Page 8 of Kylan (The Wylde Street Boys #3)

EIGHT

LEON

To say I’d fucked up was a huge understatement.

To say I’d taken Marek for granted was also up there in the stupidest things I’d ever done.

I’d taken him, his love for me, and his complete understanding and trust, and shaken its foundations until it’d almost come crashing down around me.

I’d never doubted us. Not for one second. And I should have.

I should have treated him as if he was about to walk away, because he very nearly did.

All because I assumed to know what was best. I assumed to know how he felt. I assumed to think that we’d just go back to the old us the second Kylan was out of our lives.

Oh, how wrong I’d been.

The hole Kylan left in our lives, in our home, in our marriage, was devastating. There was no going back to how we were .

He’d changed us.

He’d changed me.

I fell in love with him. I’d put it down to infatuation. A fleeting crush. The way he made my heart sing, the way he looked at me, how he looked at Marek; I was infatuated with everything about him.

I kept telling myself that’s all it was.

As I’d told myself that Marek was infatuated with him too, that he had a crush on him the way I did.

That Marek and I were in love, and what we had with Kylan was different to that.

It had to be, right?

I couldn’t possibly love another man the same way I loved Marek. I would never do that to him. He was the absolute love of my life. The reason my heart beat, the reason I woke up in the morning.

He was everything to me.

How could someone else be that as well? How could someone be equal to Marek in my life?

I couldn’t let that happen . . .

Or so I’d thought.

To see Marek shy away from me, to feel him pulling back, was the most frightening thing to ever happen to me.

The thought of losing him almost killed me.

Like losing Kylan . . .

How could I have known Marek would feel the exact same? How could I know that I would cause Marek the same pain as I’d caused Kylan.

That I’d caused myself .

I couldn’t lose Kylan any more than I could lose Marek.

That was very fucking clear to me now.

When Fitch had called and told us Kylan wasn’t well, everything changed.

Priorities.

Pride.

We’d raced over, welcomed by a seething Fitch. He had every right to be mad at us. I’d seen him on Wylde Street and I’d seen the photo Dominic had once shown us, so I knew who he was.

He was protective of Kylan, and I’d be forever grateful that he’d called us. And that he’d called us out on our behaviour. I added phoning Dominic to my long list of things to do.

But getting Kylan home was my priority. Getting him showered and fed, getting him seen to by a doctor, getting him whatever he needed was my priority.

Righting this wrong.

Marek and I got him showered and dressed into some comfortable clothes and tucked him into bed. He sipped some electrolytes and took some Panadol with some juice and ate half a sandwich, but he really needed to sleep.

So we sat on the side of his bed and tucked him in. I held his hand and Marek stroked his hair until he was sound asleep.

When we left Kylan to sleep, leaving the door to his room ajar, I pulled Marek into my arms as soon as we were in the hall, and we held each other so tight .

I would never take him—either of them—for granted again.

“I love you,” I whispered.

He nodded against my neck, his arms tightening around my back. “I love you too. And I love him, Leon. I need to know he’ll be okay.”

I pulled back and took Marek’s face in my hands. “I love him too. He’ll be fine; we’ll make sure of it. He has us, for as long as he wants us. We’ll look after him.”

Marek’s eyes were deep with sorrow. “The things he said. That he doesn’t feel right, that he doesn’t deserve love, it scares me, Leon.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

What Kylan was saying about locking down his pain and fear so he didn’t feel anything at all was just awful. A coping mechanism, for sure.

“It’s a response to trauma,” I whispered.

Marek’s bottom lip trembled, his eyes glassy. “Two days he just lay there, unable to eat or sleep. We did that to him.”

I kissed Marek’s forehead and pulled him against me for another hug. “We will help him. We can get him the best help. Medical, psychological, whatever he needs.”

“We can’t make that decision for him,” Marek replied. “He needs to be the one who decides that.”

I knew my instinct was to sweep in, make executive decisions, and fix things to however I deemed necessary, but Marek was right. I needed to respect Kylan’s decision and take his lead on this.

“We’ll ask him what he wants to do,” I said. “And if we need to prove to him that he’s worth it, no matter how long it takes, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Marek gave me a sad smile. “We almost fumbled this so bad.”

“I almost fumbled this,” I mumbled.

“No, not just you. Me too. We didn’t talk. We didn’t communicate the way we normally do. We were both so scared of hurting each other that we froze. And we’ve never done that before. We’ve never been like that before.”

“We’ve never been in love with someone else before,” I offered. “We’ve never navigated anything like this before. I was so scared of hurting you.”

He nodded, teary again. “Same. I was so mad at you, and that was new for me. And we didn’t talk it out.”

“Because you couldn’t even look at me?” I said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.

“True.” The smile he managed was tinged with sadness. “Maybe if I’d screamed at you to pull your head out of your arse, we could have saved everyone a lot of heartache.”

I snorted. “True. So if there’s ever a next time where you need to scream at me to stop being a jerk, please don’t hold back.”

He chuckled and sniffled, wiping his eyes and nose. “And I didn’t stick up for myself,” he said. “I let you dictate, because that’s what we’ve always done.”

“What? No, baby . . .”

He shook his head. “You’ve always led this dance, and I’ve always been happy that way. I’ve never had a reason to question that. You’ve always put me first, so why would I ever question that. You make choices for us, what’s best for us, with me at the forefront of every decision. What I want, what I need, what makes me happy. Everything you’ve done has been for me , so when you said we should let Kylan go, I didn’t protest. I thought maybe you were right, because I was in love with him and I didn’t want to hurt you with that.”

I put my hand to his cheek and studied his eyes. “Everything I’ve ever done has been for you. And I’m usually good with judgement calls, financial decisions, whatever you want, I would make it happen just to see you smile.” I sighed. “But I was so wrong about this. I was wrong to assume, I was wrong to not ask. I was wrong to think I couldn’t love you both equally. I won’t make that mistake again. I promise. I will do everything I can to make you both happy.”

Marek’s gaze softened and he pressed his forehead to my cheek. “We’re both going to need to learn how to better communicate. I don’t know how threesome’s work.”

I froze. “Well . . . you kinda do.”

He’d always had a penchant for threesomes. Ever since college, from day one he’d let me know he liked playing with a third. It was how our searching out additional partners all kinda started...

He gave me a shove. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

He looked up at me. “We need to sit down with Kylan and put everything on the table. Expectations, needs, wants. Everything. And maybe even make it a weekly thing so we never have this miscommunication thing happen again.”

I kissed his forehead. “Okay. Marek, darling, we also need to prepare for the possibility that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with us. We are married and he’s so young. He might not even want to go back to the daddies/boy roleplay.” I shrugged. “We’re already assuming he does.”

Marek’s whole face fell. “What if he doesn’t? If he doesn’t want to be our boy, that’s not a deal breaker for me. I just want him with us, in any capacity. Just him. But if he doesn’t want us at all, then...?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. But we’ll get through it. Our first priority is making sure he’s okay.”

Marek sighed, still sad. “I’ll go check on him. See if his fever has come down or if we should call the doctor.” He shrugged. “I might make him some veggie soup. How does that sound?”

“Sounds perfect. I’ll go check in with the office, make some phone calls, and check our emails. I’ll just be downstairs. Yell if you need me.”

Marek slipped quietly into Kylan’s room, and I watched from the door how he sat gently on the side of his bed and felt Kylan’s forehead with the back of his hand. How he stroked his hair and fixed his blankets.

Seeing him tend to him, care for him, made my heart full.

Would Kylan want to be in a proper relationship with us? I didn’t know, but god, I hoped so .

Maybe he’d want to maintain our old agreement with a few modifications. Maybe he didn’t want us at all.

Though when I’d suggested dating, the look in his eyes gave me hope that he wanted that. And he’d wanted to come here with us. We could have looked after him at his place, but he told Fitch he wanted to come home with us.

That had to be a good sign, right?

I had to believe he wanted to be part of us.

Or that he’d be open to discussing the possibility.

And what Marek said was true. We wanted him with us in any capacity. Whether that included Kylan being our boy, only he could decide that.

It was all up to him.

I spent some time in our home office. We’d never taken time off without notice before, and while I dealt with a few emergency emails and phone calls, our PAs and office manager handled rescheduling everything and managing clients who were demanding our time.

I told them we wouldn’t be in tomorrow either. I said it was a personal matter, that Marek and I were both fine, but we were dealing with a family problem.

And that’s what this was.

Family.

Sometime later, Marek came in with a small bowl of soup. It was thick and creamy and full of every vegetable we had in the house. He put the spoon to my mouth to let me taste.

“I know soup’s not really a summer thing, but he needs some proper nutrition. Soup requires minimal energy to eat, and it will fill his belly,” Marek said.

“It’s delicious. And just what he needs.”

“His temperature seems to have come down but we’ll keep an eye on him. Maybe once the paracetamol wears off it’ll spike again. We’ll see how he feels about us calling a doctor when he wakes up.”

I closed my laptop and stood up. “I’m done here. I told the office we won’t be in tomorrow either. Regardless of how he’s feeling, a day here with just the three of us is a good idea.”

“Great idea.” Marek stopped. “Oh. What about the Hysop case? They were coming in?—”

“Taken care of, my love. Rescheduled and I emailed them myself.”

He smiled at me. “Thank you.”

“Everything else can wait. Let’s go see if Ky’s awake and how he’s feeling.”

Just then, somewhere upstairs we heard a toilet flush.

Marek smiled at me. “I’ll go dish up some soup.”

I knocked lightly on Ky’s door as he was getting back into bed. He looked up at me, shy and pulling the blankets up to his waist.

“Up for a visitor? ”

“Of course.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked as I came in.

“Okay. Still tired, somehow.” He put his hand to his stomach. “I don’t know if I’m hungry or if I feel sick.”

I noticed then that his glass of water was now half-full, and I was glad he’d managed to drink some.

“It could be a bit of both,” I suggested, sitting on the edge of his bed. “And maybe a bit of anxiety and worry.”

His big blue eyes met mine and he nodded, his hands fidgeting in his lap.

I slowly put the back of my hand to his forehead. “Your temperature has come down, which is good. Marek’s made you some soup. He’s bringing it up now.”

This surprised him. “Soup?”

I nodded. “Veggie soup, to make you feel better.”

He got a little teary. “Oh. That’s so nice.”

I slid my hand over his. “I meant what I said before, Ky. We love you. I’m sorry I made a mess of everything before. I never meant to hurt you. And don’t worry, Marek ripped me a new one for that.”

He gave me a shocked smile. “He did?”

“Oh yeah. And I deserved it. When you’re feeling better and you’ve rested enough, we’ll sit down and talk about everything. I just want you to know that you’re safe here and you’re welcome here, no matter what you decide to do.”

“Decide? About what?”

“About whether you want to be with us.” I frowned. “I shouldn’t be discussing this without Marek?—”

“Discussing what without me?” Marek asked as he came in. He was holding a tray with soup and bread, more juice and fresh water.

I stood up so Marek could slide it onto the bed beside Ky.

“I was just telling Ky he’s welcome to stay here for as long as he wants until he’s feeling better, and that he wasn’t under any pressure to make any decisions.”

“Good,” Marek said. Then he helped Ky sit up against the headboard and spoon-fed him some soup. “Is that okay?”

Ky nodded and smiled at him. “It’s really good.”

My heart felt so big it could burst. And, if I was being honest, a little tender that he hadn’t readily agreed to being with us.

Even though I’d just promised him there was no pressure...

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” I said quietly.

Ky’s eyes shot to mine. “No. Please stay.” He patted the far side of the bed. “Please stay with us.”