Page 60 of The Prizes We Win
“Yeah, Love. Like your own room,” Sebastian replies.
Her face falls slightly. “You guys don’t like me sleeping in your rooms?”
“We love having you in our beds, Mama.” I run my free hand down the back of her head and twirl her dark strands between my fingers. “But you’re a woman with four boyfriends now. You’ll want your own space every once in a while.”
“And we want you to be happy here,” Luca adds. “You deserve to have a space here that’s all yours. This is your home now too.”
Joe smiles before Sebastian adds, “We have an extra room. You can decorate it however you want.”
“I can?”
“Of course, you can, Love. You can get rid of or change anything you like.” He gestures around the apartment. “This is all yours if you want it.” Sebastian stands from his spot on the sectional and moves to sit on the other side of her. Luca follows and sits on the edge of the coffee table in front of us. “I can speak for all of us, Enzo included, when I say that our home is with you now.Youare home for us. Wherever you are is where we want to be.” He places his hand on her thigh. “And if you don’t want to stay here, that’s fine, but you better make room in that apartment of yours for the four of us. Because if you go then we go too.”
“I don’t think I have enough towels at my apartment for all of you,” she replies with a smile.
“Well I know we have plenty,” Luca adds.
Joe’s smile grows as she looks around the apartment. “I’m not sure if that guest room has a big enough closet. I’ve got a lot of clothes.”
I huff a laugh. “Then we will build you a bigger one.”
She pauses for a moment before she finally says, “Okay.”
“Okay?” Sebastian asks.
“Okay,” she repeats softly.
Sebastian gets up on his knees and tucks his finger under her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “Then it’s settled. We’ll help you go to your apartment to get some more things tomorrow and figure out what to do from there, okay?”
She nods and Sebastian touches his lips to hers. The two of them kiss deeply for a minute.
Luca and I don’t look away.
No, we watch the people that we love, express their love for one another.
I think this is the most I’ve seen her smile in three days, I’ve missed that pink hue on her cheeks and the way her eyes crinkle at the corner when her smile reaches her ears.
And to think, I was almost too scared to have this for myself.
There was a moment when we opened that door and we found Enzo, a moment when I thought to myself… “This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
I had let myself find a love so deep and so pure that the sight of him lying on the cold cement ground, covered in his own blood,lifelesswas enough to make me feel like I was going to die right then and there. And what’s worse is I feel that same love four times over.
But then Ronan said he was alive, and I knew that without my love for them, this wouldn’t be a life worth living. Sure, I may risk loving and losing them, but the pain from that is incomparable to walking through the rest of my life and never letting myself love any of them at all.
And sure, my love for each of them differs greatly. I will never love Luca, Sebastian, and Enzo in the way that I love Joe. But I will also never love her in the way that I love the three of them. And my love for Lorenzo is… it’s growing. It’s changing and ever-evolving. It’s growing deeper and deeper every time I look at him. Every time I touch him. It’s turning into a love I could have never expected in a million years. But so is my love for the two men sitting across from me. I never could have imagined I would find myself in the situation that we are right now. That we’d be sharing Joe. Sharing Enzo. I love Sebastian and Luca enough to put my love for Joe and Enzo in their hands.
That alone speaks volumes.
Sebastian pulls his lips off Joe, shoots me a wink, and turns to Luca. “Might wanna finish that quick,” he says as he points to thewine glass in Luca’s hand before downing the rest of his in one swallow.
“Why?” Luca asks with an amused grin.
Seb nods toward the stairs. “Time to give our boy a shower.”
Luca dramatically rolls his eyes and Joe laughs. “Great.” He tips the rest of his wine back and stands from the coffee table. “This should be fun.” Luca reaches for Joe’s free hand, letting his fingertips touch hers before following Sebastian upstairs.
“You wanna watch some Harry Potter?”
