Theirs to Keep

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.

The hope that had sprung in the last little while had started as a slow trickle that she kept a very tight rein on. She’d feared getting ahead of herself.

But now it was all out there. It was impossible to misunderstand their intentions. They wanted her. Both of them. And God, she wanted them too.

Cade touched a finger to her cheek and tenderly traced the lines of her face, landing on the fullness of her lips, until it was all she could do not to swipe her tongue over the tip.

“A lot of what Merrick said is exactly how I feel. Maybe I fought it more than he did in the beginning because I couldn’t wrap my head around how we could possibly make it work. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take the ultimate commitment from all three of us, and we’ll have to work three times as hard as a couple in a traditional relationship.

“But with that said, once I stopped fighting it and allowed myself to say…what if? It was freeing. I began to think of the possibilities. I thought of how happy that I know we can make you. If you’ll just give us that chance,” he ended softly.

“But will I make you happy?”

“You already make us happy,” Merrick said.

Cade leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I understand why you feel the way you do, honey. I get it. I really do. I know we didn’t meet under the best circumstances. I know you have a lot of fears and insecurities over not knowing what’s in your past, and I know you worry that you’re a burden to me and Merrick and that somehow we’ve got it all screwed up in our heads, that we’re suffering some kind of savior complex, and that’s why we’re so into you.”

She blinked, unable to even respond to that.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

Slowly she nodded. “That’s about it in a nutshell.”

“Put it out of your mind,” Cade said, as blunt as Merrick had been just moments earlier. “It’s not remotely true. You’re here with us because we want you here. There are a number of agencies we could have turned you over to. Hell, we could have just called the police and washed our hands of you months ago. But we didn’t do any of that because we want you here with us, and we’ll do damn near anything to persuade you that it’s where you need to be.”

She smiled then and reached up to take his hand, squeezing for all she was worth. “I don’t know if it’s where I need to be, but it’s where I want to be.”

“Good enough for me,” Merrick said. “Now, I vote we stop rehashing this so we stop making ourselves crazy, and we go out and do something fun today. The weather is beautiful. It’s warm, and the sun is shining.”

“Oh, that sounds great,” she said in a wistful tone. “But what about your workout? Shouldn’t you be leaving?”

The sun wasn’t even up yet. It was routine for them all to rise early so Merrick could run and be at the gym by sun up. He put in several hours on the mat, and then he’d go into the office to help Cade. In the evenings, he ran again and worked on conditioning.

Merrick leaned forward to kiss her, his lips cold from the shake he was drinking.

“Tell you what. Let me get my morning workout over with, and then we’ll go do something together. Just the three of us.”

“The local park is beautiful. Has a great lake where ducks gather to be fed. I could pack us a picnic lunch, and we can hang out in the sun. Bring a jacket, though. There’s still a nip to the air,” Cade advised.

Spring was slowly struggling to make its presence known in Grand Junction. Autumn chill had come quickly in October, as she’d well known because it had been when she’d dragged herself from the Colorado River to collapse on the bank.

It was plenty cold here, and she knew enough about the new Elle to know she wasn’t used to the colder, drier climate in Western Colorado. Wherever she had come from, the temperatures were much warmer. The question was, how had she ended up here. And why?

She shook off the lingering worry and fear, determined to move forward, out of the shadows.

“That sounds great,” she said, injecting the proper amount of enthusiasm into her voice.

And it was perfect. She’d get to spend the day with Cade and Merrick. She’d become fiercely dependent on the comfort and support they offered. They were her security blanket. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, she knew she wouldn’t be where she was right now emotionally if not for the two men who’d taken her in and helped put her back together.

“Here, eat your breakfast,” Cade said, handing her a plate with scrambled eggs, a blueberry muffin and bacon. “When we’re done eating, we’ll head down to take in Merrick’s workout and then we’ll come back so he can get showered and changed. I’ll work on getting us something packed for lunch.”

She relaxed, enjoying the simple routine they’d fallen into. Breakfast together in the mornings. Merrick’s workouts in the gym. The office during the week and then evenings together with Merrick and his conditioning team and workout partners.

No, she hadn’t ventured out much on her own. Yet. But she’d get there. She had every confidence that with Cade and Merrick’s support, she’d regain her confidence and her certainty of her place in the world.

In a perfect world, she’d be able to do all of that on her own. She wouldn’t need anyone to assert her independence. But everyone needed someone at some point, right?

She had no knowledge of the person she’d been before. The person she couldn’t remember. She’d like to think that she hadn’t always been this needy, insecure, clingy person she was now, and it was her hope that she could somehow find the old Elle and shed the hesitancy with which she approached everything now.

At other times, she acknowledged that she was being too hard on herself, and that given what she’d endured and God only knew what else she didn’t know about, it was no surprise she wasn’t ready to light the world on fire and seize the day.

“Time,” she whispered. “I just need time.”

“What’s that, baby?” Merrick asked.

She blinked and looked up at him and then smiled at the concern brimming in his dark eyes. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just something I needed to remind myself of.”

Cade settled down on her other side, his plate piled high with food.

“Whatever it is you were worrying yourself over, let it go,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I’m trying,” she returned softly. “I really am.”

“Good,” Merrick said in his gruff voice. “Let’s just enjoy the day, and tomorrow will take care of itself.”