by Amira Rain
Glancing down to our clasped hands again briefly, Eric paused for a moment before looking into my eyes again. “I never should have agreed to share you in the first place, Ellie. I wish I’d known then just how deeply I’d fall in love with you, and just how much I wish you were mine and mine alone sometimes.”
I couldn’t help but heave a sigh. “We can’t do this, Eric. I can’t do this again. I can’t explain yet another time that I will never choose between you and Ryan. I love you both too much to ever do that.”
Eric quickly said he knew. “I just wanted to tell you how I feel.”
Now thinking that maybe I’d just responded too sharply to him, I gave his hands another little squeeze. “I appreciate that…but let’s not talk any more about regrets. Let’s just move forward. You, me, and Ryan, all just making a fresh start so that I never have to choose between two men that I’ve grown to deeply love. Okay?”
Eric said okay; however, I could see in his eyes that he said this with continuing slight reluctance or hesitancy about the whole situation. Not wanting to discuss things any further, I resolved to just let this go, thinking that everything with him and Ryan would eventually work out in time. I had no way of knowing at that moment just how wrong I would soon be proven to be.
*
For the next week or so, everything between me, Ryan, and Eric was fine, seeming just how it had been before Ryan’s bout of “temporary insanity.” He and Eric didn’t snap at each other anymore, not while working together and not at home. Alicia reported that Mark had told her that Ryan and Eric had seemed to “chill out” around each other.
With the construction materials they’d need to start with now scavenged, they began work on the secondary wall, having to be gone from home for long hours to do it, but at least not gone seemingly every minute of every day, like how they’d been in the days immediately following the breach in the existing wall. The three of us were still able to have breakfast together and spend most evenings together, having dinner together most of the time.
Ryan and Eric each had time to come spend some time with me individually a few times, which I found I liked a lot. One day, Ryan came home around noon just to have lunch with me, and the next day, Eric came home for lunch. The three of us agreed that even though we were all part of a trio relationship, there was nothing wrong with parts of the trio meeting up to visit just as a duo every once in a while. Somewhat to my surprise, while the three of us had this discussion, Ryan didn’t display any flashes of jealousy or possessiveness at all, at least not any that I saw, which made me think that his “insanity” really had just been temporary.
Eric’s little flash of having feelings of possessiveness also seemed to have been just a very fleeting thing. As the days went by, he never again said anything else to me about wishing that I was his and his alone. He also never said anything further about wishing that he’d never offered the title of co-alpha to Ryan. So, as far as I knew, all “temporary insanity” had officially left the minds of all parties involved. Or, at least all male parties involved.
It was the beginning of the second week after the wall breach when I realized that I had a serious problem. In fact, I had a problem so serious that it made my stomach churn with dread every single time I thought about it. My problem was that I’d suddenly realized that I didn’t exactly love my two alpha lovers exactly equally anymore. For whatever reason, I’d just started feeling slightly warmer toward Eric, and I just couldn’t think of any way to describe it.
Maybe it was something about the expression on his face when I caught him watching me paint in the living room one afternoon. Saying that he wanted to just “rest his eyes” after lunch for ten minutes before heading back out to work, he had a seat on the couch, and I began quietly working on a watercolor of the main gates at the entrance of the community, with him and Ryan in wolf form just off to the side.
After working for a few minutes, painting Eric’s silvery fur with pale shades of gray, I reached for a different paintbrush to add detail to his ears and just happened to catch a glimpse of him on the couch. Sitting back with his hands loosely clasped across his six-pack abs, he was just watching me with heavy-lidded eyes and his lips curved in the slightest of smiles. Unable to keep from smiling a little myself, I asked him what he was looking at, and his smile got a little bigger before he responded.
“A dream come to life. Just you. I’m just watching my own dream come to life.”
Face warming with pleasure, I set down my paintbrush, went over to him, and had a seat on his muscular thighs, leaning into his chest. “Come on. You can’t love me that much, can you?”
His expression, which had been lighthearted, suddenly became one of complete seriousness.
“I love you more than words can say.”
What soon ensued was a lovemaking session that made it so that his lunch break lasted about a half-hour longer than he’d intended it to.
This all might have had something to do with my increased feeling of warmth toward him, or it might have just been the way he always held me all through the night. Ryan held me when we went to sleep together too; however, upon falling asleep, he usually released me, rolling over to face the wall. It wasn’t like he meant to do this; I knew. I realized that some people just simply slept more comfortably with their arms and limbs not entangled.
I even sometimes liked to sleep without anyone touching me in any way. Even still, though, there was something about the way that Eric hardly ever let go of me while sleeping that stirred someplace deep within my heart. Even if he wasn’t outright holding me, he usually always kept a hand on my shoulder or even a hand on one of my own hands. Even while sleeping deeply, even snoring a little some nights, he seemed just completely unable to not have some part of his skin touching my skin, as if even when unconscious, he just couldn’t bear to be parted from me.
Maybe it was all of these things, or none of these things, or something else entirely. Maybe it was just something unquantifiable that I felt deep within my soul. At any rate, the fact of the matter was that to my horror, I’d started to feel in some way warmer toward Eric than Ryan. This horrified me because not too long earlier, I’d been certain that I loved them both equally. Maybe you still do, though, I told myself. Maybe this new increased warmth toward Eric is just some kind of funny “adjustment pain” of being in a trio.
I found myself telling myself this a lot, as if trying to convince myself of it.
I’d told Alicia and Jessie everything that had gone on with Ryan’s “temporary insanity,” and one afternoon, while Jessie was at my house helping me make cupcakes to deliver to a woman who’d just had a baby, I suddenly blurted out that I was scared that I was starting to love Eric more than Ryan.
Having been quietly spreading vanilla frosting on a caramel cupcake, humming, Jessie looked over at me, eyes wide. “What?”
Deciding to just spit it all out because I knew she wouldn’t judge me, I quickly explained how I’d been feeling to her. With a knowing sort of look indicating that my admission maybe wasn’t that shocking after all, she poured us each a mug of coffee, saying that maybe we should have a seat and take a break from frosting cupcakes for a while.
To my relief, once we were seated up to the island, she told me that what I was feeling was perfectly normal. “Sometimes having ‘warmer’ feelings for one man over the other is just part of being in a trio relationship. It doesn’t really mean that you actually love one man over the other. It’s just kind of the normal ebb and flow of things. Some days, you might just feel warmer toward Eric, and some days, it might be Ryan.”
“It hasn’t been Ryan, though. Every day, it’s just been Eric, and I’m almost starting to feel like my newfound ‘warmth’ toward him is just getting stronger and stronger, while my ‘warmth’ toward Ryan is just sort of pulling away somehow.”
I hadn’t even realized this about my “warmth” toward Ryan until I’d just said it out loud.
Now, Jessie frowned a little. “So, y
ou don’t ever feel warmer toward Ryan than Eric?”
I said no. “Not like this has all been going on a really long time or anything, though. Like I said, it’s just been since the day of the wall breach.”
“Well, maybe it has something to do with that. Maybe you’re still just a little disappointed in Ryan from learning about how he wanted you to choose between him and Eric…and maybe that disappointment is somehow manifesting subconsciously or something, just making you temporarily feel a little warmer toward Eric.”
“Maybe. Or maybe this is going to continue, and maybe I’ll soon be the one wanting to make a choice.”
Cradling her mug of steaming coffee between her hands, Jessie lifted her dark brows at me. “Do you think you’d ever really want that?”
Frustrated, I let my breath out in a rush. “I don’t know. I mean, no. I really do love Ryan and Eric equally. I really do. And I have chemistry with both of them. And it’s the exact same amount. No matter how I feel about Eric over Ryan some days.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself more than me.”
Becoming increasingly troubled, I sighed. “What do I do, Jessie?”
With her expression sympathetic, she said I should do nothing. “Not until some time has passed, anyway.”
“And then what?”
“Well…let’s say that these feelings of increased warmth toward Eric over Ryan go on for a whole month or something…and let’s say that they become even stronger. Then, you do some serious heart-searching and decide if being in a trio relationship is really what you want.”
“But it’s what I’ve committed to, though.”
“Right, but you haven’t committed by signing an agreement in blood or anything. You’re not eternally locked in. Sometimes, things just change.”
“Yeah, but the whole heart of my arrangement with Eric and Ryan was that I’d be mated to both of them in exchange for a long list of things for my old community.”
“And if you eventually decide that you’d like to be with Eric only, do you really think he’s going to cut off the supply line to Towering Pines just because you’ve kicked Ryan out of your bed? Heck, if anything, I think Eric would probably step things up, sending even more supplies to your old community.”
Beginning to feel miserable, I lowered my gaze to my coffee mug with a sigh. “Maybe. I guess I’m just starting to hate talking about all this. I do truly love Ryan, and I’d never, ever want to do anything to hurt him. In fact, just thinking about that…it’s making my chest ache right now. I can’t imagine ever telling him that I’m letting him go.”
Jessie said that I never had to if I never wanted to. “Maybe we’ve started thinking too far in the future, here. All you really have to deal with is what’s happening today, which is that you’re having increased feelings of warmth for Eric over Ryan, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, then, this is all really no big deal at this point. Like I said, it’s pretty normal to have fluctuating-type feelings in a trio. I know I do, even though I love both my husbands with all my heart, and in a way, I think that is pretty much equally. So, like I said, just give things a little more time. Just see if this isn’t something temporary. Okay?”
I said okay, and we soon began frosting cupcakes again; however, I did so with a sense of heaviness in my heart, almost as if I could already tell that the simple passage of time wasn’t going to help anything.
Over the next several days, my fears came true. I not only started feeling warmer toward Eric than Ryan, but I also started to think that I might truly love Eric more. I couldn’t tell exactly what had changed from the time when I’d been so sure that I loved them both equally, but something definitely had. Like Jessie had suggested, I thought that it might have had something to do with being disappointed when Ryan had told me that he wanted me to choose. At the same time, though, it was more than that.
Just like when Ryan had been so sure that I simply had more chemistry with him than with Eric, I was now nearly sure that the opposite was true. There was just something about my chemistry with Eric that just seemed to be pulling me toward him on a level much deeper and more profound than just the physical.
Maybe two weeks after the wall breach, they both started to think that something was up with me. Over breakfast one day, Ryan asked me if anything was wrong, and I said no.
“I guess I’m just tired. Maybe just because the days are getting shorter and all that. Gloomy days and dark early evenings just always seem to zap all my energy.”
This was true, although as a response to Ryan’s question, it wasn’t true.
He suggested that maybe I start sleeping in some days. “You don’t have to wake up and make us breakfast every day, you know. We appreciate your good cooking, but if it means you getting more sleep, Eric and I can whip up our own breakfast sometimes.”
Eric agreed. “Maybe Ryan and I will start cooking more and start leaving you a plate of food bedside some days so that you can have breakfast in bed.”
They both always tried so hard to please me and make sure I was happy. For some reason, I was finding this somehow heartbreaking at the moment.
In response to what Eric had said, I gave him a little smile. “Thanks, but I like getting up to cook for the two of you. And I don’t really think I’m sleep-deprived. Maybe I just need to get outside and get more exercise during the hours of the day when it’s actually light out. In fact, if we have a nice, sunny afternoon like we did yesterday, maybe I’ll take a long walk around the village. Maybe I’ll check and see how you guys are coming along with the new wall.”
Eric said he’d love that.
Ryan agreed, saying that he and a few men would be working on the south side of the new wall that day. “So, stop by to visit anytime you want. Just listen for the sound of construction work; look through any of the tiny gaps in the first wall to spot me, give me a little yoo-hoo, and I’ll come running around the other side of the wall to find you.”
His use of the word “yoo-hoo” made me smile, and I told him it was a date. “I’ll come find you and give you a little yoo-hoo sometime late this afternoon, when I’m finished passing out the new winter hats for the kids with Jessie. I’ll come find you, too, Eric, afterward.”
He said he’d love that. “I’ll be working on the western side of the new fence this afternoon.”
That all settled, they soon finished their breakfasts and departed for work, leaving me feeling slightly better about the recent problem of my feelings toward them both. Maybe Jessie is right, I thought. Maybe this is all just going to take some time. And maybe after a while, I’ll just somehow go back to loving Eric and Ryan the same.
After all, as I’d just discovered, Ryan did still make me smile, and that had to count for something, I figured. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have any love for him at all. On the contrary, I still loved him a lot, and he still made my heart beat a little faster when I saw him. It was just that Eric made my heart beat a little faster still.
With my mood at least better than it had been in a few days, I met up with Jessie that afternoon after lunch, and we walked all around the community, distributing a box full of children’s winter hats that one of the men had discovered in the back of an abandoned sporting goods store while on a run to scavenge construction supplies. As I’d hoped it would be, the day was sunny, and it was also unusually warm. Rare for late November, the temperature was at least sixty degrees and climbing, making me take off my jacket and drop it off at my house while passing out hats in my neighborhood.
While Jessie and I went along, taking a few minutes to visit with each of our neighbors at each stop, my mood began rising along with the temperature. I wasn’t even exactly sure why. It was just that the day was nice, sunny, and warm; after my breakfast with Eric and Ryan that morning, I was just simply starting to feel better about things. It will all work out, I told myself a few different times while thinking about the situation. Feelings ebb and flow. Right n
ow, I might feel like I love Eric more, and next month, it’ll probably be Ryan. A few years from now, I’ll probably be completely used to all this.
After passing out all the hats with Jessie, we met up with Alicia for coffee and cookies at her house; while the three of us talked, laughed, and ate, my mood became even a little more buoyant still. When I left Alicia’s house to go visit with Ryan and Eric, I was feeling better than I had in two weeks, ever since Ryan’s bout of “temporary insanity.”
However, walking to visit him at the construction site to the south, my buoyant mood popped like a bubble when I suddenly realized something. I wasn’t walking south. In fact, I was walking west, to Eric’s construction site, and had been for at least five minutes. Also, during these five minutes, I’d been thinking about Eric, picturing his handsome face and how his eyes would light up when he saw me. This, after I’d told Ryan that I’d come to visit him first.
Thoroughly deflated, and even a little disgusted with myself, I suddenly stopped walking and had a seat on a bench beneath a gazebo in the community greenspace. Suddenly, I felt like I was disintegrating somehow, breaking down on a molecular level, as if the very cells that made up my physical body were even sick of me lying to myself and rationalizing things that couldn’t be rationalized away.
I loved Eric more than I loved Ryan. I knew that now, and I just couldn’t fight it anymore. I loved Eric on some deeper level than I loved Ryan; despite all the pleasure they both brought me in the bedroom, I wanted to be with Eric and Eric alone. A trio relationship was never going to work for me in the long run. Not as long as there was still the option for me to choose Eric to be my only man.
Before I knew it, I was nearly hyperventilating, knowing that I was having an anxiety attack. A little dizzy, I forced myself to take deep, slow breaths while a woman named Michaela arrived at the greenspace with her two little sons in hand. She waved to me, came over, and started making pleasant small talk about the unusually nice weather.