Chapter 25
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
ISLA
I sat up, blinking through the haze of sleep. Julius stood in the doorway, leaning against the wall. I could tell right away he was less controlled by his composure.
“You’ve been drinking,” I announced as Kraven sat up too, noticing what I did.
It wasn’t an accusation. I was simply stating a fact.
Julius’s stare found mine. It was dark and unreadable. He was hiding from me.
“Yeah,” he breathed out.
Kraven didn’t say anything, and he didn’t move toward him. He just watched him, taking it all in, possibly adjusting to it. Julius stepped farther into the living room, his gaze flicking briefly to Kraven before coming back to me as if he couldn’t decide who to look at more.
Julius bit out, “I needed a minute.”
My fingers gripped the blanket. “You could’ve said something.”
A faint smile pulled at his mouth. “Would that have made a difference?”
I didn’t answer, too scared to say the wrong thing.
Julius made his way closer to me, to us.
“You okay?” he followed up the same question from earlier, sounding different now.
Less controlled, more real.
“I’m fine.”
His eyes lingered on me for a second longer before he acknowledged, “I saw it.”
The words landed heavier than anything I could have imagined. Kraven didn’t interrupt him. He didn’t step in either. He stayed exactly where he was, sitting on the couch beside me.
“What?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“Don’t do that,” he called me. “You know what.”
I swallowed hard.
“The way Kraven…” He stopped himself. “The way you two are with each other. I saw it… fuck, I’m still seeing it.”
The room went still. Everything had narrowed down to this one moment in time.
“It’s not…” I started to say something, but the words didn’t feel right. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was trying to say.
That it’s not real? That he’s imagining it? That it doesn’t mean anything? That it’s not what it looks like?
It was all lies I’d been telling myself in order to spare Julius the pain and betrayal. I didn’t mean to fall in love with both of them. It was just meant to be that way.
“Was it because I wasn’t here? Did it happen because I was gone? Or was this happening the entire time? All the times I walked in on you two… Have I been blind to the truth the whole time?”
My heart started beating faster and faster.
Julius took another step closer to me until he was right there in front of me. Close enough to where I could feel the heat burning off him.
It was tangible.
“I’m so sorry, Julius,” I honestly expressed.
“I don’t know what this is.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it or how I’m supposed to feel about it. All I know is I can’t lose you, Mouse.”
“Julius, you don’t have to decide anything right now,” Kraven intervened.
Julius laughed under his breath. “That’s your answer to everything, huh?”
“It’s the only one that makes sense to me.” Kraven shrugged.
Choose what?
I peered back and forth between them, reaching for Julius without thinking. My fingers closed in around his wrist.
“You’re not going to lose me.” Again, I glanced back and forth between them. “I promise you.”
I didn’t say it to one of them. I didn’t specify a name. I meant it for both of them. Julius’s gaze dropped briefly to where my hand held his, then lifted.
For the first time since he’d walked back into our lives, he didn’t look like he was trying to fight with Kraven, me…
Himself.
His other hand came up slowly, hovering over me for a second before settling lightly against my side. He was careful.
Testing something.
Maybe himself?
Or maybe he was waiting for someone to stop him.
Kraven didn’t move away from me. He just watched him like I was. Julius’s hand landed on my shoulder. It was firm, steady, but also conflicting.
My breath caught.
All of a sudden, Kraven moved his hand to my thigh. Now they were both slightly touching me. No one was pulling back, no one was choosing. They were both on me. His stare shifted to Kraven’s hand, then back to meet my eyes.
What’s happening?
I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t stop it either. For a moment, I thought he was going to step back. Instead, he moved closer to me.
I gasped as he closed the space between us. The invisible line was gone, and none of us said a word about crossing it. This was the one thing I couldn’t ignore anymore. They weren’t the same. Not in the way they touched me, in the way they looked at me, in the way they felt me…
Yet still, I didn’t want either of them to move from me.
My breath came slower now. It was deeper, too aware of everything that was happening.
Too conscious of both of them and how they made me feel.
Julius’s fingers pressed firmer against the side of my neck as if he had decided on something he wasn’t saying out loud yet.
Like something in him had finally stopped fighting long enough to try whatever he was doing right then.
My grip on his wrist tightened without meaning to, and he looked down at it.
“Isla…” he began, but the word didn’t go anywhere
What is there to say?
Kraven’s hand moved. Slowly at first, from my thigh to my hip. In a way that made my heart skip a beat from what was happening.
Julius saw it. I felt him see it too.
That old instinct, the one that was ready to react, ready to push back, ready to take control…
Except he stopped himself with his thumb brushing lightly against the side of my face. Almost like he was trying to adjust to this new reality instead of rejecting it.
My breath caught. This was new.
I should have said something. One of us should have, but nobody did. I was caught between them. However, this was different. I wasn’t being pulled or torn or held. I was being balanced in a space that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
My eyes closed for a second, just enough to feel it, to feel them. I tried to register it fully. To realize I wasn’t trying to get out of it. Whatever they were trying to do to me, I was along for the same ride they were. I was just too shy to admit it, what I was feeling, what I desired…
It was both of them.
At the same time.
When I opened my eyes again, Julius was watching me closely. He wasn’t guarded.
He was once again searching for something in my presence until he declared, “Tell me to stop.” His words were rough.
My heart hammered as I instantly begged, “Please don’t stop.”
Julius exhaled, his shoulders loosening. Not fully, but enough. Kraven didn’t react at all, expecting this. The way their presence settled deeper instead of pulling back from me. The way they were both watching me.
Waiting.
It wasn’t for permission. It was for direction.
For truth.
This feeling that had been building inside me felt overpowering.
It was this pull I didn’t know how to name. This space that I didn’t know I had a place in—somewhere between them that I fit in without breaking.
Julius moved again.
Closer.
Close enough that the air between us felt thinner.
Kraven didn’t step away. If anything, he came closer. He wasn’t competing. Neither of them were. They were just existing in the same place, in the same moment there with me.
Now there was no pretending, no ignoring it, no stepping back without making a choice.
And I wasn’t choosing.
I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to. There was never a choice to be made, at least not between them.
I was in love with two men.
They were two different people, and neither of them was wrong. That realization hit harder than anything else had up until that second. They weren’t something I could ever separate. It wasn’t one or the other.
It was always both.
The thought felt right yet terrifying at the same time.
Julius dropped to his knees in front of me, and my stomach somersaulted.
“You feel that?” he questioned, knowing I did.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Kraven’s finger slid up to my back. He wasn’t interrupting. He was just telling me he was still there, ready for whatever I was.
Julius leaned in a little bit more, testing me and maybe himself. When I didn’t move, he closed the distance. He was slow, careful, giving me every chance to stop him.
I didn’t.
My hand slipped from his wrist, sliding up his body until they reached his jaw, and his breath caught against mine. Kraven stayed exactly where he was. Not outside of it, but part of it.
Kraven held his gaze, not challenging, just there.
“Don’t stop,” I ordered, again looking back and forth between them.
No one spoke after that. There wasn’t anything left to say. There was only something to understand, something we never considered, or maybe we did, and we ignored that too. This wasn’t planned, it wasn’t a decision, it was fate.
I think part of me expected them to pull away, putting distance between us, as they always did when things got too close, too complicated.
Especially when things got too real.
“Alright,” Julius muttered under his breath.
It sounded as if he was trying to catch up to something that had already happened in his head.
“You okay?” Julius asked again.
The same question the third time now
“Yes…”
He studied my face, trying to decide whether it was true. Something almost unreadable crossed his expression, something that looked a lot like realization, and I found it hard to breathe.
“Okay,” he repeated.
Silence settled again. It wasn’t the same silence as before. I exhaled a deep breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
I spoke one last truth. “I’m not choosing.” My words hung there. “You don’t get to make me choose,” I continued, my voice stronger, steadier. “If you want me… then you can both claim me… I think this is the part where you tell me this isn’t happening and I have to choose.”
“And if we don’t?” Kraven asked.
I understood.
Not wavering, I shared, “Then don’t.”