“No!” I grabbed his arm. “Apparently, we were wrong about the way they feel about us. We have our answer, but we don’t have to lose our dignity. Let’s finish dinner, and then after, we can talk.”
And cry. And mourn for a relationship we both wanted but would never have.
“You’re right.”
But I didn’t feel right. I felt like a grade-A fool. Still, I plastered a smile on my face and pushed back the tears threatening to spill. We rejoined the couple at the table.
Merry and Jim seemed oblivious to the discord underlining our gestures, but their laughter sounded hollow now. They were leaving us, abandoning this intimate partnership we had so painstakingly built.
The chatter, the laughter, it all grated until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Why?” I asked.
“Brandt,” Cairo said. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” Merry asked. “Is something wrong?”
“You don’t care about us!” I blurted out. Not exactly what I’d intended to say, but it was the truth.
“What do you mean we don’t care about you?” Jim’s frown almost made me believe him, but Dr. Lively’s voice echoed in my head. “We don’t just care about you.”
“We love you,” Merry said.
“Come on now, Merry,” Cairo said. “There’s no reason to lie. We know.”
“You know what?” Jim asked.
“That you’ve canceled our surrogate partner therapy.”
Merry and Jim exchanged a glance. That look. My heart sank. It was all true!
“To think we called you here this evening to tell you we wanted to date you.”
“You did?” our neighbors echoed.
“What does it matter now?” I got to my feet, and so did Cairo. Before we could take another step, they blocked our path.
“Listen, we have a good explanation.” Merry placed a hand on my arm.
“It doesn’t matter if the explanation is good. We fell hard for you two, you know. We love everything about you. I thought how lucky we were that the first couple we found turned out to be the ones for us.”
“Brandt, Cairo, listen to me,” Jim said. “We ended our arrangement because we can’t date you if we’re still your surrogates. It’s unethical.”
“What?”
“Yeah, we fell for you too and want to be with you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Can’t you tell how crazy we are about you? We’ve done this sex surrogacy thing for several years, and we’ve never had this before with anyone. We instantly connected.”
“You mean it?” Cairo asked.
“Yes. We wanted to tell you about it this evening.”
With a groan, I melted against Merry. “You really aren’t leaving us?”
He tilted my chin. “We aren’t.” He settled his lips on mine in the sweetest kiss, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Thank god I would not lose this. Their kisses were the best.