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Scared that they wouldn’t.
And most of all, I’d been scared of them all loving me.
Chapter 8
Becca
The surface of the large table on their pool deck was covered in food and drinks. Brice and Aaron had even opened the umbrella to shade us as we each took a seat.
“We didn’t want to go back for more, interrupting our talk so we brought enough to last for a bit.”
“Don’t you mean enough for a lifetime, Aaron?”
He turned red in the cheeks at my words but it was Brice who answered as he lifted his polo shirt, revealing his toned abdominals. “You forget, Becca, that we are still growing boys.”
“But I don’t think your trainers would appreciate a growing waistline.”
“You wound me, madame.” Brice leaned over and kissed my cheek.
My breath caught, but the guys acted like this was an everyday occurrence.
They kept the talk light as we ate, but I could feel the tension mount within me the longer it took for one of them to say something. It made it difficult to eat as my stomach knotted itself.
Finally, T.J. broke the lead balloon and said, “I know that I told you I’d be fine not knowing what happened to make you run, but I think I do need to know.” He held up his hand to keep me from talking. “I want to know so that I know never to make that mistake again. I don’t think I could ever recover if I lost you again.”
“You won’t.” And I meant it. It didn’t matter what happened next. I’d always be their friend. It still might be hard to watch them with other women if it came to that, but I’d deal. Life had been a black hole, a mere existence without them. Something I never wanted to experience again. Already, my life was brighter, full of colour and emotions since the two days that we ran into each other. They may not have been great emotions, but they were proof that I was still a part of the living.
“But I, we, didn’t think we’d lose you the first time.” The worry and hurt in Aaron’s voice cracked what few remaining partial walls I still clutched to. Yes, there were still things that he and I needed to talk over and heal from—probably the same with the other two as well—but we needed to start somewhere. And the beginning was usually the best place to start from.
“I pulled away—”
“Ran.”
“High tailed.”
“And didn’t look back,” the three of them interjected.
“Fine, I ran away because I realized I was in love with all of you and I didn’t know what to do. That night we all slept together, I knew it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t all been drinking. Without the alcohol, none of you would have kissed me. So while I jumped at the chance to sleep with all of you, to fulfill a dream I knew couldn’t possibly come true, I didn’t realize how it would affect me. How it would gut me to know that someday, someone else would be in your arms while I watched from the sidelines.”
Silence hung heavy over the table when I stopped to take a breath. My gaze roamed from one man to the next as the silence lingered. They looked decidedly uncomfortable which worried me. I began to replay everything I said, wondering what could have brought about this reaction. Was it the fact that I said I fell in love with them? No, it couldn’t be since T.J. admitted that they’d felt the same way.
I shifted in my chair.
“About that night…,” Brice began.
“It wasn’t done under the influence of alcohol,” T.J. added.
“Only the first two drinks were alcoholic. After that we switched to virgin drinks.” I stared at Aaron with my mouth hanging open. What were they saying? That they, that we did all that because we wanted to?
“We had the whole evening planned. And we didn’t want you or us to be drunk,” Aaron confirmed my thoughts in his own way.
“Why?”
T.J. reached across the table, taking my hand in his as Brice and Arron placed a hand on each of my thighs.
“Because we wanted to show you how much we loved you. We’d known for months that we each loved you and we spent time researching poly relationships, trying to figure out if we could handle it.” T.J. stroked the top of my hand with his thumb, calming my racing heart.
They planned the whole thing. They researched it. They agreed. They didn’t want me to choose. Those thoughts along with others continued to swirl around my mind in endless, overlapping circles that twisted together, leaving me just as confused, elated, and hurt as before. Why hadn’t they told me how they felt?
