Chapter 19
~
June
I picked a nice restaurant that was as far away from campus as I could find while still being in the same area. But even though the place was nice with its rustic-chic and intimate vibe, I couldn’t fully enjoy it.
It didn’t help that Lucas looked as good as he did tonight, in a fitted button-down and tailored jeans. He’d offered me his blazer the moment we walked in and realized that the interior was a little colder than expected despite its smaller size.
And now that I was wrapped up in his blazer, smelling like him, while he sat opposite from me with dark, expectant eyes, I felt my throat close up.
Conversation started mild and temperate, small talk that both of us knew was simply a warm-up to the actual matters we needed to discuss.
And he was the one who eventually pushed for it.
“Have you made your decision yet?” he asked.
“Wow, straight to the point, huh?” I joked weakly.
He shook his head. “June, I don’t mean to put any pressure on you. But I’ve been nothing less than honest in how I feel about you. I want you. I haven’t made that a secret. I’ll accept whatever decision you come to, but I’d just like to know where we stand.”
I couldn’t begrudge him that. His heated gaze searched my face as though he was trying to read the answer there.
But I couldn’t just come out and tell him what my proposal was, not without easing him into it.
And I definitely couldn’t tell him that I had a threesome with Ronan and Oren.
Not yet. I was pretty sure that throwing that out there would run him off faster than I could ask him for a moment to explain.
“You know that I have feelings for all three of you, right?” I asked, trying to hedge up a way to broach the topic.
He nodded, but the tightness of his mouth and somber look that passed over his eyes told me it wasn’t something he liked to think about.
I gathered some more courage, attempting to test the waters a bit and see where his head was at when it came to sharing.
“Well, does the idea of me dating you guys at the same time bother you?” I asked.
The heat in his eyes intensified.
“Yes.” His words were curt with no room for second-guessing how he felt about it. “I know that you’re still seeing them. I won’t try and lay some kind of claim on you but I want to be very clear about my intentions. June, I want you all to myself. I refuse to share you.”
Even though that sentiment was decidedly counterproductive to what I was trying to do here, it still made me feel warm inside. Lucas was turning out to be the possessive type, and from what I gathered about his dynamic with Ronan, that would be a particularly interesting combination to experience.
Even if I somehow managed to convince him, would they even be able to get along long enough for any of us to enjoy ourselves? If they didn’t kill each other first, at least. But I knew that there was no way I could force this on him. I cared about him too much to even try.
He reached out a hand across the table and placed it over mine.
His palm was warm, the weight of it oddly comforting.
I held his gaze. “June, you need to make up your mind about who you want. But I hope that you choose me.” The softness in his expression always caught me off guard, and managed to disarm my defenses.
“Because to me, this is so much more than just hooking up with my student.”
My heart melted. I was about to try and speak when he quickly jerked his hand back, his eyes darting off to the side. I frowned, following his movement.
“Johnson’s here with his wife,” he said quietly. “They definitely saw us.”
My heart sank into my stomach. Actually, it probably sank into my ass. I pushed back from the table, leaning against my chair, my head suddenly awash with old anxieties and fears joined by new pressure. This dinner suddenly amped up the stakes tenfold.
Lucas started saying something but my ears were ringing.
“I don’t know what I’m feeling, Lucas,” I told him. It was a bit worse than that. I didn’t trust what I was feeling. I stood up, grabbing my bag. “I’m gonna leave. I just need to think this over.”
I didn’t give him a chance to explain and ducked out of the restaurant like an asshole. I’d not only stuck him with a bill—I mean, he’d initially offered to cover it but still—and I’d left him with even less clarity than we’d started the night with.
Why couldn’t I just figure this out? Every time a new hurdle got thrown in front of me, I faltered back to square one. I reverted back to Scared June, Straight-A June, Stick-up-the-ass June, Coward June.
Out of all of them, Lucas was the one who was willing to be the most vulnerable with me, over and over again. Once he’d decided that I was what he wanted, he hadn’t stumbled once in proving that to me, risks be damned. Even now, he’d stayed behind when I ran away.
Pain stabbed my heart. Why couldn’t I be more like that? Why was I still so afraid?
I wandered around the storefront for what must have been an hour. I walked around listlessly, staring into shop windows and watching people mill about with the cheery flurry of a Friday night. I tugged at the material around my shoulders only to realize I still had Lucas’s blazer wrapped around me.
Tears pricked my eyes.
I brought the sleeve up to my nose and inhaled deeply. It smelled like him, his clean-smelling cologne and hint of skin scent. I loved the way he smelled.
I loved his dark, pensive eyes, the way those tiny scars on his face contrasted his otherwise elegant features, the fullness of his mouth and the heat behind his kisses.
I loved his passion, both in his work and ambition and the way he made love like it was both the first and last time he’d be able to touch me.
I loved the fact I could relate to his desire to meet whatever expectations he felt he had to meet, and how his face lit up when he was well and truly happy doing something for himself for once.
I loved his laugh and the way it skittered across my bones every time I heard it.
I loved him.
Holy shit, I loved him.
That was what I felt. I loved the others too, and I knew that I couldn’t live without any one of them. The thought of having to choose one made it feel like I’d be losing part of me.
My mind seemed to work on autopilot as it steered my feet towards an apartment whose address I had memorized from one of our endless conversations. A well-maintained apartment block that was only ten minutes from Madison’s friend’s place, a few blocks down from where we’d gone to that house party.
When I reached the door of my destination, I was out of breath. My knuckles rapped against the door, maybe more desperate and impolite than necessary but then again, no better words described the state I was in.
Lucas opened the door, a surprised expression lighting up those pretty features..
“June?”