blonde brow. “You’re saying…we both date her? She said she didn’t want to choose—”
“Exactly,” I cut in. “So we don’t make her. We both date her, knowing she’s seeing someone else.”
“I don’t know. I…my last girlfriend cheated on me, so I don’t know if I could do that, not long-term.”
Well, at least Calum was honest. It was part of the reason I felt sure enough to say, “So then you’d walk away from her?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “That’s not what I said.”
“It wouldn’t be cheating if you were aware and okay with it,” I told him. I’d never had a relationship with a girl who’d cheated; then again, I’d never dated a girl while she was simultaneously dating someone else, but for Bree…for Bree I was willing to go outside of my comfort zone, to wrestle with my jealousy and be there for her when she needed me.
“I know, I just…I don’t know if I could handle it,” Calum muttered, his wide shoulders heaving a sigh. “I didn’t like hearing her talk about you—I know that much.”
“Same here,” I told him. “But that was when we were competing for her.”
He shot me a look. “I was never competing.”
I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “You know what I meant though. If we did this, it would be different. We’d both see her, both date her. We’d both be there for her when she needed us.” I pictured her expression, how sad she’d looked, and it hurt just to imagine her so sorrowful. “I really think she does need us. She feels alone, even though she has a loving family. Bree needs us.”
Calum studied me, his stare taking in every bit of my appearance, my stature, my expression. “You don’t seem so bad,” he finally said.
I was not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not, but I decided to anyway. “You don’t seem too bad yourself—although I did hear about how horrible your first date was, so honestly, you started off pretty low.”
He flashed a small grin as he shook his head. “She told you about that, did she? I, uh…I’m not proud of that. My little brother’s been dating her sister for over a year now, and I had just gotten out of a relationship, so going on a blind date was the last thing I wanted to do.” He bit the inside of his cheek as he thought. “I hope, by now, I’ve made it up to her.”
Silence overtook us for a while, and we sat there for a few minutes, lost in our own heads. At least, I was. All the possibilities, everything Bree could say in response to what I was proposing…I had no idea if she’d like it, or if she’d just look at me like I was crazy.
“You think she’d go for it?” I asked, shooting him a quick look. “Date both of us?”
He breathed out a long breath before saying, “I think we’d need to show her that we’re serious, that we mean it. She’s going to think it’s not going to last, and she’s the type who’d rather just give up from the beginning than let things build.”
“There will be bad times,” I said, knowing it in my soul, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up.”
“I’m not, either.”
“Good. So…it’s settled, then?”
Calum pursed his lips, looking pensive. “I guess so. I guess that means I’ll be seeing a lot more of you, then.”
“Yeah,” I spoke with a grin, “get used to seeing my face.”
He chuckled, but I could tell he was still struggling with the whole idea about dating her at the same time. Technically, wasn’t that sort of what we’d been doing until now, anyway? It was just official. Or, it would be, once we got Bree to agree to it.
The only question was…how to prove it to her? How to show her that we were not just playing around when it came to her? She would take some convincing, I knew, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to give up on her, and neither was Calum.
Bree had no idea what the future held in store for her.
Chapter Eighteen – Bree
I slept through class. Well, I didn’t really sleep as I did purposefully stay in bed and wonder what the point of my existence was, but you knew what I meant. I didn’t want to see Mason so soon, not after last night. And Calum…I’d probably never see him again, and