Page 56 of Hard Ride

“It’s fine, Ollie.I’m on birth control.Other than Van, I haven’t been with anyone in pretty much forever.”Kyra groaned.“So can we please go make up for that right now?”

“Hell, yes.”Van picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, making both Kyra and Ollie laugh.He strode toward the campervan with a shout over his shoulder.“Keep up, Ollie.I’m not going to be able to wait.”

And he didn’t.

The sex was fast and furious and even more satisfying than the first time they’d experimented with a threesome.He wasn’t sure how their lovemaking could improve, but he couldn’t wait to see what it might be like the next time and the time after that as they continued to discover how to delight each other and shed their inhibitions together.

A long, long time later, Ollie flopped onto his back in bed between Kyra and Van.From that position he was only a few feet away from his mami’s gift, tucked safely in its drawer.He couldn’t say exactly what it was that made him think of it—maybe being with two people who had inspired him to love again, and witnessing Wren, Jordan, and Kason’s pledges earlier, had him overly sentimental—but once he did, he couldn’t shut it down.

“Guys…” Ollie cleared his throat.

“Yeah?”Kyra shifted and settled her head on his shoulder.

“What’s up?”Van asked.

“I know it’s a bit before Christmas, but…I was thinking…maybe it’s time.”He didn’t have to elaborate.They knew exactly what he meant.Of course they did.

“You’ve waited long enough.”Kyra patted his chest.

“Go ahead.”Van nodded.“I’m sure your mami wouldn’t mind.”

Ollie’s hand shook as he reached over Kyra and opened the drawer.He took the present from inside and turned it over and over in his hands, like he had often in the past, on days that he was struggling.Whatever it was didn’t weigh much and wasn’t very big either.

“You deserve everything good people choose to give you,” Kyra murmured in his ear before kissing his cheek.

“She’s right.You’re a decent human being, Ollie.I’m very fortunate to call you my…friend.”Van stumbled over that last bit, but Ollie believed him when he said it.

So he slipped his finger beneath one of the folds and put light pressure against the tape that had held it down for the past twenty years.“I don’t know if I can do this.”

Did Kyra and Van realize this was about so much more than a gift?

“You owe it to yourself to try.”Kyra put her hand on his knee and squeezed.“And to your mami.Because she wouldn’t have wanted you to live half a life, closed off, alone and afraid.It’s disrespectful if you don’t make the most of the opportunity she gave you.”

Oh, yep.They got it.Got him.Completely.

And that gave him the courage to push harder.

The paper ripped.

Ollie felt as if he was exposing his heart and soul—instead of whatever had been safely ensconced in the festive, if faded, wrapping—to the world.Once one tiny corner was revealed, the rest got easier.He popped the tape on the other side.Then he couldn’t stop.He tore the present open, sitting up so he could see what tumbled out into his shaking hand.

Kyra and Van hovered over him, utterly silent.

A chocolate-brown leather cord was wound around a rectangle, not much bigger than a postage stamp.He unwrapped it loop by loop, holding his breath.

And when he got to the center, he realized exactly how precious the thing he was holding was.Because right there in his palm, was his mami, smiling up at him, even more beautiful than he remembered.

“I was so scared I’d forgotten what she looked like or the sound of her voice.But I look at this and she’s exactly like I see her in my dreams.”Though prepared to be embarrassed with full on man tears, Ollie was surprised to realize that the image didn’t hurt.He smiled, joy and light blasting through every cell of his body, as he recalled all the times they’d spent together.They might not have had a lot of stuff, but they’d had each other.“She taught me how to smile, and to enjoy life, even when it didn’t go how you planned.Especially when you lived through loss.She kept laughing, always.”

“So have you.”Kyra, however, was doing the crying for him, it seemed.Tears poured down her cheeks as she watched him stroke the photograph with his index finger.

“And you were a pretty cute kid too,” Van said, his voice more gruff than Ollie had ever heard it, even when he was buried inside Kyra and about to erupt.No digs about his faded shirt with mismatched buttons or his slightly uneven haircut, courtesy of his mom.

The picture sparked a memory he’d lost before this.One he would treasure as much as the rustic locket his mother had obviously made herself.Of her, sitting him on the kitchen counter and snipping away at his hair.

“Do you miss Papi?”he’d asked her.

“Of course, son.”She smiled despite her pain.“But the worst thing we could do would be to forget and to spend our whole lives crying, when he’d be so much happier to hear us laugh.”

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