"You have no idea-"
"I know that men can be evil snakes," she cut across her, leaning forward and lowering her voice threateningly. "And I know that some women can go along with that. I don’t know what the two of you have got Angela believing, but we’re her family and we’re not going to just sit back and let the two of you twist her mind into thinking that this is somehow something she wants."
Bianca couldn’t say a word. She wished she could explain to Diana all the intricacies that had gone into forming this relationship, all the details that they had unwound until everything fit together the way it was supposed to. She wished she could go into specific detail about everything that they had agreed on together, everything that had made this happen for them. She wished she could tell her that she was falling for Angela, and she was falling for Zev, and that the three of them made a perfect team.
But she couldn’t. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t find the words for it, but that she knew she would be betraying the secrecy that the three of them had built up together. And yes, she was hurt that she had to hide all of this – she was hurt that she had to be the one to bear the brunt of this weight, the one to deal with the backlash the way she did. But if it meant that she would be able to protect Angela and Zev, she would have done it a thousand times over.
"Just get out of her house, get out of her life," Diana continued, sensing that she was getting through to her. "The faster you get out of there, the faster it’s all over for you, too."
Bianca knew she was right – but of course, Diana meant it in a completely different way than Bianca did. Diana didn’t know that walking away from this would bring Bianca’s life crashing down around her. She didn’t know how much she was asking her to leave behind. She must have seen the sadness in Bianca’s eyes because she took a step forward and lowered her voice.
"You know that a man like him is never going to give you what you want," she told her, as gently as she could given that she was still in the process of telling her off for what she thought she had done to her daughter. "You’re never going to find happiness with him. Do you really want to live the rest of your life being someone’s bit on the side? Now, I don’t think a lot of you, but I can’t imagine many people I would wish that kind of fate on."
Bianca felt the tears welling in her eyes. She knew that she was right, that was the worst part. She was just going to keep being their secret, something that they would keep locked up behind closed doors. She was never going to get to stand beside them and say yes, these are the people I love, aren’t they amazing? Aren’t I amazing for the fact that they love me, too? As long as Angela wanted to keep this all wrapped up in the closet, their relationship was going to be kept to what was convenient for them, and not what Bianca truly wanted.
She wiped the tears away from her face quickly, not wanting Diana to see that she had managed to get under her skin. She was a grown-up woman, and she wasn’t going to let this spiteful bitch get under her skin.
"You should pack your things and think about getting out of here by the end of the week," Diana told her, briskly. How could she be so heartless? Bianca looked at her, at this woman who thought she was protecting her daughter in the run of all of this, and wondered how she could have had such little compassion for her, too.
"I’ll make sure you get a generous severance paycheck," she replied. "Not that you deserve it, after what you’ve done to the family, but if it gets you out of here quicker..."
"You don’t have to do that," Bianca snapped back, angrily. She might have been devastated, but she wasn’t going to let this woman patronize her on top of all of it, too.
"I’m going to get out of your hair, don’t you worry," she snarled at her, and she marched out of the kitchen and headed for the stairs before she broke down entirely. She had come down to get some food for the kids, but she knew she couldn’t possibly go back up there and see them now. Not when she knew that she was on the brink of being ripped away from them for good.
It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. All she had wanted to do was be with the people she loved. Was that so much to ask? Was that so sick and wrong? To her eyes, it wasn’t, but to the rest of the world, it seemed like a dirty, disgusting horrorshow. Bianca had been confused about this relationship when it had started, but the more time she spent with them, the more time she spent getting to know them and understand them and wrap her head around just what made them such a brilliant couple, it all became clearer and clearer in her mind. The three of them were meant to be. They balanced each other out. They made sense together in a way Bianca couldn’t imagine making sense with anyone else, not as long as she lived...
She made it to her room before she burst into tears. They came streaming down her face like they had hardly been holding themselves in, like she had been teetering on the brink of this since the moment the day began. Maybe this was where the relationship had always been headed, to this point of disaster, this point of no return. She had been wrapped up in the fantasy back in the day. But now that they were out in the open, that the harsh light of reality was blazing down on them, it was over.
She slumped down against the door, and closed her eyes, and let her brain stray in the direction of another fantasy. The only one that could make her feel happy right about now. She imagined the three of them, cooking dinner together, the house full of guests, the kids running around behind them. Tasting, chopping, laughing, sharing all of it with one another. They wouldn’t have to hide it. They wouldn’t have to pretend like – to pretend like they didn’t have feelings for one another. The world would accept them, and they could move on and just be together the way they wanted to.
But it was never going to happen. Not as long as Angela wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps. There was nothing Bianca could do to hasten along her decision, and she never wanted her to feel like she was putting pressure on her, anyway. She wanted Angela and Zev to stand by her because they wanted to, not because they felt like they were obliged to.
And until that moment, she would just have to live with knowing that she wasn’t enough for them to stand by. Until then, she would have to find a way through this. Until then, she would still be alone to everyone else in the world. And she was going to survive it, no matter what.
Chapter 24
Everything or nothing
"Do you have a minute?”
Bianca hung in the doorway of their bedroom, glancing between Zev and Angela. They were in the midst of packing their things and likely too busy to bother with spending much time talking to her. But she needed to see them.
"Yeah, we do," Zev finally replied, and Bianca pushed the door shut behind her. She knew that if anyone caught wind of what she was doing in here, there would be hell to pay. Everyone was still acting like her very existence around the two of them was enough to rend the marriage apart, and she was getting pretty fucking tired of it.
"The kids are all packed and ready to go," Bianca told them, mutedly, keeping her gaze on the floor. It wasn’t what she had come there to talk about, of course, but she would happily take it as a chance to forget about everything that had been going on in her head – as a chance to broach a conversation with them in a way that didn’t scare the living shit out of her.
She had been avoiding them nearly constantly since Diana had taken her aside and suggested that she do just that. She didn’t want to push their luck more than she already had – she knew well that the reality of the situation was that she couldn’t shake them, not while she was still in their employ, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t take a step back. She needed the space, anyway, to make sure that she could get through the ordeal without being reminded of everything they had lost in the last few weeks.
Her eyes flicked to the bed and she stared at it for a moment. It had been on a bed just like that one that she had been caught out in. If she had been able to keep her panties on… if they had just locked the door… the three of them could be heading back right now, naughty and ready to
pick up where they had all left off.
"That’s good to hear," Angela replied stiffly, with a nod. Bianca smiled at her. Even despite everything that had happened, she wanted nothing more than to make her girl happy. She loved her, she knew that, and there was no denying it.
"How long will the trip back to the States take, do you think?" Bianca asked, still trying to avoid the reality of the reason that had brought her into this room once more. Angela shrugged.
"I don’t know yet," she replied bluntly. "24 hours, at most? Why, you worried about the kids throwing tantrums?”
Bianca sighed and shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself and screwing up her face. She didn’t know how to start this conversation, and she didn’t want to have it at all, but she couldn’t live in a state of limbo. It wasn’t fair to her, it wasn’t fair to them.
"I don’t know if I can come back with you," Bianca told them at last. Both of them froze, so instantly that it would have been comical if not for the intensity of the situation at hand.
"What are you talking about?" Zev demanded, quietly, the first one to break the silence. Bianca shook her head and willed herself not to cry.
"I just don’t think I can do it," She replied, and she heard her voice wavering. It sounded as though it belonged to someone else entirely, like it couldn’t have been hers. She hated how she couldn’t put any of it into words. She hated that her brain seemed to switch off when it was around them. She hated...well, not them, but the situation that they were all tangled up in together. The situation that had led them to that moment.
"I can’t be with you guys and… and have to hide it all the time," she explained as best she could. "I don’t want you to worry about it, though, I can hand in my notice, we can just leave all of this stuff behind..."
"No," Angela replied at once, and there was a sureness and certainty to her voice that almost made Bianca stop in her tracks. Could she believe her? She wanted to believe her, more than anything in the world. She wanted to believe that they could make this work, but she didn’t see how.
"No, what?" She asked quietly, waiting for Angela to carry on. Angela sighed and glanced at her husband.
"I don’t want you to go," she replied. "We don’t want you to go. Right, Zev?”
"No, of course, we don’t..." Zev assured her, and he reached out to take her hand, squeezing it gently. She snatched it back from him – not because she didn’t crave his touch, but because she knew every single caress was just going to make it harder to let go of them, of this.
"But you can’t expect me to just hide out like this for the rest of my life," Bianca protested. "You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
"Of course we do," Angela soothed her, and Bianca shook her head.
"I don’t think you do," she replied, and she clenched her hand by her side and took a deep, shuddering breath. "I don’t think you understand how this feels for me. To be… to know that you want me, but that you don’t want anyone to know that we’re together..."
"You know that’s not true," Zev shot back fervently. "You know that if we could, we-"
"You can," Bianca implored him. "You understand that, right? You can, if you want to. Nobody can stop us if we decide that we just want to be together, once and for all. You get to make the call on that."
Both of them fell silent for a moment. Bianca let out a deep, shuddering breath, flicking her gaze between the two of them, waiting for them to tell her what she wanted to hear. Even though she knew she was never going to get that from them.
"If you can’t be with me the way that I want," she began, slowly, softly, but surely. "Then I don’t want to be with you at all."
She paused for another moment, giving them the time to jump in and tell her that she was crazy, that of course, they wanted her, that they would have done anything to keep her around. Everything that they had been through together, everything that had gone down, it was splayed out in front of Bianca, almost tauntingly. All the memories that she would have to leave behind. Everything that she would have to give up. And for what? For them to feel safe. Well, she wasn’t going to stand by and just let it happen to her any longer. No, she had better things to do with her life. She just hoped she could find them without too much waiting, because the thought of leaving this all behind made her heart ache in agony.
Grabbing the door handle, she went to head back out into the corridor, but before she could get there, Angela caught her arm and stopped her in her tracks.
"Bianca, please," She pleaded with her, and Bianca gave her a long look, staring at her, waiting for her to say something, anything that would make it all better.
"Please what?" Bianca asked.
"Please, just give us a little more time," She begged her. Bianca bit her lip.
"I don’t know how much more time I can-"
"We’re not asking for forever," Zev cut in. "I promise. "We’re just asking for a little space to figure this out. And we need you here while we do that."
Bianca gazed at them, at the two of them, and she knew she couldn’t just walk out of there without putting up something of a fight. She had to try with them, even if it was hard. Even if, sometimes, it felt impossible. She closed her eyes for a moment, looking inside herself to make sure this was the choice she wanted to make. And it was.
She opened them again and looked at the people she loved. And she nodded.
"I’ll stay," she replied, and Angela clutched her hand tight, like she never wanted to let her go.
Chapter 25
Will you ever be enough?
Was there anything in the world worse than being trapped in limbo?
If there was, Bianca hadn’t found it yet. Since they’d returned to New York, she felt as though she’d been battling these endless worries in the back of her mind, worries that told her that she wasn’t good enough for the people she loved – that if she had been, they would have been out about their relationship by now. She had just dropped the kids off at school for another day and returned home to an empty house, and she couldn’t help but wonder what she had done to deserve all this.
She thought she had been enough for them. She thought she had proven that, with all the time that they had spent together – in fact, she had been sure that they were the ones for her, that they could give her everything she needed, and that they felt the same way about her. But, as time passed, she could see that she had been lying to herself. She had been nothing but a sexual object to them, and it stung to look back on that and know it was true.
She had decided that the best course of action upon their return would be to put a halt to their sexual relationship, at least for the time being – while they figured things out, Bianca didn’t want to end up getting hurt more than she already had been, and she didn’t want to lead the three of them into any more potentially dangerous situations. She had thought it would be a good time for them to work out what they truly wanted from one another. But she had been wrong.
Maybe it was just in her imagination, but she was sure that they had been more dismissive of her lately than usual. Treating her as more of a disposable object. It wasn’t anything they did really, or anything they said, but her brain was constantly filled to the brim with the reality of what had happened with Angela’s family. They hadn’t defended her then – why would they start doing it now, when there was nobody to defend her from?
Angela still brushed her hand against Bianca’s when they passed by one another in the hallway, but it seemed more of a gesture than anything else, not an actual expression of lust or love. Zev would still steal a kiss whenever he got the chance, but there didn’t seem to be much behind it. Bianca would lie in bed at night and think about slipping down to their room and joining them under the covers, just to see where they could take things next. But she knew that would have been just using sex in an attempt to cobble things back together. The foundations were cracked, and she had to find some way to fix it.
A month had passed, and they hadn’t spoke
n since their initial confrontation over the way things were going. They had assured her that they just needed a little time, but how much time should Bianca have given them before she tried her hand at the world outside?
She went to make herself some breakfast in the kitchen, though eating was really more of a formality these days than anything else. She’d never had much of an appetite, but she was determined not to let what was happening in their personal lives get in the way of her health. She had to take care of herself, first and foremost, because she was beginning to understand that nobody was going to do that for her.
She was chopping up some onions for an omelet when she heard the front door open – Zev must have been back from the work meeting he had slipped out of the house early for that day. She hadn’t seen him before he’d gone out and had craved his presence all day, even though she knew it was bad for her. Even though she knew he was bad for her.
"Hello?” He called into the house, and, without thinking, she called back to him.
"Hello," She replied, and a moment later he appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. He was dressed in his navy-blue suit, the one that brought out his eyes, and she felt her knees go a little weak at the sight of him.
"You making something to eat?" He asked, as he pulled off his blazer and rolled up his sleeves. She knew that he was asking about more than the food. He always asked about the most mundane things when what he really wanted to know was what was going through her mind.
"You want something?” She asked, but, without bothering to give her a reply, he moved in behind her. The heat of his body against hers made her heart pound in her chest; how could he still make her feel this good? She felt like she should have been able to resist his charms by then, but still, when he was near her, she could feel her knees going weak. She wanted nothing more than to nestle into his arms and forget about everything. For just a while, to pretend that everything was okay...
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