Grayson stands there, his expression the pure agony of seeing something he desperately wants but no longer has access to. He spares me a brief smile that fails almost as soon as his lips curve and then he walks out of the room without looking back.
I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know if it’s possible, if I should even try.
So I simply press a kiss to Derek’s lips and climb off him. I button up my dress without another word and duck into the bathroom to clean up as best as I can. I expect him gone when I return to the bedroom, but he’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, his clothing now righted.
He watches me pull on my leggings, his expression just as tormented as Grayson’s was early. “I don’t want to lose either of you.”
“Then we never should have crossed this line.” I can see that now, even if I couldn’t in the midst of Christmas Eve, with lust clogging my senses. We had no business going there unless we were willing to go the rest of the way. I knew it wasn’t as simple as playing out a sexy fantasy, that Grayson wanted Derek even more than I did.
It’s too late for regrets.
I grab a hair tie from my suitcase and pull my hair back into a ponytail. “That offer stands, Derek. Our door and our hearts are open to you.” I glance at the doorway. “But I’m not going to hurt Grayson. He thinks he wants me to fuck you if he can’t, but I won’t do that to either of us. This is the last time.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said.” I give a mirthless smile. “You should know better than anyone things said in the heat of the moment are to spike the pleasure. I want you. I’m never going to not want you. But you only want to fuck me, and he’s my husband. He isn’t afraid to admit that he loves me.”
His brows draw together. “That’s not fair.”
“I know.” My throat feels tight. “Just… Just think about it, okay? Can you promise me that?”
He nods slowly. “I wish I could say I’m going to think about anything else for the foreseeable future.”Chapter 17Grayson and I barely speak on the flight back to New York. The silence isn’t exactly fraught, but it’s a sign of things changing. Things I desperately don’t want to change. I manage to make it until we’re back in our apartment before I burst. “Are you mad?”
My husband looks at me with something akin to shock. “What? No. Not even a little bit.” He pulls me into his arms and wraps me up tight. “I’m sad. It feels like we opened Pandora’s box on Christmas Eve, and it’s going to take time to put things back into their place.”
I press my face to his chest and breathe in his clean scent. “What if we can’t?”
“Then we go on differently than before.” He strokes my hair and presses a kiss to my temple. “Let’s unpack and I’ll order in some Thai. You pick a movie tonight.”
“Okay,” I whisper. It’s a blatant olive branch in the middle of something that isn’t really a fight, but that doesn’t change the feeling of the ground shifting beneath my feet. “We’re okay, right?”
“Yeah, baby. We’re more than okay.”
But as the days pass, I start to worry that we’re both lying about our level of okayness. It’s nothing overt. We spend the remaining days between arriving home and New Year’s Eve like we’d planned; painting the living room, but skipping organizing the storage.
I’m a bit superstitious about getting life in order during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I believe that how a person enters into the new year makes a difference. It’s why we are always fucking when the clock strikes twelve, why I go a little planner crazy with things I want to make sure happen in the next twelve months. Grayson has indulged me since we started dating, and this year is no different.
Except it is different.
It feels like we’re missing part of us, like we left it back in Colorado in that cabin with Derek. There’s nothing wrong with Grayson and I, but I keep looking over like I expect Derek to magically appear. And when Grayson and I have sex, it’s pure fucking. He drives my pleasure like if we can just orgasm enough times, we can purge this feeling of missing away. I don’t know if it works for him, but every time I stir on the other side of coming, the memories of those few days crash over me in waves.
It’s not just missing the sex with Derek, though. Interspersed in those memories are ones from farther back. We’ve spent so much time together over the years, and it never really occurred to me that we could be a throuple instead of a married couple and Derek playing the comfortable third wheel. But we fit. Every piece of evidence points to us fitting.