Page 87 of Five Days

Landon coughed and swallowed audibly, drinking Callum down. He whimpered the sweetest noise I’d memorized as him coming, and I realized he’d found release hands-free as he often did when sucking one of us off.

We lay in a tangle of sweaty limbs, unmoving and eventually catching our breath. My softened dick slid from Callum’s ass, and he sighed as my spunk slipped from his hole and soaked the mattress beneath us.

“Did we make a mess?” he asked, his tone wrecked.

“Not enough we need to shower right away,” I assured him before kissing his hair.

“Good. Don’t want to move.”

Landon hadn’t shifted from the bed’s end, nuzzled against Callum’s groin, his hand clasping at my calf muscle.

The sweetly scented breeze drifted over our damp skin, but we weren’t in a hurry to pull apart. We still had another two weeks at the villa. This vacation compared to our first one together had been nothing but heaven where vulnerability made connecting that much sweeter.

Chapter 35

Zack

The day after we returned from Italy, we crashed at my place in Boston. We’d discussed our future living arrangements, and while it would have been an easier job moving me to Rhode Island, I wanted nothing to do with the state of my birth and all the pain I’d left behind there. I didn’t dig my feet in as an attempt to get my way, but thank fuck for selfless men who agreed without argument to relocate to Massachusetts.

We would eventually require more than a two-bedroom condo, considering Landon’s need for an office and all our combined gym equipment, but for now, we would make do. A home farther north would fit us perfectly, far enough from the city for some privacy like they’d had in Rhode Island but close enough to Boston and my volunteer work.

Both men committed to join me at the shelter on a weekly basis, giving us yet another thing to do together outside the house as a triad. They planned on teaching me how to spar, since my gym had a boxing ring, and I would help them both up their weight-lifting game.

The red-eye flight home had left us groggy and struggling to readapt to the time zone, and we had no intentions of rousing ourselves back to reality for at least forty-eight hours.

A local Rhode Island news website Callum browsed over a late breakfast changed our plans.

Malcom Briggs had passed peacefully in his sleep two days ago.

I felt nothing. No sense of loss or hint of grief over a grandfather I hadn’t known. Not even anger stirred over the reminder of his bitterness and hatred of my birth mother.

Even still, Landon and Callum both pushed me to attend the burial as a way of seeing that part of my life put to rest. Literally. I wasn’t sure if Malcom had ever spoken to his wife about my visit. I had no clue if she was aware of my continued existence or if she even cared.

I had all the family I needed, but I agreed to go and watch from a distance like some shady character in a movie hiding behind a gravestone in the hopes of going unnoticed.

No such luck.

The sun shone, and no long trench coat offered me obscurity. There was no mass of people to lose myself in, no faceless friends or colleagues to wonder over the man standing a few yards away. Malcom’s black casket glistened beneath rays from the blue sky as though he’d been blessed by a god I didn’t believe in.

Iona Briggs, my grandmother, was a tiny, raven-haired sprite. She appeared untouched by age, even though she had to be in her late seventies at the very least, considering Malcom’s eighty-six. Shoulders back and I was sure dry-eyed from what I could tell in the distance between us, she watched as they lowered her late husband’s body into the ground.

She stood alone.

And she wore a bright green dress that spoke of the newness of early spring rather than mourning.

As though feeling my stare, she lifted her focus off the box of death before her. Our eyes met and held.

My heart beat a little faster, and I contemplated turning and walking away—until she smiled, her face flooding with happiness. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she hurried toward me, the lowering casket seemingly forgotten.

I stood rooted in place, unable to move. Not that I wanted to.

She stumbled to a stop less than three feet from me, breathless and taking in the entirety of my face. “It’s you!” she whispered the words with a slight Scottish accent, her lips trembling.

“Mrs. Briggs,” I greeted her with a nod, not sure what to do with my hands.

“Call me Granny,” she demanded with a dazzling smile that made her wet green eyes shine like jewels in the sunlight.

My throat tightened, and I attempted to swallow. How could this lovely creature have been married to that beast of a man who’d been nothing but bitterness and arrogance?

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