Danny held me all night, and in his strong arms, with his lips pressed to the top of my head, I felt secure enough to sleep, but he had to leave early this morning, and now my mind is whirring, and my heart is thumping, and I have to face up to the fact that I have no idea what I’m going to do.
I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back to the life I had before them.
I want the feeling of safety they bring to my life. I want encouragement and kindness. I want laughter and unity. When Maggie got together with her men, I thought she was crazy, but now I understand. There’s no chance that I’ll ever feel this way about anyone else because five men deliver five times everything a woman could ever need.
I didn’t want to feel this way about them. Keeping them at arm’s length started out as my priority, but somehow, they’ve managed to creep under my armor and touch my heart, my heart that now feels achy and sad.
Once again, I pull up my Instagram account and search for Cathy’s profile. Flicking through the images is hard because, on the one hand, I can see the emotion and connection between me Tobias, River, Danny, Mark, and Alden, and on the other hand, I want to tear Cathy’s head from her neck for uploading the pictures. She knew what she was doing. When Mom set up an Instagram account for herself, she asked all my friends if she could follow them, so she didn’t look like someone with no friends.
What Cathy did wasn’t an accident. It was a deliberate act to fuck up my life.
The trouble is, I know what will happen if I confront her. She’ll plead ignorance and pretend that the images were all innocently uploaded. She’ll deny noticing that I’m intimate with my stepbrothers. She’ll make out that I’m the one at fault. If I didn’t want people to know about what I was doing, why the hell would I do it in public? And maybe Cathy would be right. Maybe we should have been more careful.
But I didn’t imagine that the pictures would find themselves in my mom’s Insta feed, or that someone who is supposed to be my friend would try to fuck up my life in such an obvious way.
I drop my phone onto the bed and haul myself up until I’m sitting on the edge of the mattress. Looking down at my body, I can see the evidence of what we did last night etched onto my skin. Hickeys on my thighs where Tobias sucked, beard-burn where Alden scraped his chin across my belly, little reddened tips on my nipples where Mark’s fingers pinched, and Danny nibbled. I even have five little bruises where River’s fingers dug into my hip. Each mark tells a story of pleasure but also reminds me that this is too much. It’s too intense. It’s too outside of what fits with society’s expectations and what would be accepted by everyone we know.
Well, everyone except Maggie and her harem. I think she’d be grateful to have a friend living the same kind of lifestyle. Oh, and Mason and his family too.
We may not be totally alone in this lifestyle, but that doesn’t make it easier.
I shower quickly and dress in my cut-off denim shorts and a green retro tee with a huge daisy emblazoned across the front. I firmly believe that the way I dress has a big impact on my mood. I’m hoping the daisy will lift my spirits. If I had a shirt with a sunshine print , that would have been my first pick.
I’m driving to my studio when my phone rings. It’s Maggie, probably the only person outside of my men that I’d pick up a call from right now.
“Maggie,” I say, already feeling an ache in my throat at the relief of hearing from my friend.
“Shit, Cora. I saw Cathy’s photos. Your mom…”
“Yep. She saw them too,” I say, misery clouding my tone.
“Well, if my mom’s initial response to my relationship is anything to go by, I guess she isn’t happy at what she’s seen.”
“Understatement,” I say. “At least your mom didn’t have a connection to your men. Mine is raging that I’m going to fuck up her relationship.”
“No…Oh shit. I hadn’t even thought about that angle.”
“She told me I have to break up with them.”
“I’m so sorry, hon.”
I exhale a long, sad breath, allowing my shoulders to slump. “Yeah. Me too. I haven’t told them yet. I just don’t know what to do. I mean, I know what I have to do, but I don’t want to do it.”
“Of course,” Maggie hums as though she’s thinking about my options and trying to come up with a solution to end my problems. “I would tell you that time is a great healer of problems,” she says. “Especially in these kinds of situations. If your mom saw how awesome you all are together, she wouldn’t be so down on the idea.”