Triplets Make Five

13

DAISY

I didn’t know why I ran away, but I did.

As soon as I blurted out the truth, I didn’t even wait for Caleb’s reaction before I pulled my legs out of the pool and dashed across the deck towards the first pair of doors I could find.

I slipped into the foggy glass doors, and I found myself stepping into a dense fog of steam. It wasn’t just any steam. It was a rich, heavenly steam, perfumed with eucalyptus and ylang-ylang and jasmine, a fragrance that immediately eased the tension in my shoulders and worked away the knots of stress that had wound themselves up in my head.

I stepped through the tile chamber and took a seat on the built-in bench, letting my head slump back against the wall. I pinched my eyes shut, taking in a deep breath of the soothing steam, and I wondered what Caleb is thinking.

I opened my eyes, glancing at the door, and then a terrible thought entered my head. What if he doesn’t come after me? What if he leaves me here?

I gulped, but before my mind had a chance to wander to the tiny, dark corners where my vulnerability and insecurity liked to hide, the door to the steam room opened, and Caleb stepped inside.

He was dripping wet from pulling himself out of the pool and everything in me wanted to run towards him. I wanted to throw my arms around him and do all the things he kept daring me to do. Feel his skin against mine, and learn once and for all if he was right about all those things he said.

For years, I’ve refused to let my virginity define me. While my close friends and confidants had viewed it as some sort an untapped potential, “like a passport full of unstamped pages,” Raven joked once, I’ve never felt any pressing need or urgent desire to shed my virgin status. In fact, in the last few years, I had grown to appreciate it. I’ve liked not belonging to anyone. I’ve liked that nobody knows me better than I know myself.

But now Caleb’s turned my world upside down, because with one flick of his tongue my body relinquished control. He knew me better than I knew myself. And I thought I’d be scared or hurt by that, but instead I was fascinated. I wanted him to know me more and for the first time in my life, I wanted him to take the piece of me that nobody else could have.

I wanted Caleb to take my virginity.

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But as he crossed the steam room and sat on the tiled bench beside me, I sensed his sudden reluctance.

“You should have told me.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he scoffed, shaking his head. “You always ask such absurd questions.”

I heard a hint of flirtation in his voice, and hope inflated my heavy heart.

“Does it change anything?”

“Of course it does. If I had known that you were a virgin…”

His voice trailed off, and he shook his head again as he sighed heavily.

“What?” I demanded. “What would you have done differently, if you had known?”

He did not offer me an answer, so I tried again.

“What happened to all that stuff you said about sex?” I pressed. “About it not needing to mean anything to be fulfilling?”

“Your first time should mean something.”

“Why?” I demanded. “Why should it?”

“Because,” Caleb said, his fiery eyes met mine in an intense, pained gaze. “Your first time might be the only time it can mean something. And if it doesn’t, then you’ll just end up being a cynical shell of a person like me who craves a connection that he can never seem to find.”

“So having sex ruins people?” I snapped.

“No,” he said firmly. “But people can ruin sex, and if you share your first time with the wrong person--”

“Are you the wrong person?”