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“What are you talking about?” Hayden teases with a wide smile. “You can tell us anything, we love each other.”
Brent is far less amused. “That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? You two love each other, Elle loves you, I love Elle. It would be unequal. I don’t know how to be in a relationship with one person, let alone three.”
“Your relationship would still be with Elle, Brent,” I say gently.
“Yeah, no one is saying you’d have to bone your cousin,” Hayden ads with little tact.
“Phew, all worries gone,” Brent deadpans.
I chuckle. “You worry you’ll be…on the side lines?” I offer.
Brent looks the most uncomfortable I have ever seen him and if I wasn’t wanting to continue this conversation until we got to a satisfactory outcome, I would have been enjoying it. “I…I don’t know. I guess this is just not how I’d imagined it.”
“Imagined what?” Hayden asks.
“Being in love.” He rests one elbow on the driver’s side door and leans his forehead in his fingertips. “When I was young, I always imagined finding a girl, getting married, living in a big house, having a bunch of kids and growing old together. Then, for a long time, I didn’t think I would have love at all…didn’t want it, not in this life.” I nodded as he spoke knowing exactly how he feels as it was exactly what I felt before. It was pretty much what I’d told Hayden. “I’d tried to stay away from Elle, but I couldn’t. And I guess for one split second I had hopes of that perfect life again. It’s hard to reconcile that with a future of having the girl I love sharing her bed with someone else every other night.”
I blink at the road ahead, trying not to glance at my cousin and make him uncomfortable. Brent isn’t one for talking through his feelings. He usually keeps tight lipped about anything emotional, opting to help others rather than focus on himself. I am glad that he has been open with us and I hope to Hell we can get him to see how good this could be, because I want a future with Elle. A future of fucking and laughing and seeing her smile every day. I feel so close to getting there, I need it to happen.
“I think you’re focussing too much on the situation and not on the people,” I say carefully.
Brent frowns. “Explain that to me.”
I take in a deep breath trying to find the right words. “The four of us, we’re already connected, Brent. We’re family.” I swallow, not wanting to get emotional but my feeling for Elle weren’t the only ones at play here. “I know you have a big family and you grew up surrounded by love, but I never had that. I never had family until you came along, and up until university, we didn’t live together. When the four of us came together, that was the first time I had a proper family.”
“Me too,” Hayden admitted.
“Elle may have been estranged for the last few years, but it’s always been the four of us. Any relationship between us was onlyever going to include all of us. Without the four of us, there can’t be the three of us.”
That makes him turn to look at me with a frown, I meet his eyes and smile.
“Let’s say Hayden and I are together—”
“Because we are,” Hayden says firmly.
“Because we are,” I agree. “We would spend time together just the two of us, more and more. Sooner or later, you would find a girl and you’d want to spend time with her, move in with her, we’d hardly see each other. Then before you know it, we’re just names on a Christmas card list.”
“You mean apart from the fact that I work for you and I would see you every day?” Brent quirks a brow at me.
“Yeah, apart from that,” I concede with smirk. “Listen, I know that you feel if Hayden and I are together and we’re with Elle too, you would feel like…” I gesticulated while I tried to think of the right word.
“A third wheel,” Brent provides.
Hayden scoffs. “Terrible analogy. You’d be a fourth wheel, and everyone knows four wheels are better than three.”
“You know, you and Elle are more alike than you might think,” Brent grumbles, confusingly.
“Anyway,” I pull the conversation back on track. “You might believe that you would be on the outside, but we’ve always been a foursome and we won’t be selfish with Elle’s time because we have each other too.”
Brent looks thoughtful, I can practically see the cogs turning in his head. He grunts and nods, marking the end of the conversation and I allow silence to follow. Brent needs time to think about things, but I am hopeful that the seed of possibility has been planted.
We pull up at the club my father uses as a base in the midday sun. The weather is turning cold, but the sky is clear and it could be considered a nice day to those who didn’t have to meet with Sydney Preston. I hate this place. Despite it being a Monday afternoon, there are a few men sat at the bar ogling the two waitresses in their shorts the size of underwear and bikini tops.
I have no idea why my father called us in–well, he called me in. Brent goes wherever I do, and Hayden just seems to be partof the package. If he knows about Starlight, he’s going to lose his shit. We walked through the club, the mixture of techno beats, stale smoke machine smoke, and lingering cologne and perfume was a migraine incarnate.
We walk through the staff only door that leads into the general offices and monitor room. Down the stairs to the basement where my father has his personal office amongst other rooms used for things that would haunt the general public for a lifetime if they ever saw. Sydney likes it down here; I find it suffocating. No windows and high spec sound proofing so the patrons above won’t hear any of the nefarious goings on below.
As we turn the corridor toward his office, three wannabes come toward us. I’ve seen these guys around before; my father has called them in for some speciality tasks. They have illusions of grandeur being called into the big man’s office. In reality, good ol’ Dad is using them as disposable spies to bring back what information they can on The Kukris, Talons, and the old Tanto territory. They will eventually get caught and no doubt killed, or maybe tortured to the point that any semblance of a normal life will be lost. They’re kids, eighteen maybe nineteen, but they’re cunts and I have to bite my tongue to stop from groaning at the sight of them.
