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I expected an argument, but Beck surprised me when he slowly shook his head. “How about you and I get cleaned up while Quinn straightens up out here?” I asked even as I began steering Beck to the bathroom. He didn’t protest as I led him into the bathroom and my eyes met Quinn’s to make sure we were on the same page. He’d already started getting the bed back in order so I had to take that as a sign that we were.
I closed the bathroom door behind us and reached into the shower to turn the water on. Beck’s eyes were still wet from his tears, but all the emotion seemed to have been sucked out of him because he didn’t react in any kind of way as I began working his pants off his body. The boxers were next and then I gently urged him into the shower. When he did nothing but stand stiffly beneath the spray of hot water, I shucked my own clothes and climbed in with him. The shower was big enough for two people, but Beck made no move to either step away from me or get closer and when I poured some body wash into my hands and began running it over his body, he barely reacted. Under any other circumstances, I would have enjoyed the opportunity to explore his body, but his continued silence had me on edge. Once I got him clean, I made quick work of cleaning myself and then tugged him out of the shower and got him dried off. Spying a pair of sweats sitting on a small shelf near the toilet, I grabbed them and worked them up his legs. I didn’t relish the idea of putting my damp briefs back on so I wrapped a towel around my hips and tied it off as best I could.
Quinn was in the bedroom when I opened the bathroom door, but I could tell from his damp skin that he must have rushed through a shower in his own room. Beck’s room had been straightened and the bedding fixed and Quinn was wearing what looked like pajama bottoms. He was on the opposite side of the bed and had turned on a small light on the nightstand. I could see Beck’s phone sitting there as well and I realized Quinn must have gone back to the TV room to grab it since Beck had left it behind earlier.
I urged Beck under the covers. Quinn climbed in at the same time and drew Beck forward into his arms. Beck didn’t protest at all, but I didn’t necessarily take that as a good sign. I crawled in after Beck and positioned myself at his back. I ended up extending my arm over Quinn’s where it was resting on Beck’s waist. My eyes met Quinn’s over Beck’s shoulder and I saw the same question in his eyes I was sure was in mine.
Now what?
* * *
“How do you know?” Beck whispered, his voice sounding raspy and dry. I immediately reached over to the nightstand on my side of the bed and grabbed the bottle of water Quinn had left there earlier. Beck was lying quietly against my chest and though I was reluctant to disturb him, I handed him the water. I was pleased when he took a few sips, handed it back and then lay right back down in the same position he’d been in for the better part of an hour.
“How do I know what?” I asked as I let my fingers trail up and down his spine.
It had been almost 24 hours since Beck’s meltdown. Quinn and I had stayed with him the whole night and had been privy to the nightmares that had plagued the young man all night long. He’d always ended up only half waking up as he cried and told someone he was sorry over and over. By morning when the alarm on his phone had gone off, Quinn had turned it off and told me to stay with him while he went and took care of the horses. We’d spent the day taking turns staying with Beck as he’d slept, waking him long enough to eat or take the medicine as outlined on the prescription bottles and to text his fathers after I’d read one early morning text expressing concern for Beck’s whereabouts.
Beck, for his part, had continued to function on auto-pilot, but the fact that he snuggled up to me and Quinn was promising.
Or at least I liked to think so.
It was a sure sign that my emotions were getting more and more entrenched with these men each day. And that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. While I hadn’t been seeking out any kind of relationship, I wasn’t completely opposed to it either. Though the idea of being with two men at the same time had never even entered my orbit, at least not outside the bounds of sex anyway, now it was all I could think about.
I knew Luke’s childhood friend was in a threesome with two other men, though I’d only briefly met Rhys and his partners a couple of times.
“How do you know what we did wasn’t wrong?” Beck asked softly.
The door to the bedroom opened at that moment and I looked over my shoulder to see Quinn entering the room. I wasn’t sure if he’d heard Beck’s question or not so I sent him what I hoped was a silent message not to say anything. If this was our only chance to get Beck talking, we needed to make sure we didn’t waste it.
“Because I don’t believe sex between people, no matter their sexuality, is wrong. As long as they’re able to consent to it, it’s between them and only them.” As I spoke, I watched Quinn get undressed until he was just in his underwear. He slipped into the bed quietly and pressed up against Beck’s back. I bit back a smile when Beck immediately sought out Quinn’s arm and pulled it up and over his body like it had been so many times over the past 24 hours.
“Did you always like it?”
“What? Sex?” I asked. My gut tightened because I knew we were treading on dangerous ground. As much as I wanted to understand what was going through Beck’s head when it came to sex, I didn’t want to say something that would skew his perception even more than it already was.
“Yeah…did it always feel good?” Beck asked.
I glanced at Quinn who was watching me with a mix of pity and confusion.
“No, it didn’t,” I admitted. “My first time was with a girl and even though I was able to go through with it, I didn’t enjoy it.”
I felt Beck shift in my arms a little and I looked down to see him looking at me in confusion. “So you…you…”
“Came?” I supplied for him.
He nodded. “But you didn’t really want it?”
I pushed aside the awkwardness of the conversation along with the painful memories it brought up for me and said, “Yeah, something like that. She was my high school girlfriend and we’d been together for a while. I’d been in denial that I was gay and I thought I could prove I was straight if I was with her like that. But it was like my body was responding even though my mind wasn’t. Afterwards it felt like...”
“Like what?” Quinn asked softly when I’d been quiet for too long.
I was surprised to feel the sting of tears at the backs of my eyes. “Like I’d lost something special.” I reached up to discreetly wipe at my eyes, but when I felt Quinn’s fingers on my forearm, I knew I hadn’t succeeded. I shook off the darkness that had threatened to settle over me and said, “It was different when I was with a guy for the first time. The sex wasn’t even all that great, but I didn’t walk away feeling like I’d lied to myself.”
“Because you weren’t,” Beck murmured.
I nodded.
“I’m not going to lie and say I’ve been a saint in the years since I was honest with myself about who I was, but every encounter was my choice and while I might regret one or two, I’ve never looked at them and thought of them as having been wrong in any kind of way.”
