He vibrated against her, so much nervous tension leaving him in waves that she shook with it.
She waited until he loosened his hold before drawing away so she could capture them both in her view. What she had to say next made her just as nervous, perhaps more so simply because she ventured into the unknown. Into the black hole of her past, a giant, yawning abyss that frightened her just thinking about it.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Merrick asked gently. “What are you thinking?”
She inhaled sharply through her nose. “I don’t know what I can give you…physically. You both know what happened to me. I know what happened to me. And yet I can’t remember it. I’d like to say that since I can’t remember it, it can’t hurt me, but I’m nervous and a little scared. Not of you,” she rushed to say. “Never of you. But my mind is already obviously protecting me. Who’s to say what else might happen if those barriers are breached?”
Cade pressed another kiss to her temple and then carefully smoothed her hair behind her ear with coaxing gestures.
“We aren’t in a hurry, honey. We’ve got all the time in the world. What do you say we take it one day at a time. See what each day brings and face it together.”
She relaxed, breathing in a huge sigh of bone-melting relief. “I say that’s a wonderful idea.”
Merrick leaned forward to touch his lips to hers. “Cade’s right, baby. We’ve got nothing but time. We’ll get there. But for now, all we want is you with us. No guilt for taking anything we give you. No hang-ups over letting us take care of you. We’re working as a unit. Together. Just the three of us.”
She smiled and nodded her acceptance. “You’ll let me continue helping out in the office and come to the workouts?”
“Hell yeah,” Cade was quick to say. “I like having you there with us. I sure as hell don’t want you going to work for someone else.”
At the very mention, Merrick scowled, his face going dark. “Of course I want you with me. You’re part of this. Part of us, Elle. I like having you there when I finish. I like seeing you sitting there outside the ring. But I want you there as mine. Not pretending to be with Dallas. I want you to be mine. Which means, hell no, as Cade said, we don’t want you working anywhere else. Call us selfish, but we want you with us, with one of us, at all times.”
She laughed, her heart soaring. “I have no intention of working for anyone else. How could I anyway? I have no driver’s license. No birth certificate. No Social Security number. I officially don’t exist.”
Cade sobered. “Eventually we’re going to have to conduct a thorough investigation into your past, honey. You need to know that. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to find out who you are.”
She went silent but nodded slowly. “I know,” she finally said. “Maybe one day I’ll be ready. For now, I just want to be…happy…and not worry about what lies in my past or what scary thing lurks around the corner.”
“I think we can arrange that,” Merrick said, his lips easing into a smile. “Now what about that yummy dinner you promised us?”
She laughed. “Is that all you ever think about? Food?”
He pretended to give it careful consideration. Then he grinned. “Yeah, pretty much. Sex and food. That’s it for most guys, baby.”
Her heart lightened. Cade relaxed against her. The awkwardness was over, and perhaps now the hard part began. Making it work. Pushing it from the realm of fantasy and fiction into real life.
Could they make such a relationship work in reality?
There was only one way to find out.
C H A P T E R S E V E N T E E N
WHEN ELLE WALKED INTO THE kitchen the next morning, she felt self-conscious, and it was automatic to be shy and reserved instead of finding that comfortable routine they’d settled into over the last several months.
But things had changed. Yesterday, they’d taken a giant leap. She couldn’t say whether it was forward or not. Who knew what the future held? In order to effectively have a future, one had to embrace and come to terms with one’s past.
It would be so easy to shut her eyes, shake her head and refuse to allow any part of the past in. A huge part of her didn’t want to remember. She wanted to start over. In so many ways, her life had begun the day Cade and Merrick found her.
And it wasn’t to say that she had nothing or was nothing without the two men. But in those awful few days between the time whatever horrible thing had happened to her and when Cade and Merrick had found her, she’d been desolate and hopeless.
They’d given her strength. And faith that she wasn’t consigned to that fate forever.
She never wanted to feel the utter devastation that she’d endured when she’d awakened on the riverbank, cold and shivering, her mind a blank and filled with only one thing.
Terror.
“Mornin’,” Cade called out.
Merrick paused at the blender, where he was concocting his high-protein breakfast shake that he always drank before his morning workout at his gym. He stared at her, those eyes brooding but unerringly able to ferret out the slightest shift in her mood.
“What’s wrong?” Merrick asked bluntly.
Cade arched a brow, but he too was staring at her like he knew something was off.
She gave a slight grimace and trudged toward the table where she could sit and see both men.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just a little…” She pursed her lips and then frowned. “I’m not sure what I am, to be honest. But let’s face it. Yesterday was pretty heavy. I guess I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to do now.”
“Just because we laid out how we feel about you doesn’t mean that things change,” Cade said mildly.
She glanced over, and he’d turned to the side from the stove, his hip cocked against the edge as he held a spatula in his left hand.
“Logically, I know that. Or at least I think I do. I’m just afraid. Of so many things. Right now, I’m freaked out by my own shadow. It’s hardly a time to be contemplating a serious relationship. I don’t know why the both of you aren’t running like hell in the other direction. What could you possibly see in me?”
Merrick’s expression immediately grew stormy. Cade’s brow furrowed in a clear what-the-fuck manner, and she held up her hand to stop the inevitable blowup.
“I’m not being all woe is me here, guys. I’m not even saying it to garner sympathy or to build up my ego. I’m not even spouting a bunch of crap of how I’m not worthy, and you’re too good, blah blah blah. I’m being brutally honest here. I’m a complete and utter hot mess. I’m so twisted up that it could take years to untie all the knots. Why on earth would you put yourself through this? I’m genuinely baffled.”
Merrick’s face softened. He dumped the now-empty blender into the sink and then walked to where she sat, taking the chair next to her. He reached for her hand, twining their fingers together.
“How do you explain why the sun rises every morning? How do you explain the stars in the sky? How do you understand why no two snowflakes are alike? Some things just are, baby. And this is one of them. I can’t give you pretty, dressed-up answers that are so polished they don’t even sound sincere. I can only tell you that for me, it’s you. It’s always going to be you and nobody else. Fuck explaining it. I don’t need an explanation. I just need you.”
“Not that I can do near the job he just did with that oh-so-eloquent speech,” Cade said dryly. “But I’d like to put my two cents in at least.”
Her chest was so tight that she wasn’t certain she could take any more like what Merrick had just stunned her with. She was speechless. And her heart fluttered so wildly that she felt light-headed and dizzy. Drunk on sensation.