Page 86 of Bliss: Part 1
“What?” I asked again, sharper this time. “What’s going on?”
Tripp leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “There’s…something going on between them.”
I frowned. “Like what? Are they okay?”
“They slept in the same bed last night,” Rhys said.
My mouth parted. “What?”
Ashby was the one who said what everyone else seemed too careful to say. “They probably fucked.”
“Jesus, Ash,” Dash muttered, shooting him a look.
“What? You were all thinking it.”
“I wasn’t,” I said quietly, stunned. “I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
Ashby shrugged. “Well, maybe you should’ve been.”
“Can we not?” Tripp rubbed both hands down his face. “We don’t know what’s happening, and honestly, it’s not our business unless they decide to tell us. They’re probably working through a lot. We need to let them have their space.”
We all fell quiet after that, and no one argued. There wasn’t much more to say.
Eventually, we turned on the movie and settled in. The opening credits of some random movie rolled. But even with the sound of explosions and dialogue in the background, my thoughts kept drifting.
I kept thinking about Dad and Odin. About how much they’d been through, and how long it must’ve taken them to even get to this point. And somewhere in all of that, I felt this complicated mix of emotions I couldn’t even name. Worry, curiosity, some kind of hope. Maybe even a weird kind of comfort, knowing we weren’t the only ones figuring things out one step at a time.
And though I shouldn’t have been thinking about it, I couldn’t stop imagining Dad and Odin having sex.
Twenty-Six
Bliss
It kind of felt like we were all thinking the same thing, even if no one said it out loud at first. The movie was still playing, but nobody was paying attention to it anymore. We were all silent for a while.
Ashby then shifted in his seat, and I could feel it coming before he even opened his mouth. He wasn’t someone who held things in for long.
“I’m probably gonna ruin this whole moment,” he said, his voice steady, “but I need to get this off my chest. I keep thinking about how I wish we’d fucked before all this stuff came out.”
Nobody said anything right away. Not because we were shocked. But because we felt the same. There was honesty settling around us.
I glanced over at him, meeting his eyes for a few seconds before looking down. My throat felt tight when I admitted, “Me too.”
Next to me, Tripp let out a slow breath and muttered under it. “Shit.”
None of us moved. We all just sat there quietly, thinking about what we were really saying without spelling it out. We were each weighing out our options, as if thinking about having sex with each other was a normal thing.
And after that, it just…started to happen.
I stood up first. I wasn’t scared, but my hands were shaking a little. It was more like nerves, excitement, relief all at once. I didn’t rush it and simply undressed slowly, aware of all their eyes on me. At that point, I wasn’t really thinking anymore.
Once I was standing there bare, I looked around at them and said, “I want this. I want all of you. If you want this too…then we should just do it. What’s the point of ignoring what we really want? It will only hurt us.”
They looked at each other, and the lack of speaking made me nervous. Had I gone too far? Was I pushing them to do something they didn’t want? Shit…maybe I’m the problem.
Just when I was about to lose it, they started moving too. One by one, they stood up, eyes meeting mine, nodding slightly at each other like they’d been waiting for someone to say it first.
They started undressing, and my heart starting beating fast.
