HUGE X3: A MFMM Menage Stepbrother Romance (12 page)

I move closer to Bryan.
 
It’s instinctive because my knees feel like
they might give out again and I know he’ll catch me if they do.

“She’s stabilized,” Ethan says in a tone that is
filled relief.
 
In that moment I
understand that he thought she was going to die too.
 
I blink and the tears that were resting in my
eyes spill messily down my cheeks.
 
Carrie’s going to be okay.
 
Maybe.
 
I let out a shaky breath
and go to give Ethan a hug.
 
It feels
strange to hold my friend’s boyfriend tight against me but I know he needs
this, because I do too.
 

“I thought…” he trails off when his voice cracks.

“I know.”
 
I pat
his broad shoulder and squeeze him a little tighter.
 

“I’ve never been that scared before, about anything.”

“I know,” I say again.
 
“I’m sorry…I just…I couldn’t.”

Ethan pulls back and looks down at me gravely.
 
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”

“She’s my best friend.”
 
I say it as though I’m stating a fact that nobody
knew and Ethan nods in understanding.

“She’s going to be under observation for days.
 
They were really scared they were going to
lose her.”

I shake my head, not wanting to hear how close Carrie
came to…I can’t even think the word.
 
“Come on,” Ethan says.
 
“Let’s go
back.”

In the waiting room, Carrie’s mom is curled into her
husband and Nathan is sitting next to his father.
 
He stands when he sees us and comes to hug me
and Bryan as though we are long lost friends, reunited after years.
 
“She’s going to be fine,” I whisper against
his chest, and he nods.
 
“She is.”
 
There’s that same tone of relief, or maybe
it’s disbelief.
 
I understand what it’s
like to face into losing someone you love.
 

We all sit for a while.
 
Bryan busies himself getting coffee for
everyone.
 

After about an hour, Ethan comes to sit beside
me.
 
“When we come in this morning, we
were prepared for Carrie and the babies to stay a night and then come
home.
 
We’ve got nothing with us and we’re
going to need to stay here for tonight at least.
 
We need to be here for her, just in case.”

“Of course,” I say quickly.
 
“You want me to get you some things from
home?”

“Would that be okay?
 
I don’t want to ask dad.
 
He needs
to be here for Carrie’s mom.”

“Sure.
 
No
problem.”

Ethan fishes in his pocket for his house keys and
hands them to me.
 
I slip them into my
purse and wait for Bryan to return from the restroom.
 
We say our goodbyes and I follow Bryan to his
car.
 
It’s only when I’m belted in that I
close my eyes and say thank you to whoever answered my prayers.
 
Those babies need a mother and there is no
one who would ever be able to replace Carrie in that regard.
 

Bryan doesn’t start the car immediately.
 
He holds the steering wheel so tightly that
his knuckles are white.
 
“This is fucked
up,” he growls. The anger in his voice takes me by surprise because while I was
having my moment in the lot, he seemed so calm.

“What?”

“All of this shit.
 
Carrie…she’s so fucking young and she nearly died.”

“I know.”
 
We
sit in silence for a few moments longer but I can feel the coiled rage vibrating
from Bryan in his posture.
 
“But she’s
going to be okay.”

“Yeah,” he says.
 
“She better fucking be.
 
Those
boys will be wrecked if anything happened to her.
 
They’d never recover.”

There’s something about the way he says that last part
that sounds almost as though he’s speaking for himself.
 

“Bryan…”
 
I put
my hand on his thigh because I feel like I need anchoring and just making
contact with his strong body is enough to do that for me.
 
“I…”

He takes hold of my hand before I can say anything else
and holds it to his mouth.
 
It’s not a
kiss as such but there is so much need and desperation in the contact he makes
and the grip of his strong fingers that I start to cry again.

“You’re going to be okay.” He says it like it’s a
statement of fact.
 
Like he knows for
sure, when really he knows nothing.
 
He
says it like he can will it to be so.
 
He
says it like it has to be true.

“We should go,” I say, trying to pull my hand back
from the softness of his lips.
 
My palm
feels damp from his breath.
 
I remember
how his lips felt against mine when we kissed in Carrie’s yard and I want to
feel that again so much that it hurts.
 
I’m crying too much, though.
 
This
is not the time to be doing things that have the power to break my heart.

Bryan lets my hand go and starts the engine. He
doesn’t look at me or talk to me the entire way to the small house Carrie,
Ethan and Nathan share.
 

Inside, Bryan heads to the kitchen to check on
things.
 
I can see they left in a hurry
because there are dishes in the sink.
 
In
the bedroom, the bed in unmade and there is a big stain on the under-sheet
which I’m hoping is where Carrie’s waters broke.
 
I head to the closet and cry some more when I
see Carrie’s little shoes lined up next to the twins’ giant sneakers.
 
It smells of her perfume in here, a scent so
strong and familiar that it’s almost as though she’s here with me.

There is a duffle bag on the shelf at the top and I
pull it down.
 
I take a pile of lovingly
folded t-shirts and a few pairs of jeans and sweats and stuff them in.
 
I reluctantly search out some underwear and
socks and pack them too.
 
Back in the
bedroom, I decide to strip the bed and remake it so that when Carrie comes
home, everything is nice.
 
It doesn’t
take long to do and although I wish I had time to do the laundry too, I know
Ethan is waiting for these things.

Bryan has loaded the dishwasher and is taking out the
trash when I’m back in the kitchen.
 
I
peer in the fridge and take a few things that will perish before they’re home
and stuff them into the freezer.
 

“Do you remember when they told us?” Bryan asks when
he comes in from the yard.

“What, that they were in a relationship?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you think?”
 

I lean against the counter and study him, wondering
where this thought train is heading.
 

“I was shocked.
 
I mean, we’re talking about Carrie.
 
Ethan and Nathan had one kind of reputation and Carrie another.
 
I never would have put them together that
way.
 
I got the feeling she thought they
were cute, but a relationship….it would never have crossed my mind.”

Bryan nods, his expression thoughtful.

“I had a feeling they liked her, but they’d never
admit it to me.
 
Every time I asked,
they’d divert the subject back to you.”

I blush a little, remember back to those early days
when I was still prepared to flirt with him, before I began to feel the sting
of rejection.

“Clever tactics,” I say, not wanting to get too drawn
into that conversation.

He nods.
 
“I
never thought it’d be possible to love two people at once. In the beginning I
kept looking to see if I could spot who it was that Carrie liked the best, but
I couldn’t.
 
She looked at them both the
same, touched them the same.”

“She loves them both,” I say with absolute
certainty.
 
Ethan and Nathan might be
practically identical but they’re completely different people.
 
Having spent time with them all, I know that
they complement each other perfectly, for all their similarities and
differences.

“I see that,” he says.
 

“Why didn’t you ever mention your brothers?” I
ask.
 

He shrugs.
 
“I
didn’t know they existed until last summer.
 
They reached out to dad and we went up to New York to meet them.”

“Last summer?”
 
I remember him disappearing for a week.
 
He was quiet when he came back.
 
I’d thought maybe it had been woman trouble.

“Yeah.”
 
Bryan grips
the counter, leaning back.
 
“It was hard
to meet them.
 
I had a tough time for a
while.
 
Not that I didn’t want them in my
life.
 
More that I was jealous that
they’d had each other growing up and I’d been…”

“Alone.”
 
I can
understand that.
 
When dad sends photos
of my half-brother and half-sister I feel a connection to them but also
resentment that makes me feel horrible inside.
 
Bryan nods his head.
 
“But you’re
close now?” I ask, because I’d hate to think I might have disturbed their
fledgling relationship.

“Yeah.”
 
He
looks at me as though he wants to say something else but then he turns to wash
his hands.

“We should go. They’ll be wanting this stuff.”
 
I hand Bryan the bag and we lock up.
 
The journey back to the hospital is tense,
but we listen to the radio to fill the silence and I return a few messages from
our friends who are just finding out what happened.
 

At the hospital, the waiting room is busy with
people.
 
I go straight to Ethan to give
him the bag, then sit next to Carrie’s mom.
 
She doesn’t say anything but puts her hand in mine and squeezes.
 
She has a blanket on her knee.
 
It looks well-loved and I imagine it rested
over Carrie’s sleeping form in the past.
 
Maybe even her mom.
 
I can’t wait
to see the baby girls wrapped in it too.

“How are the babies?
 
Have you seen them?” I ask.

She shakes her head.
 
“They’re in the NICU.
 
The boys
have been but I don’t want to go until Carrie has seen them.
 
A mother shouldn’t be the last to see her own
children.”

“She’ll be up and about soon,” I say, and she squeezes
my hand again.
 

“I thought…”

“I know.”
 
I
squeeze her hand back to let her know that I understand.
 
We can fear the worst, and even if it doesn’t
come to pass, that fear stays with us.

I sit with her for a while, chatting about things that
seem silly in the grand scheme; college, plans for the future.
 
It seems that Carrie kept my ‘news’ to
herself and I’m grateful.
 
The longer I
sit in the hospital, the worse I feel. “I’m gonna go.” I tell her.
 
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Carrie’s mom nods and I rise from my seat, feeling
weary.
 
Bryan is deep in conversation. I
stand and watch him for a few seconds; his brow is furrowed as he listens to
Nathan.
 
He puts his hand on his friend’s
shoulder and squeezes it in a manly reassuring way that I know is his way of
saying he cares.
 
It’s hard to watch him
like this.
 
To know that we could have
had something great, and fate, for whatever reason, managed to fuck it all
up.
 
When I think back to how carefree I
was when I first met him, I almost feel like a different person.
 
I miss that girl with nothing to think about
other than boys, dancing and the occasional assignment.
 
I want to slip back into her shoes and shrug
off the troubles on my back.
 

It only takes me a couple of seconds to decide what I
need to do next.

I turn and stride out of the hospital with one thing
on my mind.
 
If I get just one more night
to be carefree Katelin, I’m going to take it in the best way I know.