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“Is that your answer?” He licks his lips, and all I can think of is kissing him again. “Your choice?”
Is it? “Jethro doesn’t want me that way,” I mutter.
His brows draw together. “He told you that?”
“No,” I admit. “He didn’t.”
The opposite, in fact. He said he wants me. That wanting me is his issue. He pulled away, because Joel wants me.
And now Joel is doing the same to spare his friend’s feelings.
Joel is watching me carefully, and before I speak again, he nods as if understanding something. “I thought so,” he says. “I won’t hurt him, Candy. I won’t.”
Then he turns around and leaves, and I sink into the armchair in a daze.
My life has suddenly turned into a soap opera. I want two guys, and I can’t be with either of them without destroying their friendship.
They won’t allow it.
I wouldn’t want that, either.
So this is it. I thought the worst thing about my fantasy was the fact that it was so distant. That I didn’t know these two guys up close and personal. That I’d never like them in person. Never stand a chance of either of them wanting me.
Never imagined how much worse it would be to find out they do want me, that they both want me—only apart, and then perhaps, and then never.
***
“That’s a huge boost to one’s ego,” Connie writes back that night when I tell her what happened. “Go you!”
Only my ego doesn’t feel that boosted. I don’t feel that lucky.
They won’t risk their friendship. So they pass me, from one to the other, like a ball. Then I get upset and think—what about what I want? But I get it. They barely know me. They’ve been besties for years. And it’s sweet, but I wish… I wish I could get one night with them both, just to see what it’s like.
But it’s not in the cards, and accepting it is the only way to go. So I post another review on my blog of one of Jade West’s darkly sexy romances and try to write another scene on my serial—only to stop short when I picture my two fantasy boyfriends.
That’s what I always do when I write about them, only now their faces are crystal clear, their voices loud inside my head. They are real. So real I can’t… write about them.
Oh crap, I have writer’s block. Reality is blocking me. It hurts as if I’ve lost them twice—both in real life and my imagination.
The next day I walk around like a zombie, my brain still in shock from the realization, trying to come to grips with the fact that I am stranded without a sexy imaginary lifeboat. It’s… scary. I’ve been escaping to my fantasy world for years now.
What am I gonna do?
Joel comes in, bringing coffee, and I flee to the back of the shop, hiding. Then Jethro comes looking for me, and I wish I could sink through the floor.
Maybe I should look for work elsewhere. Seeing them every day, knowing what I can’t have, is so much harder than I thought.
“Donna wants to see you,” he says and slips his arm around my shoulders. His dark eyes are sharp on me. “And Joel is asking how you are. Why is he asking that?”
“Tell him I’m fine. And I’ll go to see Donna.” I extract myself from his hold. “In a bit.”
“Candy.” His voice caresses my name, and I shudder—with want, with frustration. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just…” He reaches for me again, grips my wrist and pulls me close to him. I’m lost in his scent of male musk and clean soap. “Just confused.”
“About what?” My hands have ended up on his hard chest, his heart thudding under my palms, and his voice rumbles through his ribcage. “I thought you wanted Joel.”
He didn’t tell him anything? “I…yeah.”
