American Queen
“I told you the last time I asked you to marry me,” Ash says softly, “that I don’t want you out of my system. No matter how many times you want me out of yours.”
Embry looks away, emotion ticking in the muscles of his cheek and jaw. “It was for the best I said no. You know that.”
“Greer says you told her that you loved me. Is there a reason you can’t tell me that?”
Embry doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at Ash.
“Because I love you,” Ash confesses in a torn-up voice. “I’m sorry if I didn’t say it enough before. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I only wanted to use you, to fuck you like I owned you. I do want to use you and own you, but because I love you.”
“Stop it,” Embry whispers, squeezing his eyes closed. “Just—stop it.”
Ash takes a step forward, changing tactics. “The three of us—we all love each other. We’ve all tried to live without each other. It obviously didn’t work.” A rueful smile. “So we need to try something different.”
“Like what?” Embry asks, still turned away from us.
“We need to find a way to be together.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Embry asks, turning back to Ash. There’s a scowl on his face, but his eyes are wet. “You and Greer are married now. There is no together for us three.”
“Says who?” Ash responds. “We know what happens when two people fall in love. It’s happened between each of us. We have to find out what happens when three people fall in love. All together, all at once.”
“This is fucked up.” And then Embry frowns. “And I don’t want to be the third wheel in your marriage. A guest who gets kicked out when he wears out his welcome.”
“You’re not and you won’t be,” I speak up, and Embry turns toward me. It’s the first I’ve spoken since he walked in. “It’s supposed to be the three of us, can’t you see that? Can’t you feel it? Today in my dressing room or the night of the Polish State Dinner—couldn’t you feel what was happening between us all? God, Embry, don’t you want us? Don’t you want to fuck me again? Have Ash inside you again?”
His cheeks flush red against his fair skin. “Of course I fucking do,” he says. “Of course I fucking want it. That doesn’t mean it’s right.”
“Just because it’s not common doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” I say, pleading almost. I walk up to him and take his hand in mine. “I can’t live the rest of my life like this. Torn between the two of you. Watching Ash watching you. It will rip my soul in half.”
Embry exhales.
“But we can’t do anything without you wanting it too,” I say. “If you can’t be one of three, then you have to be one alone. We have to decide the boundaries here and now, because when Ash and I get back from our honeymoon, we will need to know exactly where we stand with you.”
“This can’t work,” Embry says, looking down to where I’m holding his hand. “You understand that, right? There’s no possible way the three of us could make this work.”
“It will be hard,” Ash says, coming up next to us. “It won’t be easy at all.”
“People will suspect. They’ll learn the truth. If it ever gets out, all three of us will be ruined. Forever.”
“That’s right,” Ash says, and he takes Embry’s other hand. “We’ll have to be extremely careful.”
“And we’d have to have boundaries of our own. For the sake of your marriage and my sanity, everything would have to be crystal clear about what’s on and off limits.”
“Yes,” I agree, looking at Ash. “We would have to figure that out too.”
“And the minute it hurts too much, the minute it stops working, we have to be honest about it,” Embry says, and his tone has shifted from resistant to something quiet, begging. “We have to be able to stop it if it ends up wounding us.”
Ash and I are holding hands now too, the three of us standing joined in a circle. It feels very solemn, very surreal, with the low sconces throwing off patterns of gold light and the patter of May rain sounding on the window.
“Yes,” Ash affirms. “But we have to promise each other that we’ll try to make it work. That we won’t run away when it gets hard. That we will love each other as best as we can in all the ways we can for as long as we can.”
His words hang in the air, serious and spiritual.
I take a deep breath and go first. “I promise.”
“Me too,” Ash says.
Embry looks at us, our faces, our wedding outfits, our joined hands. He looks down to where we hold his hands too. He takes a deep breath and a tear spills over and races down his cheek so fast that I barely see it before it falls to the floor.
“I promise too,” he says finally, heavily.
The moment is almost more sacred than the actual marriage vows I recited earlier, almost like God knows that this is the real promise that needs to be made.
This is the real wedding that will happen not with incense and boutonnieres but with words and skin and sweat.
29
The Wedding Night
Ash is the first to move, and he lets go of Embry’s hand, gesturing towards the large bed at the end of the room. Embry nods wordlessly, and they both lead me back to the bed, each one holding one of my hands. I have to remind myself to breathe, seeing both of these powerful men in front of me, muscled arms straining against their shirts as they tug me to the bed. Together.