Complete Bliss (Her Billionaires #5.3)(24)
Author: Julia Kent

Had to deal with the drama in front of him, no matter how interesting the drama next door was.

“We can just pretend,” Joe said in a voice full of contempt, the scoff so strong Mike could feel it scrape against his skin. “They don’t have to know we didn’t really talk about…you know…”

“Being in a threesome?” Dylan’s voice made Joe flinch. That seemed to be Dylan’s goal.

Mike was starting to see how this would all play out if they didn’t take control.

“Yes,” Trevor said in a long sigh. “Being in a threesome. But Joe doesn’t like the fact that I’m around. He wants Darla to himself.”

“Not true!” Joe hissed.

Trevor made a noise of disgust. “You’re f**king jealous, dude, and you won’t admit it.”

“If I were the jealous type I wouldn’t be in a—”

“Threesome.” All four of them said it in unison. Joe’s lips pursed, jaw clenched so hard his teeth could cut fiberoptic cable.

“Threesome,” he mimicked back. “It’s not like I can’t say it.”

“Have you said it to your parents?” Mike asked softly.

The haunted eyes that met his looked like the soul’s mirror. He couldn’t have been more different from Joe in physique, coloring, carriage, and mannerisms, but he was staring into the eyes of his emotional twin for that split second.

“No. Hell no.”

Dylan

Lucky bastards.

That was all he could think as he took good, long looks at Trevor and Joe. Ten or more years separated them, and an endless sea of experience. Trevor and Joe had youth and time on their side, and everything coming up would be new. Fresh. Exciting and unknown.

A cornucopia of opportunity awaited them, two young rock-star law students who had everything going for them.

He envied them deeply.

It wasn’t that he would change one bit of his life right now. He adored Laura, and he and Mike were…well…they just were. That wouldn’t change—not ever. Jillian was the light of his life, and now that they had a great nanny, Laura had relaxed. Chilled.

Warmed up, actually. Sex returned, the bright, brilliant spark of a really good f**k no longer something to count down for the rare moment, but a dependable source of fun and love. This was the phase of life he had signed up for, the rich, multilayered realm of settling down, barbecuing in the backyard, hanging with his (not quite) wife and kid and Mike, and it was everything he wanted.

Until he looked across the table and saw what youth could bring.

The entire lunch was a game to him, a silly joke that he’d indulged in because Laura asked him to be here, asked him and Mike to talk to these guys. Talk? About what? Trevor was an overeager puppy and Joe was like Mike back in college, an unstable rageball who seemed to think that a hard edge on his own skin would keep him from getting hurt. Mike had made the same mistake when they’d met years ago, and it had been Jill who had softened him, working inside, worming her way into his heart.

Dylan had been along for the ride back then, breezy and fun, all about the party. He could sniff one out, or create a wild, fun scene with two people and enough beer and ganja. While Mike had needed someone to crack him open, Dylan had needed gravity. Someone to tether him.

Jill had been their touchstone, the keeper of truths and saver of souls.

Did Darla serve that purpose—that mission, really—for these two young fools in front of him? Who knew. None of his business, right? Laura was making it her business, though, to stick her nose into the younger threesome’s business, prodded by Josie.

Josie. Don’t even get him started. Bane of his existence and, somehow, also one of the best things to happen to Laura. Their friendship kept her going in ways he and Mike would never understand, so while he was grateful to Laura’s friend, did she have to be such an interfering pain in the ass?

“You afraid?” Dylan asked as silence reigned after Joe’s declaration that hell no, he hadn’t told his parents about his threesome.

“Yes.” The answer was instantaneous, almost involuntary, and Trevor jolted. Dylan bit back a wry grin. He knew that feeling, too. Partnering with someone who was so cagey and confusing, hard to read yet teeming with anger, and at the same time so…right for you…meant accepting that you were going to be shocked.

A lot.

Because you never knew what was coming next, and you expected negativity. The vulnerable moments were the ones you lived for, though—because that was where the other person’s heart showed itself.

And why you stayed.

“Good.” Mike’s voice was flat and even, warm and tempered. Like he knew he was talking to a spooked animal. That’s all Joe was. A spooked, naïve kid who was in way over his head for the first time in his life.

Same as he and Mike had been back when they’d come together with Jill.

“Good?” Joe scoffed, the mask descending like a trapdoor. “What do you mean, ‘good’? It’s good to be afraid of my own parents?”

“No, it’s not,” Mike said, pouring himself another coffee. His deliberate, steady motions were part of a general approach he was taking. “But it’s good to be realistic.” Anyone else wouldn’t catch the meaning behind Mike’s words, but Dylan did. On the surface, what he said was what he meant.

Underneath? He had experienced that fear, faced it, anyway, and his fears had come true.

“Why?” Joe’s single-word question shot out toward Mike like a bullet. Part challenge, part insistence, part threat, it made Dylan clench his hands instinctively, as if he needed to prepare for a fight.

“Why?” Mike pitched forward on his elbows, face tipped up and across the table, ocean eyes stormy and more blue than green, like a darkening epicenter in a Category 5 hurricane. “Because they may love you, but they also may turn you away if they can’t handle the truth of who you are.”

Joe slumped forward, chest heaving with the effort of continuing to breathe through Mike’s words. Dylan’s stomach dropped, half from watching Joe’s reaction and half from the memory of Mike’s dad and mom the day he told them the truth.

“It’s your biggest fear. Being rejected by your parents. The very people who set all the expectations inside you for how you conduct yourself through time and space as a human being.” Mike’s eyes softened. “I can see it now as we raise our daughter.” He gave Dylan a split second of eye contact, then rubbed his chin slowly with a sheepish look. “It’s so easy to plant in them the great paradox of parenting.”