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Finished dressing, I sat down at the table used for folding clothes. Galen leaned against the edge, crossing his arms over his chest. “Hey,” he said, tipping my chin up with his finger. “You okay?”
I smiled, but it was shaky at best. What the hell had I just done? Baron and Ezra acted like this was something they wanted, but would they change their minds? Would everything be weird now? Would it matter who I’d had sex with first?
I rubbed my brow with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. “I’m okay,” I answered. “Just wondering how the hell this is all going to work.”
Galen bent and kissed me, and despite the low hum of anxiety fogging my head, my lips clung to his of their own accord. “No take backs,” he murmured, low and rough against my mouth. “You’re ours, now.” He kissed me again, harder. “Mine.” Straightening, he tucked his thumbs in his front pockets. “You, uh… want me to help you fold clothes?”
“I’ve seen how you fold clothes. Hard pass.” He looked so awkward standing there, unsure of what to say or do.
“I guess I’m going to head back upstairs, unless you want me to stay?”
“Are you going to tell them?” I blurted the question without thinking it through. Galen’s features tightened, then smoothed out.
“Of course not. I’m pretty sure they’ll figure it out on their own, but this isn’t going to be the kind of thing where we compare notes, baby.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Good.” I motioned toward the washer that had my clothes in it, wheezing in its spin cycle across the room, “I’m going to wait and switch my stuff over. Be up in a few.”
“I can wait.”
“No! No, you’re fine. It’ll just be a few minutes.”
After a long exhalation through his nose, Galen kissed me one last time.God, how would I ever get enough of those kisses?“Don’t be long.”
After he left I released a shaky breath. My stomach was churning with a sudden attack of nerves. This… this was crazy. If we did this, people around us would be brutal. The girls, because I’d taken not one but three prime men off the market. Because I’d crossed some indistinct line between being confident in my sexuality and promiscuous, and that was a threat to womanhood everywhere. Inwardly I rolled my eyes at my own sense of drama.
The guys would be equally difficult to deal with. I didn’t fool myself that they wouldn’t look at me differently, speculate on our sex lives and my freakometer.
I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I’d been through so fucking much in the past year, lost my family and friends and the reputation associated with my last name. I didn’t have much else to lose except the reputation I was building. The one I had to keep clean and moral, lest I not be granted custody of my little sister when the time came.
And what if the school caught wind of our relationship, and yanked my grant and my scholarship? I had lost my mind to even consider entering into such an unconventional relationship. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t that ‘fuck ‘em’ kind of girl, the one who cheerfully mooned authority withkiss mystamped across her ass.
I could go upstairs, right now, and tell them I’d changed my mind. I could tell them why, and Baron would look at me with those calm eyes that saw right through me. He’d kiss my forehead, tell me it was all right. That he understood.
Ezra would crack a joke and then strip to do some yoga in front of me, hoping he could change my mind.
Galen… he’d already been abandoned and rejected too many times. I couldn’t destroy this delicate peace we’d erected between us. I wouldn’t. And yet… he would never consent to being in a relationship composed of just the two of us, not after we all had fought so hard to get to this point.
I laid my head on my arms, groaning. The thought of doing this to them made me physically ill. Maybe we could manage to keep it quiet? But how?
Fuck. I stood and began gathering my laundry from the washer. We needed to talk this through. They needed to know what was at stake, and help me figure out how to keep it safe.
Chapter 36: Ezra
They’d done the deed.
From my position in the arm chair, I watched as Gale re-entered the dorm, glancing around but failing to meet either Baron or my eyes. “Hey,” he muttered, sitting on the couch across from me, his legs sprawled wide. His body was an odd combination of relaxed and nervous, one leg bouncing and the finger of one hand drumming the surface of his pants.
“Somebody’s glowing,” I drawled to Baron, who was doing classwork at the table. A smirk danced on his lips but he otherwise ignored me.
Gale didn’t, though. His gaze shot to me, challenging but faintly abashed. “Is this going to be a problem?”
I shook my head. Incredibly, there was no jealousy. Nothing but a faint sense of satisfaction that everything… everyone… was falling into place. “Nah, man. It’s great. If I didn’t think it would be weird and creepy, I’d congratulate you. As it is, I think we all need to agree that whatever happens between us and Jude stays private.”
“Agreed,” Baron said.
“One hundred percent,” Gale said. “One of the first things Jude asked me… after... was if I was going to tell you guys. I don’t ever want her to think we’re comparing notes or anything like that.”
Baron made a sound of assent and I nodded. “If this is really happening, do you think we need to set any parameters—”
