In Love With My Mobster Best Friend (mxmxm)

FORTY-NINE: SEALED

Media: Arms – Christine Perri

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Jared's POV

I wished that he would give me a reason to walk away, so I didn't have to have this conversation with myself trying to find a remotely valid reason for me to convince myself that I needed to end this.

I wished that I had the balls to end this.

I wished that I was a bigger man and that I could leave him now. Leave him and Heath. Prevent all the misery they would face the moment they chose to be with me. Because misery is all that I can promise to give them- I had nothing else to offer. If I learnt anything from my past relationships, it was that any relationship that I got into, would end badly. I'll lose interest, I'll say something heartless or tactless, it'll start with arguments, it'll end with fights. There will be tears, things might get thrown around. I'll lose my temper, I'll give threats to make my exit easier on me. That's what I'm used to, that's all I could offer.

Misery and pain. Pain, tt was almost guaranteed, with what my job is. How could I take all these with me, and tie them to me?

I wished I never pulled Coe into this life. This life that had left him with a hole to his side and his precious and innocent blood spilt. He didn't choose this life for himself, I did. I chose to involve him when he could have been free, free from me. He wasn't like me, he wasn't like Heath. We chose this life, he didn't. Yet now he was so intimately involved with the both of us.

What have I done?

Didn't I want to protect him? Didn't I want him to be happy, to be safe and to be loved? How can I do that if I'm bringing him into this life and tying him down to me and Heath? Tying him down to a life that was filled with violence?

I wished that it wasn't so terrifying to consider breaking his heart to protect him. I wished that the image of Coe's crying face, a look of hurt across his sweet features, would leave my mind alone. I wished that the look of disappointment on Heath's face would also just leave me alone. I know they would both be hurt and disappointed, to know that I was having thoughts like these.

It was torture to be left with my own thoughts. But I couldn't stop.

I was having second thoughts about sealing our relationship with each other legally, officially. I was having third thoughts. A fourth. God knows where these thoughts will take me? When they'll stop?

Maybe we needed to slow down. Maybe we needed to think this through once more. Who benefits from our union? What were the pros and cons? Were the risks worth it? Should be just stay the way we were? After all, not having a legal document to say that we had any relation at all to one another changed nothing between us. Better yet, that meant that Heath and Coe were free to leave me anytime they wanted to. Leave me and the misery that I will bring to them. I'll be giving them an out, because they'll need it.

I shivered at the memory of what happened last night. Coe's wound had reopened when we were talking, and he didn't say a word as he held onto both Heath and I, repeating that he never wanted us to leave his side, that he wanted a life together with us officially.

Why would he do that? Why would he endure that kind of pain, that kind of risk just to tell us something so... uncertain? I don't mean to leave his side, I won't do that to him. I won't ever let him feel alone, or be in danger without me by his side ever again. But why would he want anything with me officially? Didn't he know that before him, my track record shows that I am a man incapable of long term commitment? Why would he still want that from me? Why was marriage so important to him?