It was hours before there was any sign of Jon. I laid there in the dark room beside Patrick, hoping that Jon would call or something, anything, just to let me know he was okay. Patrick dozed off but I stayed awake, staring at the ceiling until I heard the door downstairs click shut and I bolted upright.
Quietly, I got out of bed, trying not to disturb Pat, and ran as quietly as I could to the stairs. The only light on was in the foyer and I came to a grinding halt at the base of the stairs.
Jon stood in front of me, drenched head to toe and reeking of alcohol. “What did you do?” I whispered, afraid to touch him. “Where did you go?”
“I just drove,” he replied thickly. “I think I was in Queens for awhile. That’s probably where I left the car.”
Thank god he didn’t drive like this. “How did you get home?”
“Charles gave me a ride. I have no idea why I called him, but I did.”
I stood there awkwardly for a moment, unsure what to do next. When he didn’t move, I finally made up my mind and closed the distance between us. “Let’s get these off you.” I pulled at his jacket and let it fall to the floor heavily. “Come on, you need a shower or a bath,” I said as I pulled at his shirt.
Jon kicked off his shoes and I took him by the hands, leading him upstairs to the master ensuite. They did this for me all the time, provided the aftercare I needed, and it was about time that I repaid the favour. Jon was quiet but he let me strip him down and run a hot bath with my lavender epsom salts. Lavender is calming, and it will help him sleep. He wouldn’t look at me though; he had his gaze fixed resolutely on the floor and refused to meet my eyes no matter how much I begged him to just look at me once.
His clothing fell to the floor in sopping puddles, I kicked it away and made a mental note to get his jacket off the floor and get all his stuff in the wash before bed. Jon turned and I grabbed his hand, steadying him as he got in the bathtub. He sunk down into the hot water and I sat beside him on the window ledge, grabbing the bottle of shampoo and pouring some into the palm of my hand.
“Do you remember doing this for me at Plaisir?” I asked suddenly. “After Patrick said you could touch me again, and he let me sub drop? You washed my hair and told me you would make him come take care of me.” My fingers worked through his hair gently and slowly. “You’ve done it for me a lot.”
I had forgiven Patrick a long time ago, and while it was true that I had moved forward and gotten past it, the experience had changed our relationship irrevocably. He’d earned back my trust bit by bit, he’d changed when I needed him to, and we grew together from it. But Jon had been there, and he’d come and stayed with me after Patrick left, and I think that was the point where I knew I couldn’t have one or the other. Patrick was jealous and inexperienced and hurt me both emotionally and physically, and Jon was there to put the pieces back together. I told Patrick that Jon would never love me, and at the time I thought that was true.
Patrick wasn’t terrified of me being alone with Jon after that, he learned self-control and things healed between us. Now he didn’t have any jealousy towards the older man, and Jon had softened considerably for the three of us to be together. It worked. Whatever the hell we had done right had stuck and we could work together, and I knew in my heart that if Patrick hadn’t told Jon about the company that he wouldn’t have reacted this way. He would have been excited, I told myself as I washed his hair, he would have stayed.
The three of us played a game where we lied and held things back and hurt each other at every turn, but we only ever came back stronger. No matter the mind games we played or choices we made, there was nothing to keep us apart.
“You’ll love him more,” Jon mumbled. “He’s richer, and younger, and everything I’m not.” He tipped his head back and looked at me with wide, watery artic eyes. “You deserve to have that and I’m just holding you back…”
Oh, Jon… He could be mean, rude, callous, demanding, aggressive, and so much more but right now, all I could see was a terrified little boy that thought he was the problem. I ran my fingers over his cheek, through the wet tear tracks and prickly stubble, letting myself just revel at being able to touch him like this. I wanted you for so long, and I never thought you wanted me because I was just the dumb blonde that worked at your front desk. I never even thought I was in Patrick’s league; he was a womanizer that every woman in the office fawned over, both of them seemed wildly out of my reach and to hear them constantly talk about their luck with getting me was astounding. Hearing Jon tell me I deserved better just didn’t compute in my head.
How was I supposed to do better than him? How was I supposed to be with one and know I lost the other? We could do this, it wasn’t new, it wasn’t weird or wrong or anything else. It was unexpected, but what was the worst that could happen?
“I love you,” I told him honestly. “I don’t want you to go because I need you, after everything we’ve gone through, after everything you put me through, I think I deserve that.” Every lie, every time they withheld things, every time they thought they were doing something that would be good for me and turned out worse – I could have left, I should have left. I didn’t though, and I wasn’t about to let him go now, like this, when I knew he could do this with us. I leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth. “Daddy, I love you,” I whispered against him. “I want people to know that I love you, I don’t want to hide it.”
“You’re marrying him,” he said, shaking his head. “You chose him—”
“No,” I interrupted. “I didn’t choose anyone. We can get married too, we can make this work.”
He laughed loudly and rubbed his face with wet, soapy hands. “Polygamy isn’t legal here, dove. That won’t fly.”
“It’s called a commitment ceremony.” I moved to the floor and knelt beside the tub. “It’s not legal but it doesn’t need to be either.”
He turned to look at me, his eyes were dark and sad. “Why would you do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’ll make things harder, you know that. You know it will hurt Patrick.”
I shook my head adamantly. “I love Patrick like I love you, Patrick cares about you too. You know that, you can’t pretend like you don’t want to be without both of us.”
I didn’t care if they had sex with each other, I didn’t care if they loved each other, because in the end it made it easier for all of us. But I did have a problem if they chose to act like they just tolerated each other. Patrick relied on Jon; he was the person he opened up to when we got back from Poland, Jon trusted Pat to be his confidant during the divorce – whether they wanted to acknowledge it or not, they cared for each other one way or the other.
“You love Pat too,” I said quietly. “Even if it isn’t romantically, you still care about him.”
Jon didn’t say anything, instead he reached out and caught my chin. I leaned forward at his urging and kissed him, Jon’s arms wrapped around my waist and he pulled me against the tub to him.
“Why do I love you?” he murmured against my lips. “Why can’t I walk away from this?”
I knotted my fingers into his wet hair and held him to me, letting my tongue delicately trace the curve of his lips. I don’t know why he loved me, I knew why he wanted me in the beginning; I was young and flirtatious and overall, willing. Patrick wanted a relationship with me from the beginning, Jon just wanted sex. It didn’t surprise me that Jon felt like he needed to second guess us when our relationship had gone from zero to one hundred in what felt like minutes.
“I don’t know,” I answered as I pulled away slightly. “But I don’t want you to go, I need you.” I placed his hand on my stomach and held his gaze. “We need you.”
“It could be his—”
“He’s ours,” I interrupted sternly. “Yours, mine, and Patrick’s, and no one is going to convince me otherwise.”
Jon smiled faintly and for once, he looked excited. “He?”
I nodded and looked down at our hands over my stomach. Him. William. I’d heard once upon a time that mothers were never right when they speculated on the sex of their baby, but that didn’t bother me – this was my little boy until proven otherwise. And even if he is a she or a they, I’ll love them all the same.
“It’s too early to tell, but that’s how I feel,” I told him with a shrug. “Please stay, Jon, let us try and do this for real – publicly and honestly.”
“You know you want to stay, not just for her.”
I jumped at sound of Patrick’s voice and turned around to see him leaning against the doorjamb. He lounged there with his bright red boxer-briefs sitting low on his hips and drawing my eyes down the happy trail.
“Did you come in here trying to seduce her or make me feel better?” Jon asked dryly.
Pat shrugged. “You both like my dick, I figured it would make everything a little easier.”
I mean, he wasn’t wrong. Jon laughed suddenly and I jolted, my hand coming up over my heart at the sound. His laughter filled the room and I couldn’t hold back my smile at the sound of him letting go. A moment later and Patrick came to join me beside the bathtub and helped get Jon cleaned up. The three of us sat there for a while, just talking and enjoying the company. I think Jon knew it automatically that Pat wasn’t taking the position, and the two of them joked around easily, all animosity forgotten.
A while later, we climbed back into bed and got comfortable. Patrick pulled me back against his chest and I grinned as I looked back at him. “It’s a girl,” he whispered. “Our own little girl.”
“Wrong.” I shook my head vehemently. “It’s a boy.”
“Have you thought of any names?” Jon asked suddenly. He came over and sat between legs facing us. “Either way I mean, have you had names thought of before now?”
He would be William, after my dad, the middle name was up for debate though. “It’s a secret,” I answered finally. “What are we going to do about last names though?” That was the hard part.
Jon and Pat looked at each other for a moment before turning their attention to me. For whatever reason, I blushed under their gazes and quickly looked down at my stomach again.
“You’re going to take my name when we get married, aren’t you?” Pat asked.
Lydia Rosing. It had a nice ring to it, but if I was completely honest I was going to miss my own name. “I might hyphenate,” I told him reluctantly. “I really hadn’t thought about that yet.”
“Are you still thinking of taking Aleksy’s name?” Jon interjected.
What? Since when? I twisted in Pat’s embrace to see him better and a slight flush crept up his neck.
“It was just a thought,” he admitted while refusing to meet my gaze. “He and I had talked about it a little bit before he…passed.” The last part came out uncertain and I realized that no matter how well Patrick was holding up in front of me, he was still grieving for his father too.
Patrick Jarosz. Lydia Jarosz. That’s not my name, I thought sadly, it means nothing to me. “We can sit on it a while longer,” I told him. “There’s nothing that needs to be done right now.”
“No,” Jon agreed. “But there is something we need to talk about.”
The elephant in the room. I knew that no matter what we all said, paternity testing was important because Jon’s family had a history of heart disease and Patrick’s grandparents both had cancer on his mother’s side. I didn’t know anything about my family; Danielle was a teenage runaway and my dad was kicked out at seventeen when Danielle told him that she was pregnant. My medical history was completely unknown…
“We can get the test around the end of the month,” I said, making sure to look at them both. “Dr. Auyeung can tell us more when we go again, but she said I’m about close enough to do non-invasive paternity testing.”
Jon nodded, pulled himself up to the head of bed and stretched out. I yawed and rolled off Patrick so I was laying between them. He smiled and slid down to lay with us before pulling the blanket up. Jon wrapped his arms around my waist and cuddled up behind me while Patrick made himself comfortable as my pillow.
The room was dark and quiet, save for the sound of Patrick’s heart next to my ear and Jon’s slow, rhythmic breathing. I could still smell the beer on him and the fear that manifested that drove him away and toward drinking. I closed my eyes and held their hands, my fingers lacing tightly through theirs. This is my family now. Our family. It was everything I had ever wanted, now we just had to reach the finish line.