It was this pull I didn’t know how to name. This space that I didn’t know I had a place in—somewhere between them that I fit in without breaking.
Julius moved again.
Closer.
Close enough that the air between us felt thinner.
Kraven didn’t step away. If anything, he came closer. He wasn’t competing. Neither of them were. They were just existing in the same place, in the same moment there with me.
Now there was no pretending, no ignoring it, no stepping back without making a choice.
And I wasn’t choosing.
I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to. There was never a choice to be made, at least not between them.
I was in love with two men.
They were two different people, and neither of them was wrong. That realization hit harder than anything else had up until that second. They weren’t something I could ever separate. It wasn’t one or the other.
It was always both.
The thought felt right yet terrifying at the same time.
Julius dropped to his knees in front of me, and my stomach somersaulted.
“You feel that?” he questioned, knowing I did.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Kraven’s finger slid up to my back. He wasn’t interrupting. He was just telling me he was still there, ready for whatever I was.
Julius leaned in a little bit more, testing me and maybe himself. When I didn’t move, he closed the distance. He was slow, careful, giving me every chance to stop him.
I didn’t.
My hand slipped from his wrist, sliding up his body until they reached his jaw, and his breath caught against mine. Kraven stayed exactly where he was. Not outside of it, but part of it.
Kraven held his gaze, not challenging, just there.
“Don’t stop,” I ordered, again looking back and forth between them.
No one spoke after that. There wasn’t anything left to say. There was only something to understand, something we never considered, or maybe we did, and we ignored that too. This wasn’t planned, it wasn’t a decision, it was fate.
I think part of me expected them to pull away, putting distance between us, as they always did when things got too close, too complicated.
Especially when things got too real.
“Alright,” Julius muttered under his breath.
It sounded as if he was trying to catch up to something that had already happened in his head.
“You okay?” Julius asked again.
The same question the third time now
“Yes…”
He studied my face, trying to decide whether it was true. Something almost unreadable crossed his expression, something that looked a lot like realization, and I found it hard to breathe.
