“Well, I can’t lie and say I’m not disappointed you won’t be here on Christmas morning.” Kelly topped Rori’s coffee off before sitting back down at the dining room table they sat at every Friday morning.

Her sister’s house had become as comfortable as her own, a second home in many ways and a place she knew would always welcome her.

While Rori had told her sister about the change in plans two weeks before, right after Jude had told her about it, it had been clear Kelly wasn’t entirely happy with the situation.

“We need this, Kel.” Rori toyed with the edge of the newspaper her sister had been reading before she’d arrived.

“I know. I know you do. It’s just…well this is the first Christmas since Zach that you’re…” Kelly licked her lips, Rori knew, searching for just exactly the best way to say normal.

So Rori did instead. “Normal.” She shrugged. “Oh don’t look so guilty. It’s true. Losing him made me a little crazy for a while. But during that time Jude was always there for me. Patiently loving me even when I was in pieces.”

“I imagine it has to be hard living with Zach’s ghost. Max said the other day that he’d never seen his brother work harder or be a better man than he is with you. But how can you compete with the memory of a guy like Zach?”

Her stomach tensed for a moment. “He doesn’t need to compete. If he feels that way, I’m doing this all wrong.” Rori sighed. Zach was gone and she’d accepted it. But the time after he’d died had been dark. He’d been her husband. She’d loved him with all her heart and soul. Jude never expected her to act any other way and she was grateful for it. Had known, by the time they finally came together, that it was meant to be that way. He’d proved over and over that he loved her and would care for her, had shown her the depths of his commitment to her and their relationship.

Part of that had been him taking a back seat to Rori’s need to put the ghost of her life with another man to rest. “He deliberately put himself and his own needs on the back burner for me.”

“He may have acted like a dick years ago, but he loves you. No doubt in my mind. And Max is probably right about Zach.” Kelly groaned. “I hate it when I have to not be selfish.” She winked.

Rori laughed. “This time away is about building something that is Rori and Jude. He deserves that and I want it too. It feels like I’ve loved Jude since I was a bitty girl, you know? But that’s different from this thing we have now.”

“Well, you have grown-up love. Complete with in-laws and all that politics stuff that comes with it. Relationships are different than crushes or even dating. You know that.”

“I know. I do and I totally agree. I see this trip as a big foundational wall in our relationship. We need to build it, to put the work into it. Hell, I need to do it so he knows he’s first and foremost. I don’t want to phone it in.”

Kelly burst out laughing. “Rori, the way the two of you look at each other is so hot it makes me want to shove my husband into a closet and violate him that very moment. You two are connected in a big way. He absolutely adores you. I had my doubts. I can’t lie. But he’s been good to you. Always put you first. He’d do anything to make you smile and how can I not love him for that too?”

Rori blushed, the heat on her cheeks also due in part to how hot it was that he looked at her the way he did.

“I love him. More than I ever thought possible. He makes me happy. Fills me up and makes me feel beautiful. I want to put him first. I want him to be as happy as he makes me. I want him to know without a doubt that what we have isn’t a rebound thing, or me settling.”

Kelly squeezed her hand. “That’s the key to a successful marriage. Well, that and good sex. Though—” she lifted a shoulder, “—combining those things is always a plus.”

“I just never want him to feel second best. But it’s hard to find a way to say it without bringing Zach up and I don’t want to make him think I’m hiding it either. It’s a careful walk right now.”

“Course it is, baby. You both love each other. You care about the other’s feelings. That’s why it’s so hard. And frankly, I think that’s why it works. You both understand you had a second chance at love. It’s rare enough to find it once, the way you and Zach had it. But you and Jude have it too. In your own way. It’s not the same, and I think it’s better that way. Imagine if it was very similar. You’d be wondering, deep down, if it was just that you saw parts of Zach in him and that’s why you were with him. And he’d wonder the same thing.”

Rori took a deep breath and sipped her coffee. It was good to be understood the way she and her sister shared.

“Thanks for listening.”

Kelly narrowed her eyes at her sister. “Anytime. Now, you’ll be back in time for New Year’s Eve though, right?”

Rori snorted, nodding. “Of course.”

“All right, then I love you and I’m always here for you.”

***

Across town, Jude was at the diner eating breakfast with a friend of theirs who’d dropped in while in the area for his job. Cole was someone he’d originally worked with on some cross training between local and federal law enforcement. Shortly after the assignment had ended, they’d run into each other at a club. A D/s-themed club in Nashville.

Cole had been very much in the closet about his sexual preferences. He worried about people finding out he liked BDSM and kept his activities to states farther away from where he currently lived.

Jude had, at that time, lied to himself about what he was and what he liked. Maybe the two men had seen that need to pretend in the other and left it alone. But Jude didn’t have to be that anymore and finally, Cole had come to trust Jude enough to share his own details and perhaps come to grips with the things he liked without feeling guilty or wrong for it.

Jude had had a confidante in Zach. Another sexually dominant man he could discuss things with. A good friend, even though they’d both loved the same woman. When Zach had died, Jude lost that. Fortuitously, he’d bumped into Cole some months before and they’d reconnected their friendship.

“You said she took it well. That she sounded excited and happy. Let it be. Stop feeling guilty about it. You all live close to each other. You’ll be back for New Year’s. She’s yours too, man.” Cole mopped up his eggs with a piece of toast.

“I know. I just feel sort of selfish for wanting her all to myself.”

Cole snorted. “Why the hell would you feel that? Your woman is incredible. It’s clear you love her. It’s more than clear she loves you. It’s not selfish to want to be creating memories and traditions that will be the foundation for the rest of your life. She lived in Europe for years anyway, it’s not like she spent every single Christmas here with her family.”

“Go on and be rational.”

“You have something special, Jude. Something I look at and pretend I don’t need, but in reality, everyone yearns for. You should feel selfish over it.”

“And five hours from home means I don’t have to worry about anyone coming over when I’ve got her bound. I can play for hours with her and no one is going to interrupt.” Damn did that appeal to him in a major way.

Cole’s eyes lit. “That too. I imagine living so close to your family and the fact that you two share so much family in common must mean a lot of interruptions.”

Yes. He didn’t regret living in such close quarters with their family. He loved it and it was a value he and Rori shared. He knew their children would have that closeness of kin they did and knew it would serve them all their days.

Family was, in the end, the most important thing a man could do. Not just marriage or partnership with another person, but children, home and hearth. Building a life for not only your generation, but touching those beyond it. Being with Rori, being loved by her, had made him into a family man on a whole new level.

At the same time, when your brother lived a few streets away, it meant a lot of drop-in visits. It meant there were times when he didn’t have the opportunity to go as deep with her as he’d wanted.

He’d have days to lure her, seduce her over and over again at his pace. However loud she wanted to be, whatever and wherever. A flush worked over his chest thinking about it and the new toys he’d picked up in preparation for this trip.

Cole’s left eyebrow rose slowly. “Must be some plans in your head right about now.”

“We need a place where the world falls away.” There was the boat. The boat Rori loved to sail. The boat that had a lovely bedroom chock full of toys. A boat Zach had built and turned into their getaway.

Jude paused. And there was Zach again. Impossibly far away, and yet always so close. “I feel like a total asshole, but I want to move into a place of our own.” He’d blurted it, needing to just say it so fast he couldn’t change his mind.

Again, Cole took his measure. “Can’t say as I blame you. It’d be hard…to live where they lived. To try to make memories where hers and his were first. Will always be first.”

“I can’t expect her to pretend he never existed. I think of him all the time too.”

“I don’t think I’d agree that wanting a house of your own with her is you asking her to pretend he never existed. Have you talked to her about it?”

“When we first got together earlier this year, we decided to stay in the house but move bedrooms. I thought I could deal with it and the economy sucks and all so it would be better to wait.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Cole snorted and sipped his coffee.

Smartass.

“She’s had a lot to deal with in the last nearly two years. Can I ask her to marry me and move out of her own home because I can’t deal with her dead husband’s memories? What kind of dick does that?”

Cole waved lazily, leaning back into the booth’s squeaky upholstery. “You’re not even giving her a chance. You haven’t brought it up. It’s a reasonable thing to want your own home. A reasonable thing to bring up these concerns to the woman you plan to marry. Rori is a smart, together woman and she loves you.”

“I just… He was my friend too. I miss him. Which sounds so fucked up given that I’m with his wife now and I loved her before. But it’s true. He was like a brother to me. They were good together. I admired that. Admired how he was with her. Envied it too, I suppose.” Jude had learned a lot about dominating a woman, about how to bring it into a relationship and keep an eye on the balance of power, from Zach.

He took a bite, chewed as he thought. “But she’s mine now and I’m not going backward.”

“This is going to sound harsh, but take it in the sprit I deliver it. She’s not his wife anymore. He is dead. She is yours. You said it yourself.” Cole looked around as he leaned in. “He’d be the first guy to tell you to own her fully. To thank your ass and little green apples that you’ve got a woman like her giving herself to you.”

Jude smiled. “Yeah.”