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chapter 13
Sam
I closed the door and rested my head against it. When Craig came up behind me and squeezed my shoulders, I couldn’t resist anymore. I turned and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pulling him to me. I needed the contact. I needed the comfort. We’d ballsed it up. Big time. By trying to protect each other, we’d broken her heart. We hadn’t even considered that as a possibility, convinced that she’d never even look at us.
Irony was such a bitch.
Now I was questioning whether we were ever serious enough about Ally to deserve her. Maybe we should have encouraged her to date more. To meet someone. There were good blokes who’d been interested in her and all we did was run them off. One of them might have done better by her than we had. We’d treated her like shit and all they did was show their interest—tell her she was pretty. Ask her for a drink. A hook-up. Even the ones we thought of as low lives were unlikely to have hurt her as much as we’d managed to.
But when I thought about another man touching her, my blood boiled. I wanted to tear him limb from limb. Was it just jealousy or something a hell of a lot deeper? It seemed like a stupid question. I loved her; I knew I did.
But could I love her completely if I’d also fallen for Craig?
Could a person love two people at the same time equally? Was it even possible?
It was real to me. Was that the answer?
Every time I thought about either one of them, the butterflies in my belly took flight and I couldn’t help but smile. My heart went all light and fuzzy and they were the only people who I could imagine coming home to. I wanted to grow old with them. I wanted to get naked with them. Both of them.
Maybe that made me a deviant.
Or maybe it was supposed to be like that between the three of us.
Craig tentatively wrapped his arms around my waist and when I held him tighter, he pulled me against him, holding me close. Thick muscles surrounded me, and I was enveloped in his warmth. I sank into him, melting against him. Resting my forehead on his shoulder, I breathed him in. Not for the first time in my life, I had to bite back a groan and will my dick to play nice—actually, not to come out and play at all—when I was near him. The last thing I wanted was for him to jump back disgusted when I needed him, and I couldn’t let him go. Not yet. I breathed in the scent of citrus and cardamom like a drug. I’d been addicted from the first moment I’d smelt it and with the emotional turmoil I had going on, I just wanted to get drunk on him. If only Ally was here too.
I was confused and my heart hurt, but standing there in the protection of his arms, my world was at least partly righted.
“You okay?” The rumble of his murmured voice passed through my chest and settled there as he ran one hand up and down my back and kept me anchored to him with the other.
“Honestly? I dunno,” I confessed with a huff. “I’m a little all over the shop.”
“Ally’s comments throw you for a loop too?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t add why. I knew him well enough to know that I couldn’t be completely honest with him.
“You’ll be right.” Craig pulled back, gripped my biceps and laughed awkwardly. “Bloody hell, ’ay. Look at us. Ally thinks we’re poofters and we’re standing here snuggling together. No wonder.”
“Yeah.” His words knocked the wind out of me, while he stomped on my heart with his size ten boots. “Just look at us.” I understood then why Ally had been pulling away from us. My silence, Craig’s unconsidered words, and both our actions must have flayed her. He’d certainly managed to wreck me. “I’m going to bed.”
Without even turning the light on, I stripped and pulled the sheet over me as I crawled into bed in just a pair of undies. Facing away from Craig’s bed, I hiked up the sheet to my ears and closed my eyes. There was no way I could face him when he said shit that cut me to the quick. I didn’t know why he did it. Why he suddenly turned into this… loud-mouthed bogan. When his defences went up his words were as sharp as a knife.
I heard the tap run for a moment, then Craig brushing his teeth, the switch of lights being turned off, and finally the bed next to mine creak. He sighed. “You awake, mate?” I ignored him, squeezing my eyes closed and willing myself not to cry. At least before Ally knew, I could live in denial. I could let myself believe that both were unobtainable, but with Ally’s confession had come a tsunami of emotion and I was struggling to contain it. When Craig sighed again, I bit down on my knuckle and waited out his silence. “I’m sorry if I fucked up your chances with Ally. I don’t deserve either one of you. But I’ll make it right if I can. I’ll walk away if that’s what it comes down to.”
“Don’t,” I croaked, rolling over to face him. “You don’t get it do you? I don’t want to choose between the two of you. I love you, you damn mug.”
He huffed out a laugh and smiled at me. “I love you too, mate.” He slid into bed and pulled the sheet over himself. “Night, Sam.”
“Night.”
*****
The grey-brown smoke in the distance made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Craig and I were on horseback, checking the fence line between the springer paddock where the cows and calves were, and the strip of bush bordering the larger paddock where the bulls and weaned bull calves were. The wind blew hot and the acrid smell washed over us. “Mate, I’m not liking the look of that fire, and Spook’s getting antsy.”
“Yeah, me neither.” He paused, his hand shielding his eyes as he looked towards the bulls and bull calves gathered in the shade of the trees. “That sensor’s gotta be wrong. Blond’s never wandered off like this before.”
I followed the line of his gaze, looking into the glare of the sun at the small mob of animals. He was our prize bull, and by far the biggest of the cattle at the station. But he wasn’t with the others. Pulling the binoculars out of my saddle bag, I scanned the length of the paddock, trying to spot him in the distance. “Nothing. No sight of him.”
“Shit,” Craig muttered. “You’re right, we need to get back. I don’t wanna be away from the homestead while this fire’s hanging around. Let’s go.”
