AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This sounds like the kind of thing where you’d get a plus-one,” he pointed out. “So which one of us gets to be your date?”
Brock’s question hung in the frozen air for a few moments. I stopped walking altogether.
“I— I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”
A flash of panic went through me. Brock was right, thiswasa black-tie affair. People brought guests, significant others. I couldn’t bring friends, though. The first night of the exhibit was an exclusive showing.
Suddenly I felt miserable.
“I think it’s obvious,” Valerio said casually. He spread his fingers across his chest. “It’s me.”
“You?” Kade scoffed.
“Sure!” he smiled. “Of the three of us, I’m obviously the most refined.”
“Obviously,” Brock sneered mockingly.
“No, seriously!” he went on. “I might not know sculptures or artwork, but I know beauty when I see it.”
His eyes drifted to me, but I was unwilling to accept the compliment. In my mind’s eye, whenever I envisioned the show I’d always pictured Drake hanging from my arm. But now…
Right now I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of this before.
“Look, it’s her big night so we let her pick,” Brock said decisively. “And whoever she chooses, the others will just have to suck it up.”
“But I can’t pick!” I cried. “I won’t. I don’t ever want to play favorites.”
“It’s notreallyplaying favorites,” Brock pointed out.
“But it is,” I said, my mind moving quickly. “I love you all equally. It’s not like I could just—”
I stopped mid-sentence, realizing what I’d said. In doing so, I drew even more attention to it.
“What’d you just say?” Valerio squinted.
“That I couldn’t pick?”
“No,” said Kade shrewdly. “Theotherthing.”
All of a sudden my stomach was erupting with butterflies! My mind, totally locked on the magnitude of what I’d just said.
But my heart was strangely okay with it. In fact, it was soaring.
“I— I…” My mouth was the last obstacle. Eventually it gave in, allowing myself to speak straight from the heart. “I said I loved you.”
“Me?” Valerio said, spreading his hand even wider on his own chest.
“No, not you,” I blushed, punching him in the arm. Somehow though, his making light of the situation made it easier for me to speak truthfully. “All of you. I’m… I’m in love with allthreeof you. I think.”
“Youthink?” Kade chuckled gruffly.
“No,” I countered quickly. “I— I mean yes, but—”
It was Brock who took mercy on me, pulling me away from the crowd. The four of us wandered off to a little area where people were sitting down. A few steps later we stood beneath one of those propane-fired lampshade things. The ones that throw off a lot of heat.
“You can say it you know,” Brock told me plainly. “It’s okay.”
“I love you,” I mumbled, looking down for a moment. When I tilted my chin upward again, I smiled shyly. “I— I can’t reallyhelploving the three of you. You’ve been so good to me. You mean so much to me, I—”
