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“Nope,” Carter says. The rest of them shake their head.
Aiden sighs. “What are we going to do?”
Daniel grunts from the wall and flips his knife away, slipping it into his pocket. “What’s there to do? Henry kicked us out.”
“Yeah, but,” Aiden starts.
But Daniel interrupts him. “He kicked us out,” he says again. “Maybe he’ll get over it and we can all be cool again, but we’re not going back there.”
Aiden frowns. “So what, we all go home?”
Ryan stretches. “It looks like that, doesn’t it?” He glances at me. “Do you have somewhere to stay?
“I was gonna go to a hotel near my parents’ house until it’s finished. Only should be a few more days.”
“We’ll pay for it,” Aiden says quickly, and the guys all agree.
“You don’t have to,” I say.
“We’ll pay,” James insists. “What else can we do?”
“Nothing,” I say softly.
“We can fix what happened with Henry,” Carter says. “It’ll take time, though, to make him understand.”
There’s a lull in the conversation. “What does he need to understand?” I ask finally.
Aiden leans up against the dresser. The TV wobbles for a second as he looks at me. “What was happening between us.”
“And what was happening?” I insist, feeling stupid. “I mean, what was that?” I look around the room, at all the handsome faces.
They suddenly can’t seem to meet my eye, and that hurts more than anything else.
“I don’t know,” Aiden finally says, looking around him. “Can anyone explain it?”
“It was just sex,” I say finally. “I mean, that was it, right?”
Aiden’s eyes go wide. “No,” he says.
“No,” Carter agrees. “It wasn’t just sex. Not for me, at least.”
I bite my lip. Daniel and James and Ryan all nod in agreement with Carter.
“It wasn’t just sex,” James says, watching me carefully.
“That’s how Henry’ll see it, anyway. And now what? You guys live all over the country. And I’m still a college student. How are we supposed to keep this going?”
Nobody answers. The silence says a lot. I stand there and watch them for a second before sighing.
“It was just that house,” I say finally. “Just being there together. It made us do something… something we wouldn’t normally do.”
“Emily,” Aiden says, and I can feel the hurt in his voice.
“We’re out of that house now though,” I say over his objection. I can’t let him sway me, now when I’m finally feeling like I have a choice to make and a little momentum to make it. If I sit back and I think too much about this, I know I’ll be too afraid. I’ll fail somehow.
“We live different lives. We can’t do whatever this is outside of that house.” I look around at each of them, at each of the men that fulfill me, make me feel incredible, bring the best out of me. “I’m sorry. We just can’t.”
“We could,” Carter says, looking around. “We could make it work.”
