Page 20 of The More the Merrier

Her brows furrowed in confused concern, her expression dubious. "Okay, Daddy." She brightened. "Well, if you need any creative ideas for me… I'm a ring size seven and I do take IOUs if they come with romantic proposals."

I shook my head and smiled. Noelle had been dropping subtle hints about rings and weddings for the better part of the year. Apparently now we were bypassing subtle and going for exceedingly direct.

"Oh? And what ring size is Liam?" I asked dryly. Noelle knew I wasn't proposing to one without the other, and Liam was still kicking the closet door.

"You know all of us have to be on the same page, little one, and we're not there yet." I wanted it desperately, though, maybe even more so than Noelle, which was probably why she loved teasing me about it so much. I sighed. "I'm gonna have to get more creative than that unfortunately. Got any other ideas?"

Noelle shrugged. "Not really. I'm not gonna snoop, Daddy, I promise."

"Is that your way of asking me to leave?"

"Please? I don't want to wrap your presents with you here, even if they are in boxes."

"Okay. Just know if the storm doesn't let up, we may have to do Christmas morning after Christmas morning."

"If that's the price I have to pay for actually getting to spend Christmas with you I can make it work," she promised.

"Thank you, little one. Let me know if you come up with any good ideas for Daddy Liam."

"I will."

I knelt to kiss her cheek, then left the room, shutting the door behind me and returned to Liam. He was sitting cross-legged under the Christmas tree, staring up at the lights. I joined him and took his hand in mine.

"What are we doing?"

He sighed. "We're reflecting. I checked some work emails while you were in there with Noelle and it wasn't anything bad, but it just drained me. The past few days have been so nice. The snow, the lights, the easy days and all the time together. It feels like it took a goddamn blizzard for us to be able to slow down and just… enjoy the season. And all weekend I’ve felt like a ticking time bomb knowing that come Monday, blizzard or no, they are going to expect me to spend the day chained to my computer. I was sitting here wishing I had a job more like yours where I had a lot of flexibility, or even one like Noelle's where it was just more laid back and I got to be around people from all walks of life and people weren't as judgy."

"It's never too late to make a change," I encouraged.

"I wish. I think about it sometimes, but I can't figure out what that would even look like. Corporate life is all I know."

"There are other corporations that need people with your skills. You could start shopping around, maybe look for a company with different moral standards that would be more open-minded."

"Yeah. I guess."

I could tell he wasn't convinced, and I wanted to support him without pushing. It was a fine line.

"I just want you to be happy," I said.

"I wish… polyamory and bisexuality weren't so stigmatized. Like, it's not just my shitty job and my uptight parents. We can't even be fully ourselves out in public, and not just because of the morality clause, either. I wish we had a place just for people like us where we could go to blow off steam every once in a while. I feel like having a place like that might help, but it doesn't exist."

"We're in Vegas… It might. Have you checked?"

"Yeah. There are a few BDSM clubs that we'd for sure be welcome at and might even want to check out sometime, but I don't know. I guess I was more like… looking for a place where we'd actually fit in. Not just… be accepted. Like, somewhere where we could meet other throuples. People like us, who might understand our struggles."

I lifted his hand and kissed it. "If there's a place like that anywhere in the US, I'll find it and we'll go."

He didn't say anything, just leaned his head against my shoulder and snuggled close. We sat in silence, lost in our own thoughts. I wasn't sure what Liam was thinking, but my brain was focused on the fact that I'd just been handed the perfect creative gift idea on a silver platter. And I was determined to deliver. I couldn't fix anything Liam was going through or make his important decisions for him, but a vacation was something I could do. If it happened to be a vacation to a place where Liam felt totally comfortable being 100% himself, even better.

Chapter 8

Liam

Monday morning. I sat at the dining table with my coffee all alone. Noelle and Logan were still sleeping. I'd thought about staying in bed with them, but as soon as my eyes popped open my brain was racing. My heart pounded as I thought about the workload in front of me. After a perfect weekend the last thing I wanted to do was spend my day staring at spreadsheets and schmoozing on zoom calls, but the thing about the Christmas season was that it fell right before one year ended and another began, which meant those of us crunching numbers in corporate America were working twice as hard, doing things like end of year reports.

Draining my coffee mug, I carried my laptop to the couch and flipped it open. The lights and ambiance of the Christmas tree calmed me, just as it had the day before. I spent the first ten minutes reading and answering emails, and then turned my attention to a PowerPoint presentation that needed my approval. I tweaked and polished it, probably more than necessary, and decided to check my email once more before diving into spreadsheets and finance reports. I switched tabs and found a brand new email had just come through from the CEO of the company. The headline read: Urgent: Morality Clause update.

I should have known better, but I guess I thought it couldn't possibly get worse, only better, so I clicked to open it only to discover I was so, so wrong.

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