“I… Maybe?” I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. Sighing heavily, I looked at him again. “And I know the solution is that we need to talk. Even if it’s an uncomfortable conversation.” Putting my glasses on again, I added a quiet, “I’m just afraid of how that conversation will end.”
“I know.” Max nodded. “But the sooner you talk to Aaron—to both of them—the sooner you can do damage control. The longer you let it drag out and fester, the messier it’ll be.” He gave my forearm a gentle squeeze. “Talk to them, Will.”
“Yeah, I…” I sighed. “I’ll do that. Thanks for the advice.” I gestured at his laptop. “You, um, probably have work to do. I’ll leave you to it.”
He made a face. “Ugh. Grading.”
Chuckling, I rose, and I clapped his shoulder. “It’s what we signed up for. Some of us were just smart enough to do it part-time instead of full-time.”
He muttered something in French, and I laughed again as I headed out of the coffee shop.
By the time I’d reached my car, though, my humor had faded. I started the engine, but I didn’t shift into gear. Instead, I stared out the windshield, trying to make sense of what Max had said and figure out what to do with that.
The things Aaron and I had started doing in the bedroom with Kelly were obviously good for Aaron, but what if this wasn’t good for us? I was close to Kelly. Closer than I’d intended to be. There was no pretending the same wasn’t true about Aaron and Kelly. The question was, how close were they?
And had we gotten in deep enough that if I asked Aaron to choose…
I closed my eyes and exhaled. I didn’t want to think about that.
But something told me it wasn’t a question I could avoid for much longer.
Thirty-Seven
Aaron
“Was Judge Townsend that much of a hardass today?”
“Hmm?” I looked up from staring blankly at my computer screen, and I found Tom leaning into my doorway. “What?”
His brow furrowed, and some of his amusement shifted to concern. He glanced down the hall, then came into my office and dropped into one of my guest chairs. “You’ve been a space cadet ever since you came in. Something happen in court this morning?”
In court? This morning? Had I been to…
Oh. Right.
I shook myself. “No, no. It was fine. Good thing, too, since my head’s not really in the game.”
“You don’t say.” He watched me, hands folded in his lap and head tilted. “Would I be wrong if I said this had something to do with your…” He flailed his hand as if he couldn’t quite come up with the right phrase, and he finally settled on, “Home life?”
“Am I that obvious?”
“To someone who’s known you as long as I have?” He nodded sharply. “Just a bit.”
“Damn. And here I thought I was being slick.”
“Nope. Sorry, counsel. Try again.”
I laughed halfheartedly. Sighing, I reached up to rub some stiffness out of my shoulder. It didn’t work. “Hell, I don’t even know what the issue is. Everything’s going great with the two of them.” I paused. “Maybe that’s the problem. I don’t know.”
Tom looked at me like I’d lost my ever-loving mind. “Everything’s going great, and that’s the problem? Huh?”
“It’s…” Exhaling, I sat back in my chair and racked my brain in search of some way to explain things. Maybe the fact that I couldn’t explain it should have told me it didn’t make any sense, but…it did. It honestly did. Just not in a way I could quite articulate. “Fuck. I don’t know.”
Tom’s expression shifted back to one of concern. “What’s going on?”
I thought about it for a long moment before I said, “I knew we’d get close to Kelly to some extent, you know? It’s kind of inevitable when you’re that intimate and have to trust someone that much.”
“Right?”
“Right, so… I mean I guess you were right. What you said after you saw the three of us together. We have gotten close to him. And not just…” I drummed my nails rapidly on the edge of my desk. “It’s not just in the bedroom. Like, not even close.”
“Yeah, it sounds like you guys have been spending a lot of time together even when you’re not…” He glanced over his shoulder as Kip, our paralegal, walked past my open door. Clearing his throat, he met my gaze. “You’ve been spending a lot of time together doing other things.”
I nodded. “We have. And in the moment,