherish it.” I leaned forward and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and brushed her soft cheek gently with the pad of my thumb. “We aren’t pressuring you. If you decide that you can’t forgive us, we’ll understand, and nothing has to change.” I paused. “Or maybe it will—whatever you want to happen, we’ll go with it.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, shaking her head and looking infinitely sad. “It’s a lot. I’m just not sure where to go from here. I know you’ve said you want something with me, and I know how I would have reacted to that news a half-hour ago, but it’s more complicated than that now. I feel like I’ve been betrayed by my best friends and I need to work out how to move past that. Whether I even can.”
I wanted to hold her, to never let her go. To tell her that we’d done it because we were genuine. We were trying to keep her in our lives in whatever way we thought we could, without hurting the other. We clearly didn’t put two and two together and were doing the one thing we’d tried to avoid—hurting her. We had a lot to make up for. I hoped one day she’d give us the chance. But it was up to her now.
Maybe now was a good time to start prayin’.
