“Can we help you do something else?” Grace asked.
He shrugged. “Picking up tools, I guess.”
When they finished helping him do that, they started to head inside, but Emma stopped and turned to him when she realized he wasn’t following them. “Why don’t you go rest?”
“I will in a little while. I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but resting and it’s not helping.”
* * * *
In the dining room, Brandon was on his laptop and going over reports for work when Grace and Emma walked in. Emma tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow her and Grace out to the lanai.
There, she kept her voice low. “Jeff’s not getting better. Have you seen how bad he is? When we came in, he was just standing there in the garage staring at the Edsel. Like he’d forgotten what he was going to do.”
Brandon felt torn between not wanting her to have to parent the adults in her life, and grateful she was as observant as she was. Especially since he’d suspected Jeff was putting on a good front for them in the evenings, trying to pretend he wasn’t having as much trouble as he really was.
“Thanks, honey. I’ll talk to Stuart and figure out what to do. Let me know if you see anything else.”
Once the girls had returned to the house, Stuart stepped through the sliders from the master bedroom. “What’s going on? What was that about?”
Brandon told him.
“So what now?” Stuart asked.
Brandon ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”
And that frustrated him most of all, that he couldn’t take care of his guy, the one thing Brandon had promised he would always do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Stuart was glad he’d beat Jeff home on Monday. Grace and Emma had gone over to Tracey’s after school to spend time with her and eat dinner there. It allowed him some alone time with Brandon.
To talk.
He found him cleaning the pool filter in the backyard.
“Hey. Didn’t hear your truck.” Brandon sat up to get a kiss from him.
“Can we talk, Brandon?”
He frowned. “This sounds serious.”
“It…is.”
“Are you all right?”
“No.” He settled on the ground next to Brandon. “I want you to marry Jeff.”
Brandon’s blue gaze intently studied him for a long moment. “Why?”
“Because Jeff’s going to have to stop working. You and I both know that, even if he’s refusing to see it. He might get ‘better’ at some point in the future, but right now, he’s barely functioning. It’s been four weeks. The extra stress on him isn’t helping, it’s just making him worse, and he won’t get the IV line he needs for the meds because of working. You have good health insurance. Better than I do. You marry him and put him on your insurance. That way…” He took a deep breath. “That way you can order him to stop working.”
“I promised you guys I’d never interfere with your jobs. That was one of our ironclad rules when we first started dating.”
“I know, but he’s not facing reality. You heard what Emma said. Jeff’s in denial about his condition. He’s not getting better. He’s getting worse, and it’s not only hurting him physically, it’s killing him mentally and emotionally. Order him to marry you and stay home. Tell him he can be a stay-at-home house elf for us or something. I’d rather we lose his income so he can focus on taking care of his health. You know I’m right. If he does finally get better, he can go back to work. Or order him to ask for a different job or something, anything.”
Stuart didn’t interrupt Brandon while he pondered all of that. “You’d really be okay with me marrying him?”
“Absolutely. Especially in a case like this.” He reached for Brandon’s hand and held it in both of his. “It’s killing me seeing how much pain he’s in every day. We’re losing him. He comes home, sleeps. Forces himself out of bed every morning. Even on his days off he can barely function. He’s in a lot of bad pain. Please? I love both of you, but I can’t stand seeing him do this to himself.”
Brandon pulled him in for a hug. “You’re a good boy, you know that?”
Stuart melted against him. “I didn’t do this to hear that, but thank you, Master.”
“I know.” Brandon stroked his hair, not releasing him from their embrace. “But I wanted you to hear that.” He finally sat back, cupping Stuart’s face with his hands and giving him a kiss. “We are the two luckiest guys in the world to have you as our husband.”
His heart skipped a beat. “Husband?” Sure, he knew Brandon had felt that way, but it was still nice to hear.
“So what if it can’t be on a piece of paper? That’s how I feel about you both. You’re my husbands. This is way more than Master and slave stuff to me. I’m here for life. I wouldn’t have moved you in that night the tree fell on Jeff’s place, Emma’s orders or not, had I not felt ready to spend the rest of my life with both of you. And I wouldn’t have collared you, either.”
“Thank you, Master.”
Brandon let out a sad sigh. “Let’s do this tonight before Emma gets home. I’d rather she not be here, because I know Jeff’s not going to react well to this.”
“Agreed.”
* * * *
Jeff gave serious thought to calling Brandon, Stuart, or even Emma, to come pick him up from work.
He hurt that bad.
How am I going to keep doing this?
The doctor told him they couldn’t give him an estimate of if, or when, the pain would ease up. That it was possible he might be in some level of pain for the rest of his life.
That if he didn’t give in and let them try an IV port for the meds he might not improve at all.
But if he didn’t work, he couldn’t pay for his health insurance, which was paying for his medications and his doctor visits.
If he didn’t have the IV medicine, it was likely he might never beat the disease attacking his body. Unless he was somehow lucky enough, after a couple of years of fighting for it, to qualify for disability.
This fucking sucks.
After sitting there for ten minutes, he finally decided to go for it. Taking it easy and driving below the speed limit, he carefully worked his way home. Took him twenty minutes longer than it usually would, even with the traffic being light.
Brandon’s car and Stuart’s truck sat parked in the driveway when he pulled in, but Emma wasn’t home yet.
Maybe that’s for the best.
He hated her seeing him like this, because she would always go into mother hen mode. She was a kid. She shouldn’t have to parent him. She already had one fuck-up as a parent, although to Tracey’s credit, she had turned things around by divorcing Pat.
Still, it was his job to help take care of Emma.
Em shouldn’t be responsible for taking care of him.
When he walked in, he smelled something delicious. He didn’t even have time to call out he was home before Stuart swooped in from somewhere to gently hug him. “Welcome home.”
“Hey.” That was something else he hated, how Stuart and Brandon now treated him like he was fragile. “Dinner smells good.”
“Pot roast. You’ve got time to take a shower.”
Brandon emerged from the master bedroom, looking like he’d just had a shower. “Hey. Thought I heard you. How you feeling?”
Lying was forbidden, but he didn’t want to tell them the truth. “I’m vertical.” The men followed him to the master bedroom, where he started stripping.
“We need to have a talk,” Brandon said, catching Jeff’s hands and making him look at him. “Stuart and I have already decided this, so it will happen. I’m going to marry you.”
Brandon could have slapped him in the face and it wouldn’t have stunned him more. “What?”
“Marry. You and me.”
He sank to the end of the bed. “Why?”
Brandon, still holding Jeff’s hands, knelt in front of him. “Because you need to go
on my insurance.”
“I have insurance through work.”
“Correction—you will have to go on my insurance because you’re going to quit working because you’re going to get the IV drugs.”
“You’re serious?”
“We both are. The only other option you have is to ask that they transfer you into something other than being a service tech so you can get the IV port. If there’s even an available option. Like service writer. Or sales.”
“I’m not a salesman. I’d suck at that. And I don’t know if there’s any openings for a service writer.”
“Fine. Then you’ll stop working and focus on getting better. Your job will be doing as much as you comfortably can around here and healing. When you reach a point you can go back to work, and the doctors clear you to go back to work, then we’ll discuss it.”
Jeff wanted to feel happy about this, but he couldn’t. If anything, it made him feel worse. “I won’t be pulling my weight around here financially.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Stuart said. “You killing yourself trying to work doesn’t help us, either. Especially if you push yourself to the point you’re back in the hospital again. Nobody wants that. We love you, and we want you with us for life. That means you have to take care of yourself and let us help take care of you.”
“This sucks.”
“Would you be feeling like this if it was cancer?” Brandon asked. “What if it was me in your position? Or Stuart? How would you feel?”
“That’s different.”
“No, it’s not,” both men said in unison. “It’s no different,” Brandon continued. “You’re just stubborn.”
“We get it,” Stuart said. “But what you aren’t getting is we love you and are worried about you.”
“Emma ratted you out,” Brandon said. “She saw how bad you were doing out in the garage when she and Grace were helping you with the Edsel.”
* * * *
Brandon stood and walked over to his dresser. They each had an “off-limits” drawer in their respective dressers, where, unless someone had permission to go into it for some reason, no one snooped. This was for privacy, and Brandon had always honored that.
A couple of weeks ago, he’d tucked away a jeweler’s box in his.
It was this box he now retrieved before he returned to the men. Then he pointed at Stuart, and the bed, to sit next to Jeff.
Once Stuart did, Brandon again dropped to one knee before them, opening the box. Inside, the three matching wedding bands he’d purchased for them. He’d planned to schedule a weekend alone for them and “propose” to them then, maybe take them over to the beach and do it there.
This was before he’d realized they’d have to do something more permanent for Jeff.
He took Stuart’s out first and slipped it onto his left ring finger. “My sweet beta boy, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I know you won’t have the piece of paper, but will you still marry me?”
Blinking back tears, Stuart eagerly nodded. “Yes, Master!”
Then Brandon took out Jeff’s ring and slipped it on his left ring finger. “I promised when I collared you both that I would take care of you. Right now, the best way I can take care of you is to legally marry you and put you on my insurance, because you have to stop working and focus on healing. I love you, and want to spend the rest of our lives together. Please marry me.”
Tears rolled down Jeff’s cheeks. “Yes, Master.”
He rose and kissed Stuart first, then Jeff, before sitting on the end of the bed on Jeff’s other side. Then he and Stuart hugged him. “You’re a stubborn, proud guy. We get it, you want to pull your weight. But what you forget is we need you. You healthy and safe and healing is what we need, not you killing yourself. Didn’t you agree to be mine?”
Jeff sniffled. “Yeah.”
“Okay, then. What we want—what I want as your Master—is for you to stay home. Deal?”
Jeff nodded. “Deal.”
Brandon palmed Jeff’s cheek and made him look him in the eyes. “For life. I meant it. For better and worse, sickness and health, all of that.”
He rested his forehead against Brandon’s. “I almost called one of you to come get me today when I left work. I wasn’t sure I could even drive.”
“Dammit,” Stuart said. “Why the hell didn’t you call us?”
But Brandon got it. He slowly rocked Jeff as the man started sobbing in his arms. “I hate feeling like this. I feel useless and weak.” Stuart pressed himself along Jeff’s back.
“Cry it out, buddy,” Brandon said. “That’s why we’re here. This is why you gave yourself to me, remember? I can’t fix this, but I can take care of you. Both of us can. I need you to give them notice tomorrow. Forget transferring to a different position. We’ll get the license in the morning before I go to work, and get married this weekend. I’m sure Loren will do it for us. And you’re officially under orders from this point forward to not hide how you’re feeling from us. If you need help, you must ask. Otherwise, I’ll cane Stuart’s ass for it.”
“Hey,” Stuart joked, but he didn’t safeword.
It did, however, have the effect Brandon hoped and pulled a snotty, ragged laugh from Jeff. “Yes, Master. Thank you.”
“Thank him? Hell, thank me. It’s my ass on the line now.” When Stuart lifted his head from where he’d been pressed along Jeff’s back, he wore a playful smile.
Chapter Twenty-Four
This wasn’t exactly the wedding day Jeff had envisioned for himself, but he’d take it.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty that Brandon and Stuart had decided he should be the one Brandon married simply because of his stupid body.
Warring with that, the infinite love he felt for both of them for deciding based on that, because they loved him and cared about him. Selfless, both of them. He knew he could never do enough to show them how much he loved both of them for it.
They were having it there at the house for both expenses and logistics. Nothing fancy, but when Emma had taken over the arrangements with help from Tracey, Grace, Faith, Loren, June, Cali, and others, none of the three men had the heart to stop them, much less get in their way.
For now, Jeff stood in “his” bedroom, staring at the mirror over the dresser. There wasn’t a theme so much as there was a mood, casual vibe, the men all wearing matching button-up short-sleeved shirts with classic cars emblazoned on them, and khaki shorts.
He’d heard rumors about the decorations and cake having a similar theme, but since all three of them had been banned from the lanai and backyard since that morning, he didn’t know for sure.
Someone tapped on his bedroom door. “Come in.”
Emma peeked in, smiling. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Why’d I have to hide, again?”
She opened the door wider. “Because you’re the bride, duh.”
“How’d I become the bride?”
She planted her hands on her hips and tipped her head exactly the way Brandon did. “Are you seriously going to tell Dad he’s the bride?”
“Fair enough. Let’s do this.”
His parents, Iris and Calvin, and Sylvie were all there, too. Iris and Sylvie especially had felt horrible when they’d learned about his Lyme disease diagnosis, but he didn’t blame them for him contracting the disease.
Shit happened.
Sometimes, bad shit happened to good people, or while trying to do a good deed for someone.
He’d have enough struggles trying to overcome this without adding extra mental baggage that had no place in his life.
Jeff knew the guest list was around thirty-five people, but on their lanai it felt like more than that. Next week they were going to have a kinky reception at Cali, Max, and Sean’s house, and had invited people to that who couldn’t be here today, or whom they’d excluded from today for the sake of space and trying to keep it simple.
Brandon had told them to keep their rings on. Now that they were on, he only wante
d them taken off for work, and then they could wear them on their day collar around their neck.
Well, Stuart could. Jeff wouldn’t have much reason to remove his for a while, unless he was working on the Edsel or something.
They stood together, Brandon in the middle, Stuart on his right, and Jeff on his left, both men holding hands with Brandon and each other.
Loren smiled. “I hear we’re dispensing with the ring exchange portion of the ceremony?”
Brandon nodded. “Efficiency.” The smell of whatever Bill was grilling wafted through the air, making stomachs growl. “And I’m hungry.”
“I’ve had a special request,” Loren said before looking past the men. “Who gives these men away?”
Emma and Grace stood behind them, their arms around each other’s waists. “We do,” they echoed, grinning.
“Well, and Jeff’s parents,” Emma added, pointing to them. His dad smiled and waved, cracking Jeff up.
Jeff tipped his head over onto Brandon’s shoulder as Loren spoke, his mind drifting. Tracey and Faith were taking video for them, and Cali was once again manning a camera, so he could watch it all later.
Never in his life had he dreamed he’d be this happy in a relationship. Especially with two men.
He’d hoped to one day get married, but then when they’d formed their triad he’d let that slip to the side, knowing it was the structure, not the title, that was important.
This was real. This was life.
This was happening to him, with the men he loved.
He perked up when she reached the important part. “Do you, Stuart, take Brandon and Jeff as your husbands, to love, honor, and obey, as long as you all shall live?”
Stuart was crying, but the beaming smile on his face completed the story. “I do.”
“Do you, Jeff, take Brandon and Stuart as your husbands, to love, honor, and obey, as long as you all shall live?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“Do you, Brandon, take Jeff and Stuart as your husbands, to love, honor, and cherish, as long as you all shall live?”