She took another drink. He was going to have to order another one.
“Just had what?” Michael was suddenly tense again. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Lucy shook her head and passed Ty’s drink back. “I was taking out the trash and I thought I heard something. It freaked me out a little. Too many horror movies. That’s all.”
That brought up so many good memories. “We used to watch horror movies while we were in college.”
“You were in college,” she reminded him.
“I was,” he said. “We would find a movie on cable and then call each other and watch and talk the whole way through, and I would inevitably get a phone call around two a.m. that night that she heard something.”
“You liked that part,” she accused.
There it was. That invisible tether that had connected them for as long as he could remember.
Michael reached out a hand, and Lucy took it. “I’m sorry for being overbearing. I didn’t want to screw this up a second time. Not that I screwed up the first time.”
It was Ty’s turn to groan. “Fine. It was all my fault.”
Lucy reached for his hand, too. “I should have talked to both of you. I should have taken Michael up on his offer to go have a drink and sort it out. Ty, I’ve come to realize that I’m scared of losing you. So scared that I would almost rather push you away than try, and that’s foolish of me. Michael, in some ways the same goes for you. I’m invested in this relationship even though it’s not much of one yet. There’s a part of me that would rather hold on to the possibility of what could happen between us than actually attempt to make it happen. Does that make sense?”
“It sounds stupid,” Michael replied, his voice hoarse. “But yes, I do know what you mean.”
Progress. It was a beautiful thing. “I do, too. It’s why I turned you down back in high school. I knew I was going away, and I didn’t think I could keep you. Funny thing is we stayed close for the most part. I missed you all those years, and then when I came back you had a boyfriend and I decided it was time to see if there was someone else out there for me.”
“Tell her.” Michael sat back.
Lucy did the same, breaking their contact, but not in a harsh way. They were still somehow together, the little booth they sat at enclosing them. “Tell me what?”
He glared Michael’s way. They’d talked more than sports the night before. Mostly Ty talking because Michael was a closed-up asshole. But he was a pretty good listener.
Michael took a sip of his beer and put it back down again. “This is why you two didn’t get together then and wouldn’t work today if you didn’t have me. You have to talk to each other. And the fact that I have to be the one to say that is sad because I’m not a talker. At least not anymore.”
Well, not talking hadn’t worked for them. The question was would she actually believe him. He’d admitted this particular secret to Michael last night. He’d expected the man to snort and laugh at him. Instead, Michael had turned his way and given him what Ty now thought of as his understanding grunt.
“I came back from college a virgin.” Ty said the words directly and clearly because he didn’t want to repeat them. “Like I said, I meant to come home and start a relationship with you because I could give you what you deserved.”
“What did I deserve?” Lucy asked, her eyes soft and concerned.
“You deserved to be married. You deserved to have a man with a good job who could support you while you got your education.” He’d gotten through college as fast as he could because he’d wanted to come home to Bliss. And then she’d had a boyfriend, one of his best friend’s brothers.
“I only wanted you, Ty.”
“I should have stayed.” That seemed to be where he’d really gone wrong. He’d asked her to come with him, but he’d also known she had to take care of her family.
She reached for his hand again. “No. You needed that time. And you had a full ride. You couldn’t turn it down. I’m surprised you came back. You could have gotten a job anywhere.”
“But you were here.” He needed to make her understand. “My whole life was here. I missed you every second I was gone.”
Zane placed a glass of wine in front of her, and the heavenly scent of fried mozzarella hit him. He’d been nervous walking in here but now he was hungry.
Hungry for a lot of things.
“Your food should be out in about ten minutes.” Zane gave them a nod before walking back to the kitchen.
“So now you two understand each other?” Michael asked.
Lucy gave him a smile. “We do.”
“And you understand that Tyler’s long line of very brief sexual relationships was because he couldn’t have the woman he wanted,” Michael said.
He didn’t like the sound of that. “I wouldn’t say they were all that brief. I’ve got stamina.”
Michael shot him a frown. “I was talking about the fact that you didn’t have real relationships with those women.”
“No, he had relationships with their vaginas,” Lucy quipped.
He wished he’d chosen a different way to try to get over her. “But none in the last year.”
“So your stamina might not be what it used to,” Michael said with a snort.
That got Lucy laughing, and when her eyes shone like that Ty would take all the ribbing in the world.
Michael sat up, his shoulders squaring. “We need to talk about something else now that we’ve gotten that out of the way.”
He looked so serious, any hint of amusement fleeing. It made Ty nervous. “What do we need to talk about? Because we seem to be doing a whole lot of talking.”
“I think what Michael meant was that we didn’t talk about the important stuff,” Lucy explained. “I suspect he also thinks we talk too much.”
“This is something we definitely have to talk about,” Michael insisted. “You need to think about this. Do you still want me here? The two of you love each other. I care about you, Lucy. I even care about Ty, but you both need to understand that I’m not capable of loving anyone. There’s nothing soft and sweet about me anymore. So I’m going to give you a chance to get out of this. If we go back to Ty’s tonight and do what will likely feel awkward as hell at first, I’ll be involved, and that means I’ll be bossy and probably obnoxious about the both of you.”
This was his chance. He could get rid of Michael, and Lucy would be all his.
And he hadn’t been great at being on his own with her. They wouldn’t have had the talk they’d just had without Michael here with them. Lucy would still be keeping him at a distance, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He liked the friendship he was finding. He liked having someone to back him up. This was what the other threesomes had. They had a camaraderie he wouldn’t have if he was on his own.
He glanced over, and Lucy was obviously waiting for him to reply. “I don’t want you to go away. I’m starting to think we might not work without you, and I want us to work.”
“I do, too,” Lucy said quietly. She reached out to Michael so she had a hand on both of them again. “I want to try with both of you.”