Page 88 of For Your Heart
The choking sound he makes has me gripping him tighter, kissing his head. I’m thankful that we rarely run out of hot water. I couldn’t pick myself up, much less my brother right now if I tried. One or both of us would end up with a broken neck.
Which would hurt a lot less than this.
“I don’t know,” Declan says. “But fuck, my heart is going to stop if it keeps hurting like this every few months.”
The better question is the same we’d been asking ourselves for months in a different yet eerily similar situation: what do we do now? How do we fix it?
Bottom line is that Simon isn’t going anywhere. We won’t fucking allow it. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to keep our lives as separate as we have been. Somehow we survived when it was temporary, but it can’t keep going like that.
Not when Sage will want more and more time with me if we’re an actual couple. How do you tell the man you love that you’re going to be spending intimate time with someone else when you know how hard that affects him?
This is set up for failure. Apparently, only Stommer can find it within himself to accept this relationship with Simon.
Fuck, I wish Simon were here now to help take away some of the pain. Yet, that feels like a betrayal too.
“Jesus fuck,” Declan mutters. I flinch when his teeth sink into my collarbone. Then he sucks the spot before licking it. I’m not sure if he’s trying to mark me, punish me, or comfort me. “All three,” he says.
“Let’s go to bed,” I say.
We get to our feet and it’s awkward as fuck trying to stand upright when my legs suddenly feel stiff. I shouldn’t feel so out of shape considering my job is literally to stay fit, but apparently dancing uses a very different set of muscles. And then sitting on a hard tile floor in an awkward position around my brother compounds on that.
It’s not more than a few minutes later when we’re still slightly damp and clad only in underwear when we climb into bed. The bed we share with Simon. The one where we’ve shared Sage and Zarek.
I groan and squeeze my eyes shut. This is fucking miserable.
Twenty-Eight
SAGE
His touch burns.I practically run from his car and through my door because I can’t let him see me cry and I’m about three seconds away from bursting into tears. As soon as I’m safely behind my door, I slam it shut, lock it, and slide down until I’m crouched behind it.
I let the tears fall. With my eyes squeezed shut, all I can see is the three of them dancing. The way that the twins’ hands are on him. Moving over his body. Their lips on his skin. The way Simon is just putty in their hold.
He looked relaxed. At home. Like that’s his spot between them. Where there’s no place for me or Zarek. It’s the three of them.
I’m stupid. Of course, it’s the three of them. It’s always been the three of them.
“But I think he wanted me too,” I sob into my entryway.
Headlights flash through my windows and I know the pattern all too well. He’s leaving. He’s driving away. That hurts even more. Do I want him to fight for me? Do I want him to bang on my door until I answer and beg me to understand? For to sayanything at allthat would convince me to stay?
Maybe I want all of that.
It’s a good thing he leaves, I reason to myself. In this state, I might have believed absolutely anything he told me. Even an outright lie. I’d have believed him if he told me that there’s nothing between them at all. That he exaggerated when he claimed to be in love with his best friend. It was all just some amped up emotions from learning that Simon found someone else.
They were angry at this new guy and thought that if they told Simon they were in love with him that Simon might choose them instead.
The tales I make up to convince myself that this isn’t so bad are wild. Complete and total bullshit too. You don’t tell someone you’re in love with that you also love someone else for funsies. Given the conversation we had where we shared our secrets, I have no reason to believe it was fabricated at all.
It wasn’t. Isn’t. That’s just their relationship.
The worst part? I’m pretty sure that’s the tamest thing. He said they shower together. They don’t wear clothes in showers. What then? Do they keep several feet between them? Do they keep their faces turned? What happens if one of them accidentally brushes up against another?
I’m stupid. I’m so stupidly stupid. Of course, I justhadto fall in love with a man in love with someone else. Ihadto fall in love with someone who has all sorts of intimate relationships.
Then there’s the fact that they sleep together, mostly naked. I know how small that bed is. None of them are small men. Then there’s all the other things they do that Damon had alluded to.
In my mind, that kind of thing should be between two people. What’s the word—monogamy?
