“We had apartments in the same three-flat building. Can you imagine that?” She could, actually, and giggled. “Anyway, Bethany and her family lived across the street. We’d known each other from the time we were in diapers. We started dating in high school, lost our virginity to each other…I really did love her. I never…I never even kissed anyone else until…”
“Spring break?” Chloe was confused. She wasn’t quite sure where Taylor Kerrigan fit into this story.
“Yeah. Our junior year.” His fingers moved to her shoulder, slowly sweeping back and forth across her collarbone. “By then it was pretty certain I was headed for the draft. Beth wasn’t too happy about that. She didn’t want that kind of life, you know?”
Chloe didn’t think Jesse was expecting her to answer, so she didn’t give him one.
“But I wanted it. The first time my dad tossed me a football I knew I wanted it.”
Chloe reached back and squeezed the hand that stroked her skin.
“So she went to Florida and I came home alone.” Jesse laced his fingers with hers and she took a deep breath because it was beginning to dawn on her what Jesse was leading up to and exactly how Taylor fit into this story. She closed her eyes.
“He’s been struggling—he’s been trying to confide in you for a long time.”
“Taylor moved into the building next to us the summer before sixth grade—I was eleven. He was fourteen. Came here from London. I thought he talked funny.” He chuckled again. “He and Brendan became best mates, as Taylor would say—they were in the same year at school, so he was around a lot.”
He took both of her hands in his and circled his arms around her, keeping her close to him, kissing her hair. “I refused to acknowledge what I felt for a long time. Because I loved Beth and I knew I wasn’t gay…but if I wasn’t then why did I feel like that? I told you, I was very confused at first.”
Against her nature, Chloe kept quiet. She squeezed his hands in a silent signal that she was listening.
“When I got home, I couldn’t deny it to myself anymore. And I didn’t want to. I was so in love with him, Chloe. I still am.”
She froze right there in his arms. She couldn’t move. Her heart dropped like a heavy weight in her chest. How could she have been so stupid to think who he loved before her would no longer matter? Now she wondered where she’d fit into this story. If she fit into this story. Because she didn’t see how she could.
“You need to hear him out, Chloe.”
She blinked back the tears and did her best to breathe.
“It was no secret to anyone Taylor was bi. No one knew who Venery was yet, but they’d been playing gigs for years already. I’d been to plenty of them and the parties after…saw everybody fucking.” He paused briefly, as if remembering, or perhaps gathering his thoughts. “Anyway, that night we were all hanging out at Taylor’s place. Everyone left eventually, but I stayed. When we finally kissed and he told me how he felt, that he wanted me…this feeling came over me that I’ve only felt one other time since.” Jesse turned her in his arms so their eyes met. “With you.”
And then he kissed her. It was the kind of kiss you’d see in a movie or read of in a book. It was the kind of kiss that, for that moment in time, consumed you. Claimed you. Seared into your soul and branded you. If kissing were an art, then Jesse was a master of it. He didn’t need words. He could convey everything he felt inside with his lips and his tongue.
If she had been standing she would have fallen to her knees, because this man, this beautiful and gentle soul, loved her with the purest heart. Chloe was overcome by the intensity of it. What do you do with a love like that when it doesn’t belong solely to you? Her eyes began to burn with the tears she’d been holding back. She let them fall.
Jesse lifted his lips from hers. His fingers stroked her cheek. “Babe? Why are you crying?” He kissed the tears from her eyes.
Chloe tried to inhale a deep breath, but the air felt like it stuck in her throat. “I don’t know what to do, Jesse.” She tried again. “I just don’t see where I fit into this picture.”
He held her close. “I told you, with me.”
“What about him?” She scrambled to sit up, but couldn’t find her purchase on the slippery porcelain in the water.
“And him. You belong with both of us.”
Chloe used Jesse’s strong thighs for leverage and raised herself up. The water sloshed with her movement. She looked down to where Jesse still sat in the bath. “Like a threesome?”
“Not just sex, Chloe. A real relationship.”
“You can’t be serious.”
But he was serious. The earnest look on his face told her so.
“Keep an open mind, and an open heart.”
Jesse stood and assisted Chloe from the tub. He didn’t speak a word. He dried her skin, wrapped her in a towel, and carried her back to her bedroom. She sat upon the bed holding the towel at her breasts. He stood before her in all his naked glory. Beautiful. Strong. Proud. Vulnerable. She saw all of him.
Then he finally spoke, “I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life, Chloe.” He reached for her and freed her hair to let it tumble down her back. “I love you and I love Taylor. That won’t ever change. I want the three of us to be together—in every way. Do you understand?”
Chloe shook her head. No, she didn’t understand. Not at all.
Jesse took her hand and held it to his chest, over the space where his pure heart beat. “You say you can’t picture where you fit, well let me paint it for you. I see you and me and Taylor happily loving each other no different than any other couple would—except there’s even more joy, more love to share. I see us cooking dinner together, doing laundry together, planting a garden, getting a dog…creating a life. A family. Making babies.”
A startled sigh escaped her at that. Jesse ran his fingers through her messy hair and that sexy smirk of his appeared. “Oh yeah, Riosin, I see that too. Waking up every morning to your soft body, naked between us.” His finger grazed over her nipple. “We’re going to need a bigger bed.”
Chloe felt his words between her thighs. The sex part she got. She’d seen enough drunken sex at college parties to know people fucked in threes all the time, but they didn’t love in threes, did they? They fucked, they got off, and went home until the next fuckfest. They didn’t date or play house or make babies. And that was the part she couldn’t grasp.
The concept was so foreign to her. She loved Jesse, and that she knew how to do. She was so in love with him that she couldn’t even begin to imagine being in love with someone else too. “It’s impossible. You can’t…”
He sat beside her. The towel fell to the floor as he pulled her into his lap. “Trust me, baby. I do, and you can.”
“How?”
“Parents love more than one child. People love more than one friend. What makes this any different? Why does this seem so impossible to you?”
She shrugged. “It just is.”
“Love has no limits, Chloe.”
She wanted to believe that.
“Cake.” He smiled.