Page 70 of Somewhere We Belong

“It’s better in my opinion,” Colt said.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I chuckled.

The tension between us felt electric and the urge to kiss him was strong.

“Hi, my name is Chayanne. I’ll be your waitress for tonight.” A beautiful woman stood at the front of our table.

We placed our drink orders as silence took over again. Once I decided on what I wanted, I put the menu down to look around the restaurant. Chayenne brought our drinks, and we ordered.

“Should we talk about what we want?” Atlas asked, and I had a feeling he was the talker of the group, while Theo and Colt were more reserved.

“Sure,” I said, as Colt and Theo nodded.

“We want you, Nova. I think I've felt my attraction for a while, but lately it felt like I couldn’t ignore it anymore,” Atlas said, looking a little shy all of a sudden. “I think you're amazing and this feels right.”

“It does feel right even if it does scare me,” I admitted. “I’m a package deal and if we do this, I need to protect Sol. She wants a dad so bad, even if she doesn’t outright tell me and I could seeher getting attached to you guys very quickly. That terrifies me because I don’t want her to suffer through any heartache.”

“We would never do anything to hurt her,” Theo said immediately.

“I know, but if we don’t work out then it’s not just me with a broken heart, but her too.” I sighed, feeling guilty about how I had left things with her earlier.

“So, what are you saying?” Colt took a sip of his whiskey.

“If we do this, we have to keep it a secret,” I said, biting my lip. “When and if we get more serious, we can tell her, but I just don’t want to disappoint her.”

I grabbed my wine glass, staring at it a little too intently, waiting for the moment they realized this was too much.

“That sounds reasonable,” Atlas said.

“While I don’t like keeping secrets, but I get where you are coming from,” Colt said. “I don’t think we should keep ourselves a secret for too long though.”

“Does this mean that you don’t want us around her?” Theo frowned.

“Oh no, I don’t think I could do that even if I tried,” I chuckled. “She would riot. I’m just saying if we are around her, no PDA and not tell her you’re?—”

I didn’t know what to call them.

“Boyfriends? Is that what you would be?” I was not sure how we were navigating this.

“Partners? Or boyfriends?” Atlas suggested.

“As long as you are only ours, I don’t care what you call us,” Colt said with a hint of a growl.

“I’m fine with either of those too,” Theo added. “You are only ours and no one else's, especially not Superman’s.”

Heat curled in my abdomen at their admission, but I chuckled because I knew who Theo was talking about. I really needed to text him, but we hadn’t talked since that night and Ifelt weird reaching out, out of the blue, “Hey! I’m dating three men, sorry!”

“It’s weird, but we don’t like to share outside of the group. It doesn’t feel right,” Atlas said, as my brows raised.

“You had an open relationship?” I asked, a little shocked.

“Being so far away we didn’t think it was fair for Atlas to be alone. We said if he needed someone, then we were ok with that,” Colt said, leaning back. “As long as he came home to us, no one else mattered, but it seemed that was awful and we all suffered. It wasn’t a good time for us.”

“I slept with someone cause I was so lonely, and I hated myself for it.” Atlas looked lost in the memory.

“He didn’t tell us, and he withdrew from us,” Theo said, rubbing Atlas’ back. “He finally broke down and told us what had happened, and we all agreed it wasn’t the right thing for us. It didn't help that Colt and I obsessed if he would do something with someone.”

“Wow.” I looked between them admiringly.