Chapter 35 #2
Still with a troubled look on his face, he opens the door to the building and gestures me inside. “Do you like steak?”
“Sure.”
“I could have made that for you,” he says.
“He wanted to do it. I didn’t ask him to.”
Deacon stops on the staircase and faces me. “I don’t get it.”
I shrug. “I think he likes to cook, too.”
“Is it because I didn’t cook last week?” he asks.
“I promise it’s not that deep, Deacon. He’s just being nice. You were in the kitchen all day Saturday. And yesterday, too.”
“Oh.”
“You all right?” I ask.
He gives me a few long seconds of eye contact, and I feel it in my core. All the same nervous excitement I used to get whenever he paid attention to me flutters back into existence along with the ache of it not being enough.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m okay. Sorry, I just always feel like I’m doing something wrong.”
What? “You aren’t,” I tell him.
“With you especially.”
Where the fuck is this coming from? I glance up at Millie’s closed door, feeling a strong need to get behind my own. “We’re gonna talk about this on the stairs?”
He looks confused again, so I change the subject. “Wanna go make sure Isaac isn’t messing up your kitchen?”
“I’m not all that attached to the kitchen.” He leans back against the wall, both feet crossed on a stair. “You know I spent most of my session with my therapist on Friday talking about you. And with Bailey, too.”
Apollo doesn’t know what to do. He’s poised to climb, looking back at me like what the fuck? You coming? I have to say I’m on the same page with him. I don’t know what to do, either. This feels like being hit with a frying pan.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I feel like you’re still not sure about this.”
I glance around again to make sure we’re alone.
This is hella awkward. “Did I do something wrong?” My mind is flipping through all the events of the last few days, the last week, and all I can remember is giving this unconventional situation my best efforts, both in bed and out of it. Mostly in it, I guess.
“Why’d you ask if he and I had sex at the party? Were you jealous?”
I take a deep breath and try not to let his question bother me so much, but any way I look at it, it hurts.
Because I was jealous. “I’m trying, Deacon.” This is going on my gravestone, I swear. Here lies Evan Lockwood. He tried.
“I’m trying, too, but I feel like you’re not gonna give me the chance I need.”
I expect him to say more, but when he doesn’t, I have to ask. “Time you need to what?”
“The time we need,” he says.
I’m so confused. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Really?”
I shrug. “Where am I gonna go?” LA? Fuck. Why was that first thing that popped into my head? Why is my brain so eager to consider replacing one complicated situation with another? It was just a job offer. I already have a job.
“So you do want this to work?” Deacon asks. “Or you feel like you don’t get a say?”
Wow, I don’t like that question. If this is what’s always gonna happen when someone else decides to cook, we might need to set some ground rules. “I want it to work. Can we go up, please? I don’t want to see Millie.”
Deacon sighs. “Fine.”
Isaac smiles at me when I come in. I don’t return it, but it doesn’t really matter because Deacon’s right behind me, and it’s his turn to get our boss’s smiles and attention anyway.
Without taking him off his leash, I walk with Apollo into my bedroom, closing the door behind us.
This situation is so fucking stupid. I’ve never been one to brag about my stellar judgment, but this is ridiculous.
First I seduce my boss, then I turn that into something I do on a regular basis, and then I decide it’ll be no big deal to share him with my roommate.
While they’ve both clearly said they want this three-way relationship, it can’t always be about sex.
At some point we’ll need to have a conversation about how all this is actually going to work.
What if—when we all decide to take a step back and look at the complete picture, a weak link is revealed?
Because I’m that person, right? Because I’m the one who liked the idea of dinner first?
I hate what this is doing to me. How all my insecurities are bubbling to the surface and forcing me to confront whether they’re warranted or a trauma response.
I hate feeling defensive and jealous and unsure about where I stand with Deacon.
But what I hate more than that is my fear of talking to him about it. Why am I like this?
If my parents taught me anything it’s that I am wanted. So why did one man not wanting me four years ago turn into a fear that’s still running my life?
I’ve been trying so hard to push past it.
I might have balked at first, but since then, I’ve been in this with both of them.
I’ve committed to it. Still, while I know Isaac wants us both, I’m not entirely sure Deacon does.
He’s given me a chance, for sure. But my crush on him could be a detour he’s trying to navigate until the road he really wants to be on with Isaac clears again.
So yeah—there’s some natural jealousy there.
I want them both to want me as much as I want them.
And with Deacon, it’s been hit or miss. Isaac does a good job of bridging the gap between us, but there’s still a gap, and right now, I’m feeling it.
I log into my computer and do my best to get my mind on something less complicated—like computer programming. I’m totally absorbed in working out some of the new and impossible interface bugs on my scheduling app when someone knocks on my door.
I sigh. “Yeah?”
It’s Deacon, looking sort of lost. I wonder if Isaac kicked him out of the kitchen, or if he’s here of his own free will.
“I wasn’t finished talking to you,” he says.
“Okay.” I gesture to my bed for him to sit.
He does and picks up where I guess he thinks we left off. “I don’t ask what the two of you do together when you’re alone.”
I turn in my chair to face him. “Well, you’re allowed to.”
“I just assume you’re fucking.”
I shake my head, newly frustrated. “That’s not what we always do, though. We work together. We talk. We’re trying to figure things out.”
“I’m trying to figure things out, too.”
I get that, and I also can’t imagine the way he processes a relationship like this. “I’m sorry, Deacon. I don’t know all the rules yet.”
“You get that sex is one of the ways I connect, right?” he asks.
Nausea grips me as I think of him and Isaac. The way all their kisses look starved and desperate. The way Deacon reaches for him. Needs him. I nod.
“Like one of the easiest ways for me.”
That doesn’t track with as much as he demanded we communicate so much up front, but it makes how much less talking we’re doing now make sense. “Have you always been like that?”
“Well, no… Sort of. But just because something only lasted for an hour or a night doesn’t mean it’s worth less. I’m not saying every hook up I’ve ever had was meaningful, but they weren’t all empty and unmemorable.”
“What about the times you and I had sex?” I ask, extremely nervous to hear what he has to say about that.
“What about them?”
Ouch. Fuck. I swallow hard. “What did they mean for you? What was it worth?”
“Um…” He looks down at his hands, his fingertips tapping a rhythm against each other. “Us having sex means you were serious when you said you liked me.”
“Do you feel like you’re connecting with me?”
“Yes, but…”
I really think I might throw up.
“It’s just different than with Isaac. He feels safe.”
Safe? Isaac? The man who thinks he can and should be in a relationship with two men at the same time? The thirty-five year old man whose longest relationship was like—a season? “So he’s safe, and I’m…what?”
“Exciting? Scary?”
“Scary?”
He looks up at me now. “You could take him away.”
His words hit me like a shove to the chest. If I weren’t sitting, I’m positive I would have fallen on my ass. “Oh.”
Then he goes on. “I do get why this is harder for you given what happened with your ex. I also understand I’m a lot. I’ve been—too much maybe. But I’ll do whatever I need to…to be with you both.”
I don’t know how I feel about any of this. The words all make sense, but the premise feels off. “He’s not mine.”
Deacon, looking all tragic and beautiful with his shockingly expressive deep blue eyes, shakes his head. “He is. I see it. He’s said it.”
“It’s not all up to me, though.” It can’t be. I don’t want any of this on me. I have my own heart to worry about. I can’t be in charge of both of theirs, too.
“I just want a chance,” he says.
Something already tenuously stitched together in my chest splits straight down the middle.
“I want a chance with you, too.” But I know that’s not what he means or even on topic.
I’m also not sure he realizes how hard it is to watch him fall so easily for Isaac and stumble so hard when it comes to me.
I get that I’m not six-two and rich, and I don’t top, and I’m only a secretary, but when it’s just Deacon and me, I still get butterflies.
I still want to crack him open and feel his love pour out. I think it must be magnificent.
I understand he communicates differently, but with Isaac involved, it’s almost like he’s stopped trying with me, and that’s hurt.
I told myself it would get better the more time we have, but the way he’s talking—it doesn’t feel like he’s willing to give me that.
He needs an answer. He needs a level of clarity I’m not sure I can give him.
“Do you really want that?” he asks.
I want to say yes, of course I want a chance with Deacon. But it feels a little like missing a plane and expecting it to turn around to come back and collect me. Of course it won’t. “Well, yeah,” I say weakly.
“That’s not what it seems like,” he says.
“What does it seem like?”
“It seems like you want to be with Isaac. Like you want to be his boyfriend. You never left his side at the party, and you acted jealous when he was with me.”
I can’t argue that I got jealous when they disappeared together, but I didn’t seek out Isaac’s company at the dinner party any more than he sought out mine. I had no idea Deacon was watching so closely or that it would hurt him. My whole job at parties is to pick up Deacon’s social slack.
“You won’t let me help in the kitchen.” The excuse is weak as fuck, but I don’t know what else to say. He’s not wrong. He saw what he saw, and I’m not sure what I would have done differently.
Deacon grips the edge of the mattress. “I get that he loves you. He’s been clear about that since day one, and I’m glad you’re giving him a chance. But if there’s not a chance for me to be part of it—part of your relationship—then you need to tell me.”
This isn’t fair. It’s not my fault Isaac decided to finally open up about his feelings for me after he started seeing Deacon, and I can’t help how I feel about either of them.
I thought I was wanted—they both led me to believe that, but maybe now that he’s had us both, Deacon’s made his choice—the one I’ve always feared was inevitable.
“Why do you keep trying to put this all on me?”
“Because you’re the one who put yourself in the middle,” he says, and I actually feel like he slapped me.
“Wait.” He rubs his face and drops his shoulders. “That didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean that.”
“I think you did,” I say, my voice shaky but clear.
“No,” he says sharply, a harsher tone than I’ve ever heard come out of him. “You were already there. You were already with Isaac.”
What he’s saying isn’t making it better.
If anything, it’s worse. I can’t blame Deacon for poor word choice.
It happens. He says the wrong thing sometimes, but today he’s doubling down, and he was upset with me from the time he got home.
This is real. His frustration with me is real.
He wants Isaac, and I was fun while I lasted, but if I’m not mistaken, I’m being asked to step the fuck out of the way.
“I’m sorry,” I manage to whisper.
“The thing is, I kind of think there’s no right way to do this, but there’s gotta be at least a million ways to do it wrong.”
I nod. Because no shit.
“I understand,” I say. “I won’t try to come between you again.”
“Okay,” he says like we’ve come to some sort of agreement. “Good. I’m gonna go take a shower before dinner.”
With that, he leaves my bedroom, and me, speechless.