Harley, Dixon, Gale, and I are all sitting around a dinner table. "All of this is great," Gale comments as he spoons another bite of food into his mouth.
"Thank you." I nod my head in acknowledgment. My ankle was healing up nicely, but I was still in a boot so that I didn't injure it again, it was still weak right now. Harley and I haven't talked about what happened between us, but I was littered with hickeys that I notice Gale looking at every once in a while, Dixon too even though she is less noticeable.
I even notice Harley glancing at them from time to time, his gaze looking regretful but possessive all at the same time. I knew he doesn't condone what we did a few days ago if anything he thinks it was a mistake, which it was but I couldn't convince myself that it was anything other than heaven and that I should be embarrassed about it. It just felt so natural in his arms, it felt like home, and I don't want to be anywhere else.
"Can I go out with friends tomorrow night?" It was a Friday again and next Monday I would be going back to work. I think that Harley was going to have Jared fill in as my keeper, I stop myself from eye-rolling.
"What friends?"
"No."
Harley and I say at the same time and both glance at each other with curious gazes. Why was he so quick to say no, she was a fifteen-year-old girl, and she was allowed to have friends. He doesn't remember what he was doing at that age, or perhaps he does and that's why he doesn't want her to go out.
Dixon scowls at her brother playfully before answering my question. "I made a few friends at school. Willow, she said she was your cousin. I don't remember ever meeting her, but she says we played together a couple of times when we were little." I forgot the two were the same age, it hadn't accrued to me that they could be in the same grade. Willow was a good kid, but she was known to get into some trouble now and again.
"You two have played together a couple of times but it was many many years ago." I'm surprised that Willow even remembers that. They were only five or six then.
"Then there is Ansley, I think her last name is Landry." She says taking a bite of her food between sentences.
"All girls?" Harley asks successfully.
"I'm not a whore, Harley." Dixon rolls her eyes.
"Language, Dixon." He bites out giving her an apprehensive look letting her know that he didn't approve of the attitude.
"I don't see a problem with it, it's a good thing that you're making friends," I said eyeing the two waiting on them to break out in a fight any minute.
Those two act like each other but in their own little ways.
"As long as it's only girls and your home by ten, in addition, Gale will come with," Harley says before spooning in some food seeming to be done with the conversation.
"If it's only girls why does Gale get to go?" Dixon challenged his rule. I look at Gale to see his eyes the both of them now, his plate forgotten. He seemed awkward almost like he didn't want to be in this conversation.
"Because Gale knows if he lays one finger on you I'd beat the s-." I stand up from the table, making my chair squeak on purpose to stop Harley from finishing that sentence.
Gale didn't need to hear him say that when he hasn't done anything wrong even if it was just in reference.
"Gale wants to help me with these dishes." Gale glances at me and hops up out of his chair quickly leaving behind the two bickering siblings. I've never met someone that gave Harley more of a challenging time than me, but he has met his match.
Dixon wasn't backing down and neither was Harley both of them going head to head until one of them comes out as the winner.
"Thank you," Gale says as he grabs a drying rag even though there is a drying wrack by the sink. Clearly just trying to make himself look busy.
"I know that she doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes but she doesn't need to go out by herself," Gale explains his thoughts on the whole thing.
"Harleys not going to let her leave without you, so I'd plan for a girl's night out." I pick at him and he smacks me with the towel on my shoulder.
They finally agree that she can stay out to eleven as long as Gale can come alone. Dixon heads up to her bedroom, her earbuds already in her ears.
Gale excuses himself out of the house, he had some things he needed to do at the clubhouse since we have been keeping him busy and he's going to have a busy day tomorrow.
So then there were two, and we could seem to strike up a conversation. My nerves getting the better of me.
"We need to get laid," Harley says his expression hard and unwavering. He seems to have been deciding on what to do about what's going on here for the past couple of days.
"Huh?" I say a little taken aback by where this was going.
"You said your dream of me that night was because you had never been with a man. On my end, it's because I haven't slept with anyone in a year. What happened the other day, can't happen again. We would just end up resenting each other and even when we start resenting each other, Maddie. Your still stuck with me, stuck here. I don't want us to be stuck by each other's side and you end up hating me." There was a lot I had to unpack in his words.
The first being he did everything he did the other night because he hasn't gotten laid in a while. That hurt, it cut deep but I did tell him the same thing the last time something happened. Did it hurt him as bad as his words hurt me?
Second, he has steps with anyone since I've been back in his life and part of me hopes it has something to do with me, but I have a feeling he's planning on changing that soon.
Third, he thinks if we slept together that we would fall out, he doesn't think it would work. Which hurts a lot worse than the first sentence.
Lastly, he has given up on trying to convince me to leave. Which I was thankful for because I was in this for the long haul. I was in this until I wasn't breathing anymore.
Harley was going to be taken care of and I was going to be the one making sure of it.
"So what are you implying?" I sit up at the end of the couch turning to give him my full attention. If this was going in the direction I think it was going, my heart is going to break. I didn't even want to think about him sleeping with someone else.
"I think that it would be a good idea for us to get out of the house more, and see different people. We are always stuck in this house together. I mean what else would we expect to happen?" He says shifting my way and moving his hands as he talks to get his point across. It was making sense, what he was saying, it was but it doesn't change the feeling in the pit of my stomach sinking like an anchor at the bottom of the ocean.
"I'm not doing that," I say shutting off his idea quickly. "You can do what you need to do, but I'm not doing it."
I pick up my drink off of the coffee table and sip it.
"Maddie. I can't ... focus on anything else, when you look at me the way you look at me. The only way we are going to stop this ... this petty attraction is to put out that fire in your eyes. It's the only way I can quit thinking ..." He doesn't finish the sentence, deciding it better not to.
"Like I said. Take care of your needs. I'll worry about myself." I say raising my head slightly refusing to let this conversation get to me, or better yet to not let the hurt of thinking about him with another woman, get to me.
"Maddie ..." He trails off but I just stand up and take off up the steps.
Doesn't he get that I am not going to be able to look at another man the way I look at him, I'm not going to be able to feel the things he makes me feel with another man's touch? Partly because of my past but nearly wholly because I can't even think about anyone but him.
He already has me but I don't have him. I probably never would because he's too worried about ruining what we have forget about the possibilities of what we could be.
Maybe I would play along in this little game.
See who breaks first, because if he cares anything about me, he could never sit back and watch me throw myself at another man.
Survival of the fittest.
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