Page 29 of Wanted

We left it at that.

KAMILA

Mandy was sleeping on my bed, snoring lightly. She’d cried a bit before she finally fell asleep.

As I stepped out of my bedroom, I acknowledged that Jordan could jump out the next corner and reprimand me for leaving my bedroom in the middle of the night. He’d given us a specific order to go to bed.

I didn’t let it faze me.

The house wasn’t big. Besides my bedroom, there was one more and a small office space with an inflatable mattress. I knew Fylox was restless at night, and he usually swapped rooms every other night. When I passed by the small office space and the door was wide open, I hurried to Fylox’s official bedroom with a heart that was dancing to its own accords.

Gently turning the door handle, I slid through the doorframe. I’d expected Fylox to be awake and Alex to be sleeping as he usually did, heavy and undisturbed by canons blasting, but they were both wide-eyed at my entrance. Their backs against the bed’s headboard, they sat upright. Alex had his knees up and his arms across them. Fylox sat there quietly, unmoving.

“You should be sleeping,” Fylox addressed me.

“I’m too horny for sleep right now.”

Alex’s gleamed up the room with his smile, and Fylox rolled his eyes. The bleach-blond guy responded, “I didn’t need to know that.”

“I’m just honest,” I told them. I approached the bed, sitting down at the edge of Alex’s side. His legs were long and so skinny that it would scare me if he wasn’t this tall. When we watched the games he played, I noticed that most of the players had slender legs. Their training formed their bodies like that. “I also came to apologize.”

“Baby, no.” Alex shifted, giving me a bit of space to sit between them. I was a big girl, and I barely fit between them, but we managed. “We should apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong. You even defended me in front of my father, which is usually a death sentence, but you’re special to him, so he would never hurt you.”

Knowing that Fylox wasn’t a touching type, I scooted closer to Alex. I was still mad, but I figured that I didn’t need to push the issue any further after Jordan’s lecture earlier. Sure, I still felt embarrassed by the victim imagery in Alex and Fylox’s heads, but I also knew that I couldn’t change that if I kept latching on to the past.

Alex put his arm around my shoulder, and I didn’t flinch. I welcomed it.

“I accept your apologies,” I let them know. “I need you to know that I won’t ever allow you to touch me like that ever again. If I start feeling any sort of fear that you’re about to get violent with me, I’ll leave. I don’t care how I’m going to do it and if I’ll cut myself while I’m bashing the windows, but I will leave. And then I’ll tell Jordan to take care of you because he seems very eager to discipline you two. It was hot on his part.”

“You find my father hot?” Alex asked. There was an underlying tremble to his tone.

“I’m Katantian. Anything with a dick is a target,” I replied, feeling funny.

There was a thick silence in the room after my comment.

“I offered your dad sex when he had me in the Chicago safe house, you know,” I revealed. “Sex and blowjobs, the real deal. He should be my type, you know. This mature, wise, old man with his beard and the cute beanie on his head. I could kneel at his heel and feel worthy. He rejected me, and I feel delighted that he did.”

There was an unfamiliar sound in the room, and it came from Fylox. He let out a low chuckle while Alex was quiet as a nun, possibly scandalized by my statement.

I continued, “Is this what American men do? Deny sex? Is that a thing I should get used to here? All I’ve been getting since I arrived in this godforsaken place is rejection. I’m starting to think people only like me because of my title.”

“You’re funny, but I don’t find what you’re saying funny at all. Don’t be offended if I don’t laugh at your bad jokes,” Fylox said.

I cocked my head to glance at him. “I’m sorry for being mean to you this entire month. I should’ve taken the high road. There are other ways, more productive ones, to discuss an issue. You wanted to open up to me, and I shut you down.”

“I’ve had worse,” Fylox responded, and I believed him.

In a lighter tone, he added, “Alex is currently thinking of you having sex with his dad. You did that.”

“Why, oh, why?” I snuggled into Alex. “You should know I only have eyes for one Winters, and that’s the one who lets me pick movies while he makes his special cheat day pancakes.”

“I get cheat day pancakes. You get the good ones,” Alex reminded me.

I blurted out, “I feel safe with you two. I don’t want things to change.”

More silence followed.

“What’s next? I don’t want you to leave us,” I urged Alex. “We need to convince Jordan that we are good together.”