It was all I had, but it was all they needed. Alexei lay in my arms for a long time while Saint cleaned up. I thought he might sleep, but he eventually drifted to the bathroom and shut the door.
We let him go.
Let himbreathe.
Saint lay down beside me, eyes heavy, but this fucker didn’t sleep either. He traced a tattoo on my chest, head resting on his folded arm, the book he and Alexei had been reading somehow uncrushed between us.
It was the book Folk had given me. About learning to live with peace. “Is it good?”
Saint shrugged. “Good for Lexi.”
The first words he’d spoken since I’d come upstairs.
I tucked a lock of chestnut hair behind his ear. “I could watch you fuck him forever.”
“Why?”
“How you love each other keeps me alive.”
Saint took a breath.
I gave him a minute.
He found my hand and laced our fingers together. “I used to hate it when you said shit like that. Made me think of you dying. But it feels different now.”
“Everything’s different now.”
He nodded as the bathroom door opened and Alexei ghosted back into the room, skin damp from the shower instead of the cooled sweat on mine and Saint’s.
I wondered if he’d leave us.
Feared it for the split second it took for him to crawl into bed at my other side, his body warm against my back. “Are we ever going to talk about your red-haired woman?”
Lord, I’d been wondering when he’d bring that up.
I met Saint’s amused gaze, knowing he was gonna sit this one out. Then I faced Alexei again. “You want to talk about Lena?”
“I wanted to hear you say her name.”
“Why?”
His flinty gaze drilled into my soul. “Because you never have before, either of you. Not to me.”
“We told you we fucked women together.”
“She is notwomen,Cam. She is a queen. Why is she not yours?”
Saint chose that moment to rise from the bed and disappear, not to the bathroom, but downstairs. Deliberate, obviously. Cos maybe he didn’t want to hear that how I felt about him, even then, had destroyed any chance I’d had of loving Lena the way she’d deserved. That I hadn’t even tried.
I refocused on Alexei. “It was never like that with us. Lena’s not a one-man lover.”
“Neither are you.”
“Didn’t know that then, did I?”
“You did not?”
“No. I just knew I loved Saint and I couldn’t be with him, so I shagged around, even though it fucking hurt.”