Page 57 of Kylan

He nodded against my neck, his arms tightening around my back. “I love you too. And I love him, Leon. I need to know he’ll be okay.”

I pulled back and took Marek’s face in my hands. “I love him too. He’ll be fine; we’ll make sure of it. He has us, for as long as he wants us. We’ll look after him.”

Marek’s eyes were deep with sorrow. “The things he said. That he doesn’t feel right, that he doesn’t deserve love, it scares me, Leon.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

What Kylan was saying about locking down his pain and fear so he didn’t feel anything at all was just awful. A coping mechanism, for sure.

“It’s a response to trauma,” I whispered.

Marek’s bottom lip trembled, his eyes glassy. “Two days he just lay there, unable to eat or sleep. We did that to him.”

I kissed Marek’s forehead and pulled him against me for another hug. “We will help him. We can get him the best help. Medical, psychological, whatever he needs.”

“We can’t make that decision for him,” Marek replied. “He needs to be the one who decides that.”

I knew my instinct was to sweep in, make executive decisions, and fix things to however I deemed necessary, but Marek was right. I needed to respect Kylan’s decision and take his lead on this.

“We’ll ask him what he wants to do,” I said. “And ifwe need to prove to him that he’s worth it, no matter how long it takes, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Marek gave me a sad smile. “We almost fumbled this so bad.”

“I almost fumbled this,” I mumbled.

“No, not just you. Me too. We didn’t talk. We didn’t communicate the way we normally do. We were both so scared of hurting each other that we froze. And we’ve never done that before. We’ve never been like that before.”

“We’ve never been in love with someone else before,” I offered. “We’ve never navigated anything like this before. I was so scared of hurting you.”

He nodded, teary again. “Same. I was so mad at you, and that was new for me. And we didn’t talk it out.”

“Because you couldn’t even look at me?” I said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.

“True.” The smile he managed was tinged with sadness. “Maybe if I’d screamed at you to pull your head out of your arse, we could have saved everyone a lot of heartache.”

I snorted. “True. So if there’s ever a next time where you need to scream at me to stop being a jerk, please don’t hold back.”

He chuckled and sniffled, wiping his eyes and nose. “And I didn’t stick up for myself,” he said. “I let you dictate, because that’s what we’ve always done.”

“What? No, baby . . .”

He shook his head. “You’ve always led this dance, and I’ve always been happy that way. I’ve never had areason to question that. You’ve always put me first, so whywouldI ever question that. You make choices for us, what’s best for us, with me at the forefront of every decision. What I want, what I need, what makes me happy. Everything you’ve done has beenfor me, so when you said we should let Kylan go, I didn’t protest. I thought maybe you were right, because I was in love with him and I didn’t want to hurt you with that.”

I put my hand to his cheek and studied his eyes. “Everything I’ve ever done has been for you. And I’m usually good with judgement calls, financial decisions, whatever you want, I would make it happen just to see you smile.” I sighed. “But I was so wrong about this. I was wrong to assume, I was wrong to not ask. I was wrong to think I couldn’t love you both equally. I won’t make that mistake again. I promise. I will do everything I can to make you both happy.”

Marek’s gaze softened and he pressed his forehead to my cheek. “We’re both going to need to learn how to better communicate. I don’t know how threesome’s work.”

I froze. “Well . . . you kinda do.”

He’d always had a penchant for threesomes. Ever since college, from day one he’d let me know he liked playing with a third. It was how our searching out additional partners all kinda started...

He gave me a shove. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

He looked up at me. “We need to sit down with Kylan and put everything on the table. Expectations,needs, wants. Everything. And maybe even make it a weekly thing so we never have this miscommunication thing happen again.”

I kissed his forehead. “Okay. Marek, darling, we also need to prepare for the possibility that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with us. We are married and he’s so young. He might not even want to go back to the daddies/boy roleplay.” I shrugged. “We’re already assuming he does.”

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