Love Him Desperate (On the Market #5) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,55
guy, but it wouldn’t surprise him if he was.
Taking another drink, Dmitri sat up properly and set the bottle down. One more and he’d be buzzed, and he couldn’t take the risk. “Are you happy? Being with these two?”
Jonas blinked at him, then smiled. “Most of the time. I had a lot to work through, and I have my bad days. Why?”
Dmitri shook his head. “Just wondering.”
“Polyamory’s not for everyone,” Jonas replied softly. “I didn’t know it was for me, and I think a lot of people buckle under the jealous moments.”
“Do you?” Dmitri asked. “Get jealous of them, I mean?”
With a soft laugh, Jonas sat back and finished his water, holding the empty bottle pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “Look at them.” And Dmitri did. He looked at Parker, who had his arm tight around Ronan’s waist and was whispering something that was making Ronan laugh with a full-body chuckle. Ronan grinned, the way he never did at work. He eased back into Parker’s grasp and went soft in ways Dmitri had never seen him do outside of that moment right there. “They have something that most people don’t—that most people never will. And it’s not ever going to be like that with us. They had so much history together before I came along, and I’ll never be a part of that.”
“Doesn’t that suck?” Dmitri wondered. He sat back and tried to imagine what it would be like to share Raphael. To love him and be loved, but watch him love someone else too. It made him queasy enough he had to breathe through it, and when he looked up, Jonas was staring at him. “Sorry.”
“We should get out of here.” Jonas set his bottle down, then rose, extending Dmitri a hand. “You look like you need some actual fresh air.” He dragged Dmitri toward the door, stopping only when they heard Parker’s voice calling out after them.
“Use protection, Sparky.”
Jonas groaned and shut the door hard, pulling his keys out of his pocket. “I love him. I do, even when he’s fucking obnoxious. But this isn’t like some magical paradise of non-stop sex that makes all of the rest worth it, so if that’s what you’re thinking…”
“That was definitely not on my mind,” Dmitri said quietly. He hopped into Jonas’ car, and made a small, startled noise when he drove to the town center and parked at the library. He didn’t ask where they were headed, but it became obvious when Jonas led the way down the little trail to the creek.
Navigating it was treacherous in the dark, but Jonas had his phone light pointed ahead of them, and when they came out of the tree canopy, the bright, nearly full moon lit up the white rocks, giving the place an eerie glow.
“When I first moved here, I had an existential crisis out here on this rock,” he said, leading the way to a long, flat boulder. “Birdie was out here fishing, and he shared cupcakes with me, and I tried not to have a full-blown panic attack because I was feeling things for two men I had no right to be feeling.”
Dmitri’s face heated, and he clambered up next to Jonas, clearing his throat when he was settled. “I’m not…like, this isn’t me having a crush on your boyfriends.”
He could see the faint outline of Jonas’ smile in the moonlight. “I didn’t think that.”
“And I’m not interested in some wild sex hook-up,” Dmitri added.
“I figured that out too.”
“I don’t even—” Dmitri started, and he stopped himself because apart from Raphael and his one very terrible birthday date, Dmitri hadn’t really talked to any of his friends about himself, and he wasn’t even sure Jonas was a friend.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I just find this place peaceful. Sometimes I do get overwhelmed with the way Parker loves. It isn’t easy to be unequivocally adored that hard, and a lot of days, it’s not easy to watch him with Ronan. I wouldn’t change it for the world, but I use this place to kind of…regroup when I need it.”
Dmitri appreciated it, down to his very bones, but he knew there was no regrouping from this. Losing even a piece of Raphael would mean jagged holes in their friendship. He’d seen first-hand the way love consumed other people—the way it stole bits and pieces of attention until there were only scraps left for everyone else. Raphael only ever let Lorenzo touch him, but