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My phone vibrates in my hand, and I immediately swipe the green icon when I see my agent’s name.
“Markus, the Met needs a new Rodolfo, and they need an answer by tomorrow. You’ll have to can—”
“I’ll take it,” I cut in before he can tell me about all the concerts I’ll need to cancel. This is my lifelong dream. There’s nothing to consider.
Half an hour and four phone calls later, it’s settled. I’m playing Rodolfo at the Met in the spring.
The moment I hang up with the conductor, I want to go tell Clara. I’m in the hall, reaching for the door to the music room, when I remember the scene I walked in on earlier.
How could I forget that?
Clara is right. My career does come before her. No matter how much I love her, it always has, and I don’t see how I can change it—not at this point in my life.
I lean my forehead against the wall and listen to the beautiful notes from the piano seeping through the door. Sometimes, I’ll linger out here just to listen to her play. Her music comes straight from the soul. It always has. But when she started taking piano lessons with Grigory, it got even more deep-felt. It’s truly breathtaking. She belongs at the conservatory like Grigory said from the start.
And she belongs with him.
The realization settles deep within me like a fundamental truth. A truth that aches at the bottom of my soul. A tight knot forms in my chest and I have to leave because her music hits straight into that painful place.
I need to think.
This threesome dynamic is already on the brink of collapsing, and me taking this job will only exacerbate the situation. I’ll be gone for months. I’ll be even more swamped with work than I’ve been this fall. Clara will be devastated when I tell her the news. She’ll try to put on a happy face, knowing it’s my dream, but deep down, she’ll hurt.
Maybe it’s time we finally accept how things are supposed to be.
She belongs with Grigory, and she can’t be his as long as she’s mine.
It simply can’t happen.
Grigory doesn’t do second—never has. And as long as I’m in this dynamic, he’ll be second. No matter how much I try to convince him that I want to share her on equal terms, he’ll always see me as her primary Dom, and he might never be able to claim her fully like they both need.
To be frank, I never thought he’d agree to try this sharing thing. Hell, I was surprised already when he agreed to escalate things during the summer. Grigory is not the sharing type. Never has been.
Sure, we’ve played with the same women at clubs more than once, and he enjoys that kind of dynamic. But sharing a sub on a permanent basis is on a whole different level.
For a while, I thought it could work. I truly thought his ability to commit would override his need to possess. But not with Clara. His urge to claim her is too primitive. It would be like overriding the need to breathe when coming out of the water after nearly drowning.
Maybe over time, he could get there. But by then, it would be too late.
I only see one possible outcome.
But I need time to think everything over before I make any rash decisions—to be sure.
So I decide on something else.
I’ll go on tour with Lucia—she told me, just two days ago, that the offer still stands. It will give me time and space to think, and it will give Clara some much-needed space to focus on her audition. God knows she doesn’t need the emotional turmoil of having both Grigory and me around.
Then I’ll be back a few days after the auditions are over, and all three of us will have a talk. It’s not ideal pushing it two weeks, but I see no other way.
I break open a bottle of wine and settle at the dining table with a glass, needing something to subdue the turmoil of conflicting emotions and uncertainty inside me.
I’m on my second glass when Grigory comes in. Tension tightens his shoulders, and when he speaks, there’s a sort of distance that has never existed between us before. I think he’s affected by what transpired in the music room—Clara’s sudden breakdown and the way she rejected me. He surely feels bad about it, and I can tell he’s about to say something. Maybe even apologize.
But I don’t let him. Right now, I can’t ease whatever feeling of getting between Clara and me that he has. I can’t even reassure him that he’s not. Because he is. And I’m not sure he’s ready to hear it—not until I’ve made a decision.
“I’m going on tour with Lucia,” I say before he can express his regret. I need to get this out before I change my mind. “I’m leaving in two days, and I need you to take care of Clara. You’re in Berlin for the next couple of weeks, right?”
Grigory looks taken aback—a rare reaction for him. He watches me for a tense moment before taking the chair across from me. “I thought you’d decided not to go.”
