I swallow the last of my dinner, forcing it down. “No?”
It shouldn’t shock me that Bhodi has unfinished business with someone. He’s beautiful. Funny. Nice. I can’t imagine anyone walking away from him and not coming back to rectify their mistake.
“We were never really together,” Bhodi clarifies, which somehow feels worse. “It was a hookup that got under my skin. I startedto care about him too much, while he really was just fucking me.”
“Did you love him?”
I don’t mean to say it, but the words spill out of my mouth and I can’t take them back any more than I can kid myself that I’m not hanging on his answer more than I have any right to be. That it doesn’t twist me up that thinking about this other dude tightens Bhodi’s jaw and reddens his eyes.
“I tried really hard not to,” he says eventually. “And he never did anything to lead me on. It was just really…difficult to be with someone whoneededto be loved so much, and not give in to it. Probably doesn’t make much sense…”
“It does.”
“Really?”
I’m distracted for a moment by Rudy abandoning Bhodi’s clean clothes in favour of investigating the plates on the coffee table, but he’s shit out of luck. Little bastard’s too short.
I tell him so and shoo him away. Then I’m back in Bhodi’s vortex and it feels good, even though I hate the sadness in his eyes. “I was with a dude once who was hardcore in love with someone else. I thought that suited me—no attachments, complications, whatever. Just sex. But it still wound up hurting to know he was thinking of another bloke the whole time.”
“Thewholetime?”
I shrug. “Maybe not. We had some mad sex. But I always knew I was keeping him warm for someone better, and in the end, I wasn’t as okay with it as I thought I’d be.”
Bhodi’s fair brows are still raised to his hairline. “Someone better?”
“Betterfor him,” I amend.
“Did you want something more?”
“No.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“Caring about someone doesn’t mean you want to be with them. I liked his company, and I loved the kinky sex he was into. There were probably moments that tied all that together in a pretty Christmas bow, but when I see him now, I don’t wish that he found what he has now with me.”
Bhodi gets up and takes the plates to the sink. He comes back with a bottle of spiced rum and two glasses he must’ve brought with him when he moved in. “I’m getting there with Skylar, but I’m trying not to do what I usually do to get over something that’s hurt me.”
“And what’s that?”
“Fuck someone else.”
“It might help.”
“Or…” Bhodi pours rum and passes me one. “It might be time I broke the cycle. I like kinky sex too, but it hasn’t got me anywhere.”
He likes kinky sex. It’s so far from the point he’s trying to make, but for a hot second, it’s all I hear, and my mind tumbles into the abyss.
How kinky? Exactly?
The word is a spectrum, a fucking wide one, and the craving to know where Bhodi falls on it hits a high and keeps climbing until I get a hold of myself.
I swig rum. The burn grounds me in Christmas-spiced fire. “Sounds like you need more than sex, even if you’ve got yourself believing you don’t want it.”
“Isn’t that what your brother was trying to say to you?”
“It was.” I can’t lie. “Doesn’t mean he was right, though.”
Bhodi smiles and necks his own rum. Then pours another. “Doesn’t mean he was wrong.”
