Blake stared out into the parking lot. Axel was stubborn, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about him. He knew that Axel didn’t like him. He’d made it very clear when he’d grabbed Blake’s arm yesterday, and said he didn’t like the stunt Blake had pulled to get Kayli on the boat. He’d gone on to make veiled threats if Blake made any moves around her, that he’d walk out with her and send hell down on him. Blake didn’t understand what Kayli saw in him. It still burned to hear her talk to him when he’d listened in while they were in the children’s room, and then later in the bathroom. Doyle had made sure to pipe in Kayli whenever he got a chance. He was always listening out for her.
She was confused, he knew, with so many people giving her attention. Axel had put a lot of pressure on her. Axel did make assumptions, even after she’d told him she couldn’t commit to anyone. Asshole. “So?”
“So that girl is either playing a very sick and twisted game with men’s feelings, in which case I might have to report her to...certain people or...”
“There’s nothing like that going on.” The last thing Blake wanted was for the Academy to start investigating her, or give them a reason to take her away. Not when he’d worked this hard to finally have a reason to get her to work with him. The words she’d said to Axel and the others echoed in his mind, though. If Liam could report her, could the others? Did she know? Maybe he needed to take her away from this Academy after all. “Just a misunderstanding.”
Liam closed his lips, tilting his head this way and that as he gazed out at other buildings nearby.
Blake froze where he was. Not wanting to talk about it might give even more reason for this Academy to investigate. It really was none of their business. He hadn’t really figured it out, the whole background of this Academy. The more he investigated, the more confused he’d become. Outside of Axel and his friends, Blake had a hard time picking out more Academy people to look in on, except for the small team at the high school, who were just a bunch of kids. They were straight-A kids, too, nothing in common with Axel and the others. He had no record of them ever being in touch with each other. It had been hard to even find out that the high school crew was Academy, except in emails Doyle had intercepted from a principal identifying them as such.
Maybe he could learn more about Liam and make a few friendly connections with him as an Academy member. Maybe if he opened himself up as friendly to them, someone outside of Axel’s team who wasn’t biased, to see what they were about. Maybe then he’d find out why this Academy seemed so interested in Kayli.
Blake changed gears. “But...but if you want to talk about...”
“Talk about what?”
Maybe he could start with what Liam had wanted to talk about. He seemed eager to discuss this multiple partners in a relationship thing. Might as well play along. Maybe if he sounded interested…
Not to mention, multiple boys was Kayli’s problem right now.
“There’s other men with your wife?” Blake asked.
“Other husbands,” he said. “They married her.”
“How many are there?”
“Three others,” he said. “Plus me. With her, it makes five in our family.”
“And are you... are the men...are they bi? Or something...”
Liam shook his head. “No,” he said. “We’re very much straight. We just all fell in love with one incredible woman, a woman I refused to let go. To be honest, I thought if I hung on long enough, if the others couldn’t handle it, at least I’d always be there in the end. But no one left; we’re still all together.”
“How do you handle it?”
“How do you handle any relationship?” he asked. “With what I do, I’m often gone. If she isn’t with me, she’s with the few people I truly trust in this world to protect her.”
“Does she need protecting?”
“Constantly.”
“From bad people?”
“These days,” he said, “often enough it’s from herself. It’s complicated.”
“She’s suicidal?”
“No, no. Not like you’re thinking. Well, unless you call volunteering to jump into the fire when she sees smoke, then yes. No, her problem is that her heart is too big. She says yes to anything and everything if it means helping someone else. She’d even run away from me if she thought she could do some good elsewhere.”
That sounded familiar. “And you can’t tie her up huh?”
“No, and I wouldn’t dare try. To be honest, the only thing I’ve discovered works is to join her.”
Blake tapped at the rail. “Join her?”
“If you love her,” he said, “you follow wherever she wants to go. As long as her path is the path you want to take. And if she does have other admirers, you need to find out what her intentions are early. Don’t let her play with your feelings. But...if her heart is split in two, and you still want to stand by her...” Liam pulled a card out of his wallet and passed it to Blake. “Call me.”
Blake held the card between his fingers. It had a listing for a nonprofit company. The location was in Charleston. “To be honest, I think she’s more confused than anything. You see, she’s kind of stuck in this assignment.”
“Yeah,” Liam said. “Sounds familiar to me. A place you can’t get out of? A bunch of guys looking in on one girl? Jealousy should drive them apart, but the more they fight, the more you want her?”
Shit. Blake didn’t like where Liam was going, because he could check off every single point right now. “Tell me it doesn’t always end in a multi-relationship like that.”
“You’d be incredibly lucky if it does,” he said. He stood straight, crossing his arms over his chest. It made his bulky body seem bigger. “We’re not some freak show. It’s the real deal. Nothing to be afraid or ashamed of.”
“I’m sorry,” Blake said. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like something…dirty. It’s just not exactly what I pictured for myself.”
“Life is never what you picture,” Liam said. He unfolded his arms, dropping the defensive stance. “Listen, here’s how she usually breaks it down for me. Did your parents have more than just you?”
“Yeah,” Blake said, although he mumbled it. He didn’t like remembering his brother.
“So, imagine if you have a kid, right?” Liam pointed at the rail. “Your parents don’t just have a second kid and take half the love from the first kid and give it to the other.”
Blake smirked at this, at how common it was for parents to claim they shared their love equally among their kids. “Don’t let your parents hear you say that.”
Liam shook his head and patted his hand on the rail. “It’s horse shit. That’s all I’m saying. You don’t get one kid, give that one a whole lot of love, and then have a second kid, cut that love in two and take away love from one kid to the second one. That’s not how it works. Love is not finite.”
Blake hadn’t considered that. Love hadn’t been on his radar too often in his life. He’d seen what love and relationships could do to men. He always thought he was smarter than that. He could see right through most girls he’d dated in the past. Sure, he’d gotten his heart broken when he was younger a few times. As he got older and people became more predictable, he discovered he could predict when a girl would start batting eyes, what she’d say while holding her hand out for his credit card.
Kayli was full of secrets and was never predictable. That fire, that glint of heat in her green eyes always drew him in. He’d tried to ignore it, telling himself she was trouble and not worth it. But she was.
“How does it work?” Blake said, pulling himself back to the conversation.
“Love doesn’t divide,” Liam said. “It multiplies. You may love a girlfriend and then lose that love eventually. You might love another one later. Does it mean you didn’t really love the first girl? No. It just happened at different times. For some people, it can happen at the same time for a couple of different people.”
“Like you and your family?”
; Liam nodded, his eyes darkening. “I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to claim her for myself, but doing that might have broken her at a critical time when she needed more than just me…and I needed more than just myself to keep her safe. Over time, I had to accept that her heart was too big for any one person, and after a while, I came to care about the others who cared about her. I never thought I would, but it turned out, she’s happier when we’re all getting along.”
Blake thought of Kayli, back on the ship in the bathroom, her wearing a towel while everyone watched her getting ready. Kayli’d had fun with it, something that Blake assumed was simply showing off or making a point. She’d smiled though, in a way Blake hadn’t understand at the time. At Liam’s words, he wondered now if there wasn’t something to it. Maybe she was happier when they could handle her in that way and started getting along. She certainly hated them fighting, enough to make her cry in his arms about it.
Blake sighed, looking up at the night sky. “That’s a lot to consider.”
“Maybe,” Liam said. “Give yourself some time. Maybe I’m wrong about this. I don’t know much about your circumstances. But I know if you didn’t give a shit about those other guys on the boat, you’d stay here with her and not jump in to help them again.”
Blake pressed his lips together, unwilling to admit that was exactly what he was thinking and why he wanted back on. Either that or that someone among them might have tried to kill him and he needed to find out who. Unless they had all been in it together, which he didn’t think was true, then the others might be in danger, too. And if he was wrong? Well they were all in trouble. Kayli would never forgive him if anything happened to those guys even if she was still struggling with her feelings.
Liam put his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot. He nodded toward the card Blake still held in his hands. “Hang onto that,” he said. “Give me a call if you have any questions. Or just want to give me hell about it later. I know you’re tired.”
“Are you leaving?” Blake asked.
“I’ll go get you some clothes,” he said. “And food, too. I think I saw a 24 hour mart on the GPS on the way here. And I’ll keep an eye out when I get back. There’s still a risk someone was listening to the conversation when Corey called in about you two missing. I’ll just watch over you until you figure out where you need to be.”
Blake nodded, turning toward the door, flipping the card between his fingers. He stopped, turning back to Liam. “Won’t your wife miss you if you stay too long?”
“She always does,” he said, and then he smiled. “But she’d kill me if I let anything happen to good people. And besides, the more she misses me, the more she loves me when I get back. She may have others around her all the time, but she says she always misses me when I’m gone.” He nodded his head at Blake and walked off the porch, heading to his car. He got in, turned over the engine, and rolled out of the lot.
Blake waited until he was gone before he went inside. He caught the outline of Kayli’s body under the covers, breathing slowly, a light snore. Her hair a mess with dried sand all over it.
He crawled in behind her, lying awake for a while, considering what Liam had said. He hated to admit it, but Liam had said something that stuck with him, something Blake thought to do.
He’d stick by Kayli. Maybe in the end, he would be the one left of all of them, and Kayli and he would be together. Could she be happy like that? Just the two of them?
Could he be happy if there was more than two?
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Books by C. L. Stone
The Academy Ghost Bird Series:
Introductions
First Days
Friends vs. Family
Forgiveness and Permission
Drop of Doubt
Push and Shove
House of Korba
The Other Side of Envy
The Healing Power of Sugar (November 2015)
The Academy Scarab Beetle Series
Thief
Liar
Fake
Accessory
Hoax (July 2016)
Other C. L. Stone Books:
Spice God
Smoking Gun
BONUS!
Turn the page for an exclusive sneak peek at Hoax, the next book in The Scarab Beetle Series
The Academy
The Scarab Beetle Series
Hoax
Book Five
Coming July 2016
Written by C. L. Stone
Published by
Arcato Publishing
HOAX
Blake Coaltar nudged my arm, waking me up. “Kayli. We should go,” he said. “We’ve got a ship to catch.”
When my eyes opened and the blur cleared, I spotted a clock radio on a side table, glaring three in the morning at me. I groaned, burying my head into the pillow, mumbling curses into it.
Blake touched my shoulder, and then I felt his lips kissing my skin. “Come on. You can sleep once we’re there.”
That felt good, but the rest of me was so out of it, so uncomfortable. My eyes didn’t want to open, but I moved to try to sit up. My long brown hair was clumped and dry, stiff like I’d used a ton of hairspray and teased it. My stomach and breasts were raw, the skin irritated. The bed was gritty with sand.
I was surprised to find myself partially naked, only wearing underwear. He must have removed the shirt I’d been wearing after...
I rubbed the grit from my dry and itchy eyes, looking around and realizing we were in a hotel room. Not a nice hotel room, either but one that was run down and reeked like smoke, probably the cause of my burning eyes.
How did we get here? And why were we getting up in the middle of the night?
I heard Blake get out of the bed beside me, his feet padding on the carpet as he walked around. He turned on the overhead lights. The orange glow was too bright for my sore eyes, but I focused on a dark corner until they adjusted.
When they did and I looked to Blake, I realized he’d slept naked next to me. I stared, tired as I was, at his nude form: butt and groin and hips. I imagined his own clothes had been full of sand. His sculpted shoulders and chest were covered in red patches of irritated skin. His hair was a mess, stringy with much of it stuck to his head. Looking at his face, he didn’t seem to be in any better condition than I was; his eyes were red, dark circles underneath.
Then he smiled in a way that made him look crazy like his hair.
I lifted my arm to my nose, smelling my skin. Salt and dirt. “Ew.”
“We don’t have time for a shower,” he said quietly. “We have to go.”
“Why?” I asked.
“We have to get back on the ship.”
The last couple of days slowly sank in. We’d spent less than a day onboard a ship called Lucienda. Ethan Murdock had asked us to lead a team to find out who stashed over two billion dollars his father had tucked away in secret accounts. He assumed other CEOs among his companies were part of the conspiracy. Our goals were to find out the truth, find the money, and settle things as quietly as possible.
After only our first day, Blake and I had been thrown overboard. We weren’t exactly sure who had done it. There were a lot of possibilities. Blake even suspected mutiny.
I couldn’t blame Blake for thinking that. The Academy guys, the people I’d brought onboard to help, weren’t happy he was around.
And then there was how complicated things had gotten between me and the guys. I’d been flirting with all of them. I hadn’t been honest with what was going on, avoiding their question
s about commitments and exclusivity.
They were criminals in their former lives. Had one of them been angry enough to throw me overboard? Had they all decided I wasn’t worth the trouble?
I tried to ignore that thought. I didn’t have any proof as to who it could have been although I couldn’t dismiss any of them. Axel hadn’t wanted me onboard in the first place. Raven had seemed okay with things, but could he have been holding back? Brandon had a temper, and had even attacked Blake before. And Marc...I’d been rather intimate prior to him finding out about the others. I wasn’t sure of his true feelings now, but could jealousy and anger triggered him to throw me overboard?
Blake walked over to me, bending forward. “You okay? Can you get up?”
And then last night, on the beach, Blake and I had sex. My thighs were a bit raw from the sand. I was sure there was more sand in parts of me that I needed to rinse out at some point.
I breathed in deeply through my nose and kicked the blanket away from my naked chest. I supposed he’d seen me nude before so I could forgo the modesty for now. My breasts were covered in sand and I started to flake some of it off.
“I know it itches,” Blake said, watching me. He reached over, touching my side, sliding his hand down and brushing away a clump of sand there. “But we need to hurry. I want to rinse, too, but maybe we should wait until we get on the boat.”
“That would be better,” said a voice by the door.
My whole body snapped awake, going rigid in shock. I covered my breasts and looked over my shoulder to check out who was at the door. It was only open a crack, but there was clearly a figure standing just outside. “If you two want to make it to the boat, we’ll have to be quick.”