Chapter 65
Conin
The nightmares aren’t as prolific anymore.
I wake up peacefully rather than drenched in an excess of sweat, panting for dear life.
The space next to me is empty of a body once there.
I reach out to feel his lingering traces, the scent that reminds me so much of him.
Ezra’s lying on his stomach at the far end of the bed, drool dripping from his mouth.
He’s in nothing but his underwear, healed scars exposed, and hair spread out everywhere.
I sit up, moving in search of my missing underwear discarded in the mess that litters the floor.
What can I say? Three men live in this tiny one-bedroom apartment together.
I find Atlas in the kitchen. He’s put on a T-shirt that drapes over his boxers while he constructs a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“Hey you,” he says. I love it when he says that.
“Hi,” I say.
My arms slither their way around his midsection, and I plant a kiss on his neck. Atlas isn’t overtly muscular, but I love the feel of his flat stomach against my palms. I trail them underneath the shirt, the hair on our skin grazing each other’s. He shudders from my touch.
“Babe, I’m trying to make a sandwich. Please don’t make me horny,” he sighs.
“Sorry. What time is it?”
“Six a.m.”
“Shit. I have to be on shift in two hours.”
“Don’t go,” he complains.
“You know I need to,” I say.
He cranes his head back and rests it against mine. This tiny act of affection has become normal, comfortable even. It seems easy now, after everything. It took us a damn long time to get here, but we’re here now.
“That was amazing . . . what we did earlier,” he whispers.
“It was,” I mumble into his ear.
He turns on me and pushes me against the island counter.
We kiss ferociously, hungrily, with a desire that shouldn’t be there this early in the morning. His hands find my ass and squeeze it hard.
“Mmph, thick,” he breathes into my lips.
Atlas tastes like peanut butter and jelly. We’re locked in for another five or so minutes before we break apart. Something is happy between his legs.
“Jesus Christ. How?” I guffaw.
“I have the endurance,” he jokes.
I playfully shove him. He snorts and I dive for his sandwich to take a bite. He grabs it away from me with an enormous frown. Atlas scarfs the sandwich down whole.
“Fiend,” I say.
“My sandwich,” he pouts.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, “I’m going to shave.”
I escape to the bathroom. Inside, I gently massage the shaving cream on my face, noticing the acne dotting the mound of flesh on my chest. The groan I emit is long and harsh, made even worse the longer I fixate on my belly, which is fatter than it was several months ago.
“You look great, babe,” Atlas tells me from the bathroom door. He sidles in and plants a loud, wet smooch on my cheek, excess shaving cream splattering his lips. He wipes his face clean, returning to the kitchen. My mouth cracks from the pure joy he elicits.
Atlas and Ezra love my belly. I’m aware of their support if I decide I eventually want to be rid of it, but at times, it feels like I’m allowing myself to be me.
At others, the self-consciousness gnaws at me like a leech.
I think, perhaps, if it wasn’t a societal expectation to be fit and skinny, I’d be perfectly content with how I look.
“A bigger belly means more to love,” Ezra had said once. I stared at myself that night. Yeah, I had admitted. Bigger bellies were pretty damn attractive.
The scar on the right of my stomach, the residual aftermath from the bullet wound, is even more painful to face. I blink and Mara’s there, smiling maliciously with her skull mask cracked over her lips. I blink again and she’s gone—a memory of the distant past.
I know I’ve killed. It wasn’t Mara, but those men at the warehouse. It was in self-defense. I know this, but she still haunts me.
The razor slides down the grain on my cheek. Atlas rematerializes and watches the painstaking process. His grin is sweet and tender.
“You’re not discreet, you know.”
“Guilty as charged,” he says. “You’re just adorable.”
“Quiet, you.” Another stroke to the cheek.
When he doesn’t reply with a quip, I turn my neck to see his gaze transfixed at the corner where the bathtub meets the wall.
“Stop it,” I say.
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”
Scarlet blooms in my peripheries. I wasn’t there, but I didn’t need to be.
“Come here,” I say softly.
“But your face is covered with shaving cream.”
That didn’t stop him before.
“Fine, hold up.”
I finish and wipe my jaw clean. Atlas stares out into space, most likely reliving the horrific images he had to witness almost a year ago. I lace my fingers with him, rubbing his back with my free hand.
“Want to watch something?”
He sighs audibly.
“Star Wars?”
“Ezra will kill us if we watch Attack of the Clones without him,” I deadpan.
“So Revenge it is,” Atlas snickers.
The two of us, half-naked, take to the futon together. I retrieve a blanket and plop it over our legs. We snuggle into one another.
“So,” Atlas says, “when did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Come on, Co. When did you know you liked me?”
“Buy me dinner first,” I scoff.
“I’m serious. I want to know!”
“It’s embarrassing, but . . . I thought you were attractive from the beginning. And then, well, you were very persistent in hanging out with me, so here we are.”
“I got you beat. I loved you since the moment I laid my eyes on you,” he says and giggles.
“Oh, whatever!” I say and twist his nipple.
Atlas yips. Thinking the same exact thing, he and I dart our gaze to the open bedroom door, shushing ourselves with tiny giggles. Ezra’s conked out under the sheets, seemingly unperturbed by the sudden disruption. Atlas and I laugh.
“Love, huh?” I ask, remembering his subtle mention of the word.
“Well, yeah . . . I . . . love you. And Ezra, of course,” he says coyly.
“Of course. We’re a packaged deal, he and I.”
“I know.” Atlas grins.
“And I love you too,” I confess.
We’re no longer watching the movie. As the film plays on in the background, Atlas grinds on top of me.
Electric jolts spark from the friction, coursing through my veins, up my spine, into my erection.
He trails kisses to the waistline of my briefs, ducking underneath the blanket and working his magic.
While I breathe in euphoria, the touch of a third-party member bristles the goosebumps that have erupted all over.
Ezra pushes my chin with his index finger, luring me in for a kiss.
“You didn’t wake me up,” he murmurs.
Atlas hits a particular spot that makes me squirm. I hold my breath and wait for the sensation to subside.
“You looked like you needed the sleep,” I shudder.
“I did, but round two without me? No fair.”
“I didn’t—” Intense shivers wrack every inch of my body. I gasp, unable to help it. “I didn’t know this was going to happen.”
Atlas’s head pops from the cover, all boastful grins and crinkly eyes.
“He said he loved me.”
“It’s about time you told each other!” Ezra exclaims, slapping me on the deltoid.
“I know, I’ve been waiting forever,” says Atlas.
“Sorry. I’ve just . . . I’ve been afraid,” I say.
He climbs up my torso and lays his head in the crook of my neck. Ezra sits on the carpet. He squeezes an affirming hand on my forearm, taking the leftover space on my shoulder.
“I understand,” Atlas says. “I worry about us sometimes, too.”
“Why?” asks Ezra.
“I . . . there are times I feel like I’m intruding.
I’ll listen to one of your conversations, then realize that I don’t share the same history.
There’s this guilt I feel for allowing myself to be swept away from the high of a new relationship.
I didn’t actually pause to consider or reflect on the entire lives you shared before you met me. ”
So, the time for this conversation has arrived. I had an inkling we’d need to discuss this eventually. I brush the back of my hand over Atlas’s cheek, feel him breathe in an uncertain breath.
“Ezra and I may have an extensive history, Atlas, but the second you believe you’re not an integral part in this relationship is the second this, as amazing as it’s been, falls apart,” I say, driving in every syllable to emphasize the truth to my words.
“I’m sure I can speak for both Ezra and myself when I say that we were also swept away with the excitement of everything. But . . . I think that’s okay. We’re young. We’re discovering. We love each other. You came into our lives and you just didn’t want to let go. And I don’t want you to.”
“Neither do I,” Ezra says. “You mean so much to me.”
The cogs in Atlas’s head turn. It’s a while before he says anything, but Ezra and I don’t pry.
“I’ve never felt like this before,” he says eventually.
“Do you want to tell us how you feel?” Ezra questions.
Atlas sighs.
“I thought it was some silly crush. These two cute guys show up in a town I’ve lived in all my life and I was going to send them on their way and that would be that.
I didn’t expect everything to happen the way that it did.
I . . . didn’t expect to eventually want what you two have.
I definitely didn’t think I’d fall for you both. ”
He’s spiraling—it’s in the edge of his voice, signaling emotions that run deep; because that’s who Atlas is. He’s a well filled to the very brim. I haven’t seen him like this in a long time. This must’ve been bothering him for quite a while.
“Oh, love, you care about this a lot, don’t you?” I say.
“Yes. I’m scared to lose it,” he murmurs. A tear splashes my chest. Another, then another.
“You’re not going to lose us,” I say. “We’re in this for the long haul.”
Ezra squeezes me. He and I . . . we’re on the same page.
“Ezra and I—” I search for the words in me. “We’ve loved each other for a long time and it’s increased now that we have you. Someone else to love. Someone else we can share it with.”
“We love you just the same,” Ezra assures.
“If anything, we’re complete now.”
“Thank you,” Atlas says in barely over a whisper.
The sun brightens and the outside buzzes with the promise of a new day. We touch, we feel, we keep close to one another—hearts beating, lungs breathing air. And we’re alive. So alive.