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Thirty-Five
DELILAH
The candles flickered. Like the winds of change had passed through the room.
“You,” I repeated numbly.
“Yes.”
“You want me to dateyou.”
Liam scratched his chin, flexing one beautiful arm into a perfectly-formed bicep. I had a flash of recollection of me wrapping my hand around that bicep. Beside him, the others nodded.
“And which one of you would I date?” I asked glibly. “And which two of you would be left out in the cold, to hate me for the rest of your lives, while the other—”
“All of us,” Julius interrupted me, his arms still crossed. “You’d date all three of us.”
If my heart was racing before, it was practically hammering out of my chest now. I looked up at them one by one, disbelievingly. But then again, nottotallydisbelievingly, because somewhere in the twisting pit of my stomach, what they were saying made perfect sense.
“Mind if we cut through the bullshit?” Duncan asked.
I exhaled slowly. “Please do.”
“Good,” he said, looking relieved, “because we’ve been idiots so far. We’ve hidden our feelings. We’ve tried to tiptoe around the elephant in the room, instead of coming clean with you.”
I took another sip from my glass, reflexively. My head was swimming now, but not from the wine.
“You’re amazing,” Liam stepped in. “With the kids, with us, with everything. You’re smart, you’re handy, you’re funny, and you’re beautiful.” He tilted his head and shrugged. “You totally blow our socks off, Delilah. You’re the full package.”
“And on top of all that,” said Julius, “you’re absolutelywickedin bed.”
An inner heat rose inside me. I was suddenly sweating.
“It was crazy for justoneof us to sleep with you,” said Liam, “much less all three. Not because it was wrong, but because we were risking a woman our children loved so much! We could’ve easily lost you. We could’ve frightened you away.”
“No,” I breathed. “Never.”
“But temptation was overwhelming,” Liam went on. “We couldn’t help ourselves! There was attraction of course, but also such an emotional closeness and intimacy that it couldn’t be denied. One by one we gave in to our urges. And when we sat down to talk about it, none of us could blame any of the others for what happened.”
I knew what he meant because I’d felt it too: a comfort, a closeness… a feeling of attachment that went well beyond the physical.
And my God, the physical was already so overwhelming to begin with!
“Look at me,” said Duncan, drawing my attention back to him. “I know you’re thinking we can’t possibly want this. That it wouldn’t work. That if we’re jealous right now of you being out with some other guy, we’d be three times as jealous of each other too.”
I wanted to nod, because it was exactly what I was thinking. But he saw it in my eyes already.
“That wouldn’t happen betweenus, Delilah,” he said. “It couldn’t happen, and that’s because the three of us are brothers. We’ve fought together, lived together, put our very lives in each other’s hands. Even now in the civilian world, we fell into business together. We’re restoring this veryplacetogether!”
He threw up one hand, waving it around. Liam took over.
“The point is, we share everything,” he said. “We always have. And now we’re sharing the most incredible thing in the world: fatherhood. Even though it was thrust upon us, it’s been amazing in ways we never could’ve possibly imagined.”
They all nodded. Julius uncrossed his arms.
“And it’s been a thousand times more amazing,” he said solemnly, “since the five of us started sharing it withyou.”
The room went abruptly quiet after that, and silence reigned. It was so absolute, so total, I swore I could hear the flickering of the candle flames.
