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“I…I don’t know,” I sighed. “ I just…” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t admit I liked the idea of staying close to them. It was coming from nowhere and at a completely inappropriate time for me to even be having these kinds of feelings. I had a psycho serial killer after me and I was stressing about the boys I was crushing on. It was so insane! “You know what…forget it. We should check on Zack anyway.”
“Zack’s fine. Still fast asleep.” Nick held up the video monitor as he spoke, showing me the image of Zack fast asleep in his crib.
“Talk to us, malenka. You can tell us anything,” Aleks urged. He placed his hand on my knee and rubbed up and down my thigh a little. Of course, that just sent the butterflies in my stomach wild again.
“Why do you guys even want me to stay? If you do want me to stay? God, that was really egotistical of me to just assume….” I babbled. Thankfully Kailan cut me off.
“We want you to stay, Evie. Have no doubt about that,” he told me.
“But why. You three barely even know me?” I pointed to all but Harris. “Harris hasn’t seen me in years. I’m a virtual stranger.”
“Do we feel like strangers to you, Evie?” Nick asked. I looked between them all and considered his question carefully, even though I knew the answer already.
“No,” I shook my head. “I…I trust you guys. I don’t know why but I…I feel safe when I’m with you.”
“And we feel better when we’re with you,” Nick told me.
“Better?” I questioned.
“Less fucked up,” Harris clarified.
“Calmer,” Kailan added.
“More whole,” Aleks said.
“We’re not whole men, Evie. You know that. It’s not hard to see. We’ve been fucked by life and we’ve barely scraped through. I drink. You saw that those first couple of days. I drink to sleep. I drink to block out all of the fucked up shit I see in my mind every time I close my eyes, and sometimes when I don’t. We all have issues. We have the nightmares to prove not one of us is healed, and we probably never will be, but having you here these last few days has made things so much better for all of us. You make us happy and give us all a focus. I haven’t even opened a bottle of scotch in two days,” he explained.
“We need you as much as you need us, Evie,” Kailan added.
“Do….do you have feelings for me? Is that what you’re saying?” I asked looking between them.
“I’ve always had feelings for you, sweetheart. I never should have walked out on you. It’s the biggest mistake I ever made,” Harris sighed.
“And you guys?” I looked to the others.
“Yes. I have feelings for you,” Aleks admitted first, shocking me.
“I do too. Have since the second I saw you,” Nick said next.
“We all do,” Kailan went on.
“What?” I gasped as I tried to take it all in. “All of you?”
“Don’t freak out on us, darlin’,” Kailan calmed. “We’re not professing love or proposing or anything. We just…we need to be honest. We all like you and we’d like to know how you feel. We know you don’t know us that well, but do you feel anything?”
“It’s okay if you don’t. No matter what we’re here for you. We care about you,” Aleks added.
“Is this why you guys live together? Were you planning a relationship together too? Am I just a convenient fit?” I asked as the thought occurred to me.
“No! God no! We never even considered the idea of a relationship together. We haven’t even discussed it since we met you. You’re not just convenient Evie. We just…we all like you and if you feel the same, maybe we could make this work?” Kailan explained.
“Your brothers make it work with Livy, right? She loves them all and they love her?”
“That’s different. Livy and my brothers – they all went through something that sort of bonded them. They needed each other. My brothers had already decided to find a relationship together before she even came along,” I argued.
“We’ve all been through stuff too, haven’t we? I think the fact we can really see each other so clearly, under the bullshit, is the reason we’re feeling what we feel already after so little time,” Aleks reasoned.
“Look, this conversation moved way past what we meant it to. Let’s just leave it where it is for now. We have a lot to deal with and like you said, you don’t know us that well. Just know that we all like you and we’d like to work on those feelings if you want to too,” Harris said calmly.
