CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MAV

I'm starting to agree with Gage that this fucking trip is cursed, because I feel like we've all been through the wringer since we left home on our travels. Just like him, I can't wait to get back there, and try to put things back on track, because I'm not letting this trip destroy us, and I'm not letting anyone fucking hurt our girls. Lucy bursts into tears after that call with her parents, and she gets sandwiched between me and Sebastian as we try to soothe her pain and calm her down. Honestly, I know they think we fuck for the sake of it, but you know what, sometimes sex and orgasms just fucking help a person's mood.

Gage sits down on the low table by the sofa and waits us out, being unbelievably patient while our girl cries her heart out. When she finally calms down to the occasional sniffle or soft hiccup, he catches our eyes and we both move back to let him at Lucy.

"I'm sorry, Gage, I don't mean to keep messing things up for us all. I promise that's it with my parents, and all I care about now is you guys and… and… where's Stella?" In the old days, we'd have assumed Gage had killed her, accidentally or otherwise, but these days we know that's not how he rolls with any of us now.

He takes Lucy's hand and squeezes it gently, again something we'd never have thought him capable of before this multi person relationship happened.

"Lucy, none of this is your fault, baby. I need you to go see Stella though, because she needs her girl, and I know she'll open up to you more than she will with me."

"Is she okay? Okay, never mind, you just said she needs me, so that answers that one. I'm sorry though, that I wasted all of our time coming here. I'm happy going back home whenever you guys are." She gives us all a grateful look and hurries out of the room.

Gage watches her leave, then turns to the two of us.

"Okay, real talk time. We may have two pregnant ladies, rather than one, but Stella's dealing with a whole lot of uncertainty and pressure she's putting on herself over it. Don't mention it to her until she tells you, because she's scared of jinxing it or something. Women, right?"

I open my mouth, and he holds up a hand. "We need to talk about something else while it's just us." Whoa, sounds serious, so naturally I try to lighten the mood.

"I'm still not gay, man."

Sebastian rolls his eyes, but Gage barely reacts.

"The whole marriage thing has shaken shit up for all of us, so here's my thoughts on it, and I was just gonna declare it and enforce it, but you guys are always calling me a dictator, so I'm trying something new." Wow, Gage really is growing. We wait for the bombshell he's clearly about to drop.

"I say we ask them both to marry us, but when I say that, I mean we're all fucking getting married, and it might not be legally recognized anywhere, but it'll matter to us. Before same sex couples could get married, they could have those civil partner ceremonies, and that's what we'll do. We can discuss if names change or anything, but the main thing we need to do is lock those two down, and make sure they know they don't get to leave us now. Especially not with our fucking babies in them. This is us securing forever, right? This is about us making sure nothing breaks up this family we've built, even if we piss them off in the process, and things get rough again for a while. I'm all in here, and I'm not fucking losing any of you. Got it?"

I fight the urge to lighten the mood because I struggle with this serious stuff sometimes, but I don't feel like it's the right time to tell Gage he still can't have my ass. The fact is that he's right, and we should have thought of this sooner. They want pretty rings, and they'll get them. They want a wedding, we'll give them a fucking wedding, but they'll have three grooms, and we're all marrying each other.

"Gage, for once, I think you have a great idea. I'm with you, brother."

"For once, you say, like all of this that we have wasn't already my great idea, asshole."

"I'm in too," Pretty Boy says, a solemn look on his face, while I'm still acting the fool. It's hard being me sometimes, because I know what the right thing is, but my mind fights it sometimes. This is the right thing though. Us. Our family. Locking our ladies down for good. Yeah, I'm ALL fucking IN.

SEBASTIAN

When I think back to what I originally planned, and compare it to what we have now, there's no way I'd want to go back. I've never had this, a proper family, a group of people who love me, and support me, and listen to me. Never underestimate how much it helps a person, just to fucking listen to them. It's not about advice or knowing the right thing to say. It's just about being in the moment, and letting that person talk. It looks like Gage is catching on to that more and more every day, because he clearly coaxed Stella into talking, even though he sent Lucy in to see her. It's obvious that the girls need each other for things like this, but they have us too. Always.

"Should we check on them?" Mav asks, about an hour after Lucy went in to speak to Stella. I think he's feeling what I am, and maybe what Gage is too. The longer they talk privately, the more we worry that while we're planning on making things permanent, they could easily be talking about doing the opposite.

"You know, if this was one of their books, the women played us just to get our sperm, and now they're going to disappear on us, taking our children with them." The second the words leave my lips, we all stand up as one, because if that could occur to a person to write it, maybe it could easily occur to a person to do it.

"It's bullshit, man, but now I can't not check on them. What if they climbed out the window or something."

"On the tenth floor?"

We all stop at the closed door to the bedroom they're in, but it's silent. Fuck. What if I'm not being such a dipshit after all? Gage carefully turns the door handle and eases it open slowly. What we find inside isn't what I had in my head, thank fuck. Our two ladies are fast asleep, wrapped around each other, and we just stand and stare for a moment. Do we leave them to sleep, or do we get up in there, and hold them? If we do that, do we risk waking them when they probably need that sleep? If we wake them, will it just lead to perversion as normal?

"Let's hold them while they sleep," I find myself saying, because clearly, I'm that asshole, and maybe I'm hoping for deviant sex right now.

Gage climbs onto the bed behind Stella as Mav moves up behind Lucy, and both ladies stir and sleepily open their eyes. Instead of it turning into what I expected, or for anyone to get pissed, the girls move apart almost in sync and reach for me.

At their urging, I crawl onto the bed between them, and sigh happily as they both fall asleep again, wrapped around me, with our other two men wrapped around them. If you look up a picture of perfection in the dictionary, this is what you should see. This moment right here .