Page 117 of Full Mountie

“Yeah, in an abstract way.”

“And with a woman? Or a man?”

I don’t know. “Either, I guess. I mean, until I met you—” The words die on my tongue. Meeting Beth had changed everything. But that had its own ugly tinge, too.

I’ve made a mess of the two relationships that mean the world to me.

She gives me a hopeless look. “I think this conversation is supposed to be a lot happier than this.”

I take a deep breath. “Yeah.”

She moves closer, until her knees brush mine. “He loves you, you know. He loves you so much it hurts him that you don’t notice.”

“I…I don’t notice? I can’t keep my hands off him.”

“He thinks it’s different,” she says softly.

“From what?”

“From how you feel about me.”

It is different. But…not more or less. Just, they’re not the same people.

I reach out and take her hand. She resists for a beat, but then I tug her into my lap. “I love you,” I whisper against her temple. “So much that I’ve fucked everything up.”

She presses her skin against mine. A breath, in and out. “And how do you feel about Hugh?”

A painful hurt unfurls in my chest. “I love him, too.”

“But you haven’t said it to him.” Her voice cracks and she pulls her knees up to her chest, squeezing them tight. I wrap my arms around the ball of her body. “And he needs to hear it.”

“He won’t believe me.”

“We’ll need to convince him, then.” Her voice is sure and confident, and the tension in her body ebbs as she relaxes against me and presses her face into my neck. “I need you both. This is crazy. We’ve just begun, the three of us. We can’t be over yet.”

“I don’t know…”

Her fingers dance over the pulse point by my collarbone, then up the tendons on the side of my neck. Gentle, loving touches. “Can you tell me about your breakup the first time?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. No. Yes. I don’t know. “I left him. That’s the short answer. An opportunity came up, a posting, and I applied for it. I didn’t tell him until I had the job.”

“How did he react?”

“We fought. We fucked, too. That didn’t stop until I left.” And then the night before I left, he finally asked me if he should visit.

“Might be too complicated,” I’d said.

“You sure?”

He’d not only asked, but he’d doubled down on his hope.

And I’d dashed it.

Because we were getting too intense, too much, for two guys fucking around.

It took me another year to admit had been the first man I’d wanted to have a real relationship with, and that had scared me. And by then, the regret had faded to a bittersweetwhat iflevel.

“He asked if we could keep seeing each other,” I say faintly. “I shot him down.”

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