Chapter Fourteen

Havermouth, Present Time

As Rhett finally released from within her, they stood staring, eye to eye. She swallowed hard. “Rhett, I…”

He cupped her cheek, his gaze softening and dropping to her lips before lifting. “Aislen,” he said quietly. “You are not like us. You don’t understand…”

“I have an appointment. We should discuss Aislen’s other lover before I have to leave,” Heath’s shadow fell over them.

Her head jerked his way. “What does who I sleep with have to do with you?”

Heath’s laugh was half a sneer and might have fooled her if there wasn’t an edge to it that spoke of… hurt. “Anything to do with you, has everything to do with us,” he shoved back from the doorframe and stepped back into the kitchen, obviously expecting that Aislen and Rhett would follow.

She pulled her dressing gown closed around her body, as Rhett closed his jeans, his hair falling over his face in a blatant attempt to avoid her eyes. She followed him into the kitchen, heading back that way, not out of obedience to Heath, but because staying in the hallway with Rhett was too complicated for her to handle without another four or five coffees.

In the kitchen, she had a very nasty revisitation of her parents facing her down five years before about the very same men who now dominated the space. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” she told them as she sulked into a chair at the dining table. Rhett sat opposite to her. “You have some nerve letting yourself in like this and…”

“It’s really very simple,” Heath interrupted.

“Yes, it really is,” she agreed. “Despite Rhett fucking me stupid in the hallway, the short and long of it is that I’m an adult now, and I’m not playing your fucked up, stupid sex games. I’m here until Saturday and then I am never going to set foot in this fucked up town again."

"You’re here until you sell the house,” Cameron said firmly. “You can’t sell the house before Saturday.”

“No. I’m here to clear the house so that the agent can sell it. I should have it stripped by Saturday, after which, I’ll hand the house over to the agent and go home.”

“You’ll leave before the house is sold?” Heath said as if the idea had never occurred to him.

“Well, I’m hardly going to hang around, am I?” She pointed out, but did not miss the looks that were exchanged between the three. “Look, guys,” she said slowly. “Admittedly, we didn’t leave things on the best of terms, or tied up in the nicest of bows… But what we had going was really fucked up, you realize that don’t you?”

She looked between them and swallowed hard. “Don’t you?”

Heath looked at Cameron, and then at Rhett. She saw Rhett nod slightly, as if agreeing to something. That Cameron did not nod wasn’t a sign of dissent, she thought, but rather that he had agreed previously, and Rhett had been the hold out. For Rhett to hold out against the other two meant that it was bad.

“Whatever the fuck you are scheming between the three of you,” she said warily, “un-scheme it. We’re not eighteen anymore. I’m not falling for your shit. What you did last time was fucked up in every possible way that it could be fucked up and took me years to recover from.”

Heath looked at his watch and grimaced. “I have to go,” he told Rhett and Cameron. “We will discuss this further tonight at home.”

“Have a good day,” Cameron said immediately, standing and putting his arms around him. Rhett did the same.

“How very domestic,” Aislen observed wryly.

Heath tugged down his waistcoat, his eyes on her. “You have never seen clearly what is right in front of you,” he said, and there was a crack in the ice, a flicker of anger. “You have always focused on what others see, not what is. Leave it for now,” he added, speaking to Cameron and Rhett. “There’s no point in going into it until after the funeral.”

He didn’t wait for their response, but strode down the hallway.

“You heard him, Rhett,” Cameron said.

“Why was it fucked up?” Rhett demanded, his eyes meeting Aislen’s for the first time across the table. “Why do you think that what we had was so fucked up that you didn’t come back afterwards? That it has taken your dad dying for you to come home?”

“Rhett,” Cameron murmured, reaching out to put a hand on Rhett’s thigh. “Heath said to leave it.”

“Rhett,” Aislen said softly. “How can you look at what happened between the four of us and not think that it was wrong? Just look at what happened at the river house that night… That was rape. That was… It was an assault. I went into that bedroom with you…”

“We are the Triquetra,” Rhett went on the defensive. “We do everything together.”

“There is a little thing called consent, Rhett,” she shoved up to standing. “I can’t believe I need to have this conversation with a twenty-four-year-old man. Surely you have encountered the concept of getting consent before sex.”

“It is different with us,” he snapped irritably. “We don’t do things the same way as humans do. We know… We just know…” He trailed off; his cheeks coloured.

“You know what?” She demanded.

“We know when we have found our mate,” Cameron finished, and they both jerked their heads to look at him. He shrugged slightly, lifting his eyebrows. “It is what it is,” he spoke to Rhett. “We know when we’ve found our mate, and that is just… it for us.”

“Alright…” Aislen struggled to translate what he had said into their situation until she realized what he had implied. “I’m not… I’m not your fucking mate,” she said, shocked. “I am not.”

“Told you we should have let it fucking be like Heath said,” Cameron’s annoyance flashed over his face, directed at Rhett. “She just doesn’t get us.”

“If we don’t talk to her, she’s never going to understand,” Rhett replied.

“Oh, she’ll understand. We’ll make her understand,” Cameron snarled into Aislen’s face, before shoving past and storming off down the hallway, the front door slamming behind him.

She swallowed hard, fear an ice pick between her ribs. “What does he mean?” She asked Rhett.

He rose to his feet. “They’re right,” he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “We’ll do it our way this time. Just,” he grimaced. “Don’t bring strays to your bed, Aislen, it pisses everyone off.”

“Rhett,” she stood and pivoted on the spot, tracking him to the kitchen door. “I’m a grown woman, and I’m free to do whatever the fuck I want, and whomever the fuck I want.”

He caught the doorframe in his hand, his knuckles bleaching. “That’s where you’re mistaken, Aislen,” he said quietly, but the words were growled nonetheless. “You are not free. You are ours. You have always been ours. And we will make you recognize it as the truth.”