A moment later, the door opened behind me, but I didn’t turn around. He had to learn that I wasn’t even a little scared of him. Honestly, I was more scared of myself.
In school, it had always been funny to me how quickly everyone assigned themselves unofficial assigned seats. I remembered how disgruntled I was whenever someone sat in ‘my’ seat; it had ruined at least three of my days in middle school. In our little cabin of survival, we had assigned ourselves places, which was quite funny as we had been there for less than a day, and the entire floor was like 10 feet long.
The rude lump sat hunched over on the left of the fire, and Oskar leaned against the wall on the right side of the fire. Ettore, Jin Woo, and I sat with our backs against the left wall of the cabin, and our feet brushed the right wall of the cabinwhen we were fully stretched out. The order of our little trio was currently flexible, but ever since the couple had been in their intense discussion in a surprising combination of Korean, Italian, and German, I had been sitting closer to the fire while they sat together closer to the door. However, as I went to sit down in ‘my’ seat, they split, and Ettore patted the place between them and pulled back what I had realized was a cheap blanket. It had maybe been used for holding lambs after they were just born. It was barely larger than a baby blanket, and to make sure that everyone had even a little bit of coverage, we had to squeeze tightly together, not that I was complaining.
Cuddled between them, Jin Woo busily tucking the blanket around us, I finally chanced a look at Oskar. He was once again messing with the fire, but it kinda looked like he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. It was a bit concerning that I liked that he was looking at me. I didn’t want him to stop looking at me. The thought flashed hot and white in my brain.
If I were anywhere else, that thought would have been a sign that I needed to take my meds. I would have taken my meds, and I would have sunk back into normality. Unfortunately, my meds were somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, and so I would have to control my more unhinged urges the old-fashioned way.
“So,” I began to the men on either side of me, trying to distract myself,” have your deliberations resulted in a plan for us getting rescued? Or were you talking about something else?”
“Well,” started Jin Woo, “I do think that we should try to catch a sheep to butcher tomorrow, while Ettore thinks that we should wait until it’s a bit colder, but I think we’ll be weak and—”
“Uhm!” Ettore cleared his throat pointedly while elbowing Jin Woo.
“Um, yeah, but we were mostly talking about you.”
I could feel one of my eyebrows creeping up higher and higher.
“About me?” I said incredulously.
Ettore swiped a stray curl away from my face, his fingers lingering on the shell of my ear.
“Is that so hard to believe,salvatrice?That you would be the object of our discussion and in our thoughts?”
My brain very much short-circuited.
“Uhhhhhh…yeah?”
“Well,” Ettore leaned back as he spoke again, giving me enough space that my brain began to cool down enough to work, “more specifically about you and our relationship.”
I was not functioning high enough for this.
“Meaning?” I said directly.
Jin Woo, with a very steady voice, spoke.
“We have been thinking of adding someone to our relationship. We both feel that we have much more love to give and that we would both be good with a, well, bigger relationship. However, we are both all too conscious of the risk and the potential impact to our public images. I am the heir to a massive conglomerate, and Etto manages one of the most successful alcohol companies in the world.”
I turned towards Ettore.
“You are Da Lodi, as in the wine empire, Da Lodi Wines?” I asked incredulously.
Ettore shrugged that slow, deliciously indolent shrug.
“And liquors.”
Ah,” I said, because what the fuck else could I say, “well, ok.”
“So you see why we wouldn’t want to take such a big risk when we don’t even know if a bigger relationship would work for us. However,”
Jin Woo easily continued his fiancé’s sentence.
“There are no paparazzi here, no nosy mothers-in-law, no board members just too willing to make any tiny molehill into a mountain.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, are you saying that you want me to be your, what, practice third?” I asked.
“Yes, basically,” Ettore nodded sagely, “we wouldn’t do anything you were uncomfortable with, but just let us include you in our relationship a bit and let us pamper you as much as we can in this god forsaken place.”
