Beautiful Sacrifice (The Maddox Brothers #3)(51)
Author: Jamie McGuire

“You guys coming upstairs?” I asked, drying my hands with a clean rag.

Kirby and Gunnar looked at each other.

Gunnar nodded. “Sure. I just have one paper to write this weekend. It can wait.”

We said good-bye to everyone, and then Kirby and Gunnar followed Taylor and me upstairs.

“The good thing about having a girlfriend who doesn’t drink?” Taylor was bent over in the kitchen, rummaging in my fridge. He wheeled around with a beer bottle in his hand. He popped the top with a smile and flicked the lid into the trash. “I know she won’t drink my stash while I’m gone.” He strolled over to the couch, making me bounce when he fell into the cushion next to me.

I leaned into his side, letting that relaxing wonderful feeling that filled the loft when Taylor was there warm me like a blanket.

He stretched his arm over the back of the couch, touching my shoulder with his fingers, and then he held out his bottle to Gunnar. “There are a few more in the fridge.”

Gunnar watched him take a gulp and then shook his head. “I’m going to need all my senses to pull off this paper.”

Kirby patted his knee.

“I don’t miss college,” Taylor said. “At all.”

“I like school,” Gunnar said, gesturing toward Kirby. “I don’t like being away from her.”

Kirby hugged his arm. “Just keep kicking ass, and we’ll be in Denver in no time.”

Taylor’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re moving there together?”

Gunnar looked both proud and excited. “I’ve just got to get some money saved up and find a place once I transfer.”

“Gunnar’s applying for the physician’s assistant program,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? That’s fucking awesome, man. Good for you.” Taylor held up his beer again, as a toast this time. He looked to me. “What are Phaedra and Chuck going to do when they lose you both?”

Kirby and I traded glances.

“What?” Taylor asked.

“Have you had any luck applying here?” Kirby asked.

“Nope,” Taylor said. “But I’m solid at the station in Estes.”

“But don’t you live with your brother?” she asked.

Taylor set his beer down on a coaster even though the coffee table was scratched and already covered in water rings. “Okay. You two have been discussing. Let’s hear it.”

I squirmed. “It’s just that … it feels wrong to leave Phaedra high and dry after all she’s done for me. And I’m not sure I’d like your brother as a roommate. I don’t really want to ask him to move out, and we have a perfectly good place here. I can save more if I stay here.”

“That’s not true. I told you I’d take care of rent.”

“And I told you it was fifty-fifty or nothing.”

“I’m here, maybe, five months out of the year,” he said.

“Until you get hired on here.”

“They’re not hiring, baby. I’ve asked—a lot.”

“Not yet,” I said, pointing at him.

He looked at Kirby and then back at me. “So, what do you propose? I keep up the commute until I’m hired on here? Or that I move here without a job?”

I winced. I knew suggesting either would be an insult. “If I move to Estes Park, you’ll be here in the Springs or somewhere else for up to half the year.”

“I told you. I have a full-time position at the local station if I want it.”

“I can’t leave Phaedra and Chuck, not right now. Kirby is leaving soon …”

Taylor blew out a breath, looking away from me. “I don’t want to keep doing this. I hate seeing you only on the weekends.”

“Should we go?” Gunnar asked.

We both ignored him.

“So, we’re at an impasse,” I said.

“And what the hell does that mean?” Taylor was more frustrated than angry.

He had been talking about us moving in together since Christmas, and I’d kept giving him excuses—everything from it being too soon to moving expenses.

“I don’t have a car. How am I going to get to work if I move into your condo?”

He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. I can drop you off. It’s a shorter drive than coming here every weekend.”

“We don’t have to decide now.”

Taylor took a long drink, sucking the beer bottle dry, and then he took it with him to the kitchen. He tossed it into the trash can before opening the fridge to grab another. He twisted off the cap and threw it into the garbage, too, before returning to me in a huff.

“Taylor …” I began.

“You’re not the one who has to make this drive, Falyn.”

“You’re right,” I said. “That is a fair point.”

“We definitely need to go,” Gunnar said.

“What’s your rush?” Kirby asked.

Gunnar’s brows pulled together. “When you start agreeing with me the way Falyn just did, shit goes downhill real fast.”

She laughed and nudged him, and Taylor and I couldn’t help but smile.

He hugged me to him and kissed my hair. “I’ll make the drive as long as I have to. It’s the time in between I don’t like,” Taylor said.

“I know. I don’t like it either. The silver lining is that, after we get back from Saint Thomas, you’ll be working back here in five weeks.”

“Maybe. That’s never a guarantee. There’s no telling where I’ll be.”

I cocked my head, getting impatient with his negativity. “You said your crew has been here the last three summers.”

“Okay, but what about the year I’m not? That’s six months I’ll be even farther away from you.”

“If I live in Estes and you’re called somewhere else, you’ll be away from me anyway!” I said.

“Not if we’re in Estes! I’ll take the local position!”

Gunnar stood up.

“Honey,” Kirby said, her voice bordering on a whine.

“I’m going to drink one of those beers if we don’t leave right now,” he said, towering over her.

He reached out, and she took his hand.

“Let’s go do something,” he said.

“We could go to the hookah bar,” she said, standing next to her boyfriend.

Taylor and I glared at each other.

“It is so incredibly stupid for us to be fighting about seeing each other while we’re seeing each other,” I said.