Page 27 of Party of Three (Sapphire Cove Suite Secrets)

During the three months he and Mateo spent officially dating their new boyfriend, Buckley had been delighted to learn that he and Jeff had far more in common than their love for the man who’d brought them together. For one, they were equally superstitious.

Jeff always wore the exact same Luis Arráez jersey whenever the three of them went to a Padres game, and on busy holiday weekends, when the calls his ambulance crews received were usually more extreme thanks to hard partying and fireworks, Buckley always donned the same sterling-silver wheat chain necklace, his first, of what he hoped would be many, birthday gifts from Mateo.

Buckley figured this was why he and Jeff had worn nearly matching outfits every time they showed up to support Mateo during one of his test rides in the elevator at his therapist’s office building. A long-sleeved collared shirt and blue jeans with dress shoes.

“You guys here to keep me from throwing up or to sell me some real estate?” Mateo had asked the first time they’d all gathered in the building’s glossy lobby. It turned out he usually attended his sessions in shorts and a T-shirt, depending on the weather.

Dr. Pete saw his patients in a glass-and-steel office building not far from San Diego International Airport and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot.

It was six stories tall, which meant its elevators rose to a height three stories above the longest elevator ride Mateo had endured on his own since starting treatment for his PTSD.

On that first day, Dr. Pete had reserved them an elevator with building management, and, clutching Buckley’s hand in his right and Jeff’s hand in his left, Mateo had made it all the way to the top without asking them to stop at one of the floors in between.

Because it had been such a success, Buckley and Jeff had dressed pretty much the same for every visit since.

Now, four months after their life-changing weekend at Sapphire Cove and one month after they’d officially become a throuple, it was time for Mateo to try the ride alone.

“You sure you guys don’t want to head up to the top floor now and wait for me there?” Mateo said as he eyed the elevator doors.

“No worries. We’re in pretty good shape.” Jeff winked at him.

Mateo raised one eyebrow and gave them both an arch look, clearly doubting their belief that they could race up six flights of stairs in enough time to beat his elevator. Taking one of the unreserved cars meant they might get stopped before they reached the top.

Buckley sensed a different tension right under the surface.

If he and Jeff raced Mateo to the top, that assumed Mateo would make it there himself. If Mateo didn’t, would it be less stressful for him to know his boyfriends were waiting for him down in the lobby or at the destination he’d failed to reach on his own?

These thoughts buzzed in Buckley’s brain, but he didn’t give voice to them.

In their support sessions, he was learning to step back and allow Mateo his process.

Jeff was too. Both men wanted to come up with the magical to-do list that would make Mateo’s fears vanish like smoke.

Dr. Pete had convinced them no such list existed, and if it did, Mateo had to be its sole author.

Another perk of their throuple was that Buckley and Jeff could share their frustrations over this medical guidance with each other, rather than drowning Mateo with them as he tried to find his own way forward.

A silence fell, interrupted by a gaggle of scrubs-clad nurses returning from lunch who gave them curious looks as they waited for one of the other elevators.

Dr. Pete stepped forward. “Want to run through our coping strategies?”

Mateo nodded. “Box breathing.”

Buckley watched the two men like a hawk. He was getting glimpses into an important process he’d been asked to step back from when Mateo started treatment.

Dr. Pete nodded. “Four counts in through the nose, hold four, out through the mouth four. And if you’re not feeling it, expand the count from four to six.”

When he nodded again, the tense set to Mateo’s mouth made Buckley want to reach out and take his hand. He didn’t. In moments like this, he needed to trust the process. When Jeff tightened his grip on Buckley’s hand, it was clear he was fighting the same urge.

“Time, date, feet,” Mateo said.

Dr. Pete nodded. “Ground yourself in the moment you’re actually in by repeating the time, the calendar date, and telling yourself exactly where your feet are in the present moment.

Get super specific if you need to. City, street, building address, elevator floor, cheap shitty carpet, that kind of thing.

Whatever gets you back here, today. In the moment you’re actually in. ”

And not in that goddamn Osprey , Buckley thought.

“And last but not least…”

Mateo answered by holding up his right wrist. A snap with the rubber band wasn’t meant to cause pain. But a short, jarring stimulus could often disrupt an anxiety-fueled flight from reality, jolting you back inside your skin.

Mateo sucked in a deep breath.

“And we’ll be waiting for you at the top,” Jeff offered.

“To suck your dick.” Suddenly everyone was looking at Buckley and that’s when he realized he’d said those words out loud.

Fighting laughter, Jeff slapped him on the ass. Smiling, Mateo shook his head at his boyfriend—the loudest and most inappropriate one. At least he’d cut the tension.

“Sorry, doc,” Buckley added.

“Let’s hold off on the celebratory intimacy until we’re home. I don’t want to lose my lease here.”

Buckley nodded. Jeff furtively squeezed his ass cheek.

Mateo sucked in a deep breath and turned to both men. They wrapped their arms around him in a tight, three-way hug. Then, eyes averted, as if summoning his courage, Mateo slapped them both on the back. “Get cracking or I’ll beat you there.”

Buckley and Jeff raced to the nearest fire stairway door.

The next thing he knew they were flying up the concrete stairs.

They’d scoped out the route earlier and propped the door open on the sixth floor.

Buckley was grateful for the exertion. It distracted him from imagining the disappointed look on Mateo’s face if he had to pull the rip cord before making the complete trip.

Then, before he knew it, they exploded, gasping, into the carpeted elevator lobby on the sixth floor. There was Mateo, arms folded across his chest.

“You boys need to do more cardio.”

This time their three-way hug was tighter. And that was a good thing because Buckley was crying a little, and this gave him an excuse to bury his face in Mateo’s T-shirt.

Per the doctor’s orders, they returned home before engaging in celebratory intimacy. But they didn’t make it any farther than the kitchen.

Christmas shopping started the next day.

Not the kind where you bought gifts for your loved ones, but the kind where Mateo bought out every World Market within a hundred-mile radius for the props he needed to transform his parents’ living room into a glittering winter wonderland.

And their living room as well. He’d visited the family home in Huntington Park several times to do so-called planning sessions for their decorations, but Buckley knew these were re-entry meetings, chances for Mateo to get comfortable with his parents again on his own before the gathering that would bring them all together at the holidays.

Typically, he’d head out the door with one instruction for the men he loved. “Be sure to fuck each other’s brains out while I’m gone so you’ve got plenty of details to share with me when I’m back.”

This was one of the many boundaries they’d negotiated the night of Jeff’s now infamous walkout at Sapphire Cove.

Buckley had been reluctant to agree to Jeff’s proposal of a three-month dating period before the three of them dove in balls first. But Mateo had convinced him and so they’d confined their time with Jeff to sleepovers at his place once a week when Mateo needed to be in San Diego for therapy.

When they weren’t having blazing sex, they talked through all the boundaries and rules needed to make their unconventional situation work.

Other people were off the table.

As for how many of them were required to make a quorum, Mateo, it seemed, was completely addicted to the thrills he got from Buckley and Jeff going at it while he was out of the house.

One of his kinks, it turned out, was something he called cuck adjacent , without the humiliation role-play that went along with that seemingly more popular role-play fantasy.

When he had to be someplace he couldn’t leave quickly without consequences—usually a class at school—Jeff would start texting him about the filthy things he was doing to Buckley while he was gone.

Sometimes with a dirty picture or two thrown in.

To hear him tell it, the texts were sweet torture, a form of edging more intense than any he’d ever known, and by the time he returned home he was practically bursting out of his jeans.

During sessions like this, he’d fuck the breath out of Buckley and sometimes fuck Jeff’s mouth so hard, tears would sprout from the older man’s eyes.

Jeff, for his part, preferred sweeter photos of the two of them whenever he was away.

If the men he loved lying on top of each other with their bare asses stacked like cakes and aimed at the camera could be called sweet.

To Buckley’s very delighted surprise, it also turned out Jeff enjoyed being tied up and worked over, something he’d always been afraid to admit to with his partners because he had no desire to engage in the bottoming that most folks rashly assumed went hand in hand with submission.

There were other ways to submit to a man without letting him fuck your ass, and Jeff had apparently discovered all of them, with a very special toy box and some coils of friction-free rope.

Once those first three months were over, Jeff started driving north to their place on a regular basis. It was clear to Buckley he hadn’t wanted to feel like an outsider or a third wheel in their bedroom before they were all sure the foundation they were building was solid.

Two months after Mateo’s victorious elevator ride to the top floor of his therapist’s office building, Christmas Eve was spent at the Cano family home in Huntington Park.

The house was packed, and even though most of his family was careful to avoid the subject, Mateo’s relatives seemed energized by his return.

The three of them even held hands as they walked the last of the Posadas, a Christmas tradition neither Buckley nor Jeff had ever experienced before that night.

Led by the angel-costumed, six-year-old daughter of Mateo’s cousin, the entire family formed a procession to a neighbor’s house, many of them carrying statues of shepherds and small angels.

When they arrived at their destination, they were ceremonially denied entrance, as Joseph and Mary were denied entrance to the inn, but given refreshments as compensation.

Then they filed outside to the yard where Jeff did an excellent job of watching over the kids as they smashed the tar out of a pinata and—largely thanks to Jeff—not each other.

Then it was back to the Cano home for gift giving, where every now and then Gracie Cano would pause whatever she was doing and reach out and grasp her son’s hand, closing her eyes briefly, perhaps to avoid shedding tears, as if her son had been returned to her after a long imprisonment.

Buckley had never seen Mateo interact with his family for such an extended period, and it warmed his heart to see his boyfriend give every new arrival a tour of the decorations he’d assembled throughout the house, the ones that weren’t playing music or sound effects that drowned out his explanations.

This was a sweet, innocent and joyful side of Mateo that made Buckley fall in love with him all over again.

Then came the gifts. Once it became clear that almost all the relatives in attendance had brought something for both Buckley and Jeff, Buckley glanced over at Jeff to see if he was tearing up too, and the man gruffly muttered, “Stay focused on the unwrapping here. We’ve got a lot to get through.

” A stern command that made clear their master sergeant was on the verge of a good cry as well.

It was probably the first and last time the two of them would ever cry over a pair of socks made to look like reindeer heads, but that was beside the point.

Christmas morning was theirs to celebrate at home.

The display under the tree at their townhouse was no less impressive than the one Mateo had assembled for his parents.

Only this one would play host to a very special celebration for just the three of them.