“What do you want?”
“You. And Brent. And I don’t care what anyone thinks of that. I’m a poly kind of girl, it turns out.”
“Just like that.”
“Should it be an angsty decision? It feels right.”
“Wait until people are gossiping about you, then it may not.”
He was wrong. Jess had lived the other life for a long time. She wasn’t interested in going back to that. “I think this town might surprise you. And if they talk about you, it’s not necessarily gossip. Your friends love you, and as far as Evie is concerned—maybe it’s just that she’s getting too close to comfort on this topic. Maybe Evie saw that you were poly a long time ago, and simply named it.”
“How could she, when I didn’t see it in myself?”
“A question I’m asking myself daily at this point. Sometimes it’s just easier to see other people than to look at ourselves.”
He grimaced.
“Can we go to bed now?”
That got her a nod. And he held her all night long. But when she woke in the morning, he was gone.
At first she didn’t worry. They made coffee and waited, but he didn’t come back. She called his cell and there was no answer.
Brent wasn’t concerned, and she told herself that Evan just needed space. He’d been rocked by the fire, and she’d blundered and brought up a relationship talk at the wrong time.
“What happened last night?” she asked Brent as he drove her back to her place.
“We fooled around.”
“Did you talk?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“About what?”
He pulled into her driveway. “I don’t know, Jess. Stuff. You. Me. Us. Him. Us. The usual.”
“Did he give you any reason to think he might disappear today?”
“No. We fooled around, then we crawled into his bed to watch a stand-up comedy thing. I fell asleep curled up against him. It was pretty damn normal.”
* * *
Brent didn’t knowwhy Jess was worried. Evan came and went all the time, and maybe he’d told them he had a flight to catch and they’d forgotten.
God knew they’d all had a lot to deal with.
The driving back and forth was starting to wear on Brent, not that he’d admit it. He was exhausted.
Jess was trying to hold their little threesome together, and he knew he needed to help her more on that front, but he wasn’t a feelings guy. Not the same way her and Evan were. Brent knew what he wanted, and he was getting better at naming it, but he stumbled. He felt like a teenager all over again, worried that his feelings were too big or not big enough, never quite right.
She wanted to go over to the winery, but Brent talked her out of that. “You said it yourself. He wants what we have to be private.”
“Does he, though?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Something isn’t right.”
He kissed her, wishing he could take away her worry. “He’ll show up. And then you can kick his ass.”
“I don’t think he wants me to,” she said quietly. Sadly.
