“I know. I need you too.” Her hands wandered up and down his back, pulling him close as they kissed again, as he sucked on her tongue, nipped at her lips. Heat and pressure built inside him.

He went to his knees, spread wide, found her soft center, so wet and hot, and pushed inside her in a dizzying surge. He held her waist, his hands big on her small body, as he rocked into her deeper, deeper, pleasure rolling over him in hot waves. He looked down at her lying there, so much more beautiful than she’d been at nineteen, that summer, a woman now who’d had time to learn what she wanted from life, or maybe she was just now figuring it out, and he wanted to give it to her, all of it, everything. He’d never felt like this before.

He moved over her, still rolling his hips against her in a slow surge-and-drag rhythm, took his weight on his elbows and slid his hands into her hair, pressing his face to hers, whispering her name. She held on to his shoulders and lifted into him, meeting each stroke, her soft whimpers in his ear. It was intoxicating, crazy and sexy and burning hot, as he moved in her, giving it all to her, everything he had. For the first time in his life, he wanted to say the words, wanted to tell her how he felt, but it was too soon, and he was still too afraid, still so afraid that if he said it he wouldn’t hear it in return.

But he could show her his feelings, he could tell her how good it was, how sweet she was, he could make her feel so good, and he rose back to his knees and found her clit with his thumb as tingles and pressure built inside him higher and hotter. She gasped his name, and he loved the sound of it, loved how she responded to him, loved the look on her face, dazed and shattered as she came, rippling around his cock, setting off his orgasm too, his shuddering, gasping, mind-melting orgasm. He fell over her again, buried his face in her hair, breathed her in with hard gasps, pulsed inside her in aching bursts of pleasure.

After a long time, a long languorous spell of twined limbs, open-mouthed kisses, slow caresses, they lay side by side, heads on pillows, looking at each other.

“Tell me,” she whispered, touching his mouth with her fingertips.

“I was afraid,” he said, clasping her hand and holding it, kissing her fingers. “All my life. I told you what it was like. I know I didn’t do myself any favors. I know I didn’t make it easy. But I was afraid that even if I did, even if I tried to tell them the truth, it still wouldn’t be good enough. Nobody would care.”

“Tyler.” Her soft brown eyes filled with warmth and what looked like…love. He swallowed.

“You were too good for me,” he continued. “Too nice. I was a jerk. And I kept proving it over and over again.”

“You knew how I was feeling about you.”

“I suspected. But I knew it could never happen. For so many reasons. I’m sorry, Kaelin. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

She nodded.

“When you told my parents that you’d been there that night and stood up for me and Nick…” He closed his eyes, pressed her fingers to his mouth. “I damn near had a heart attack. I was so mad at you for doing that. And then you told them about spending the night with us. Kaelin, you didn’t have to do that. Especially for me.”

“Yes. I did.”

“I was angry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t react very well. I just didn’t think you should have sacrificed yourself for a jerk like me.”

“Tyler, please. I don’t want to hear you say that one more time. You’re not a jerk. You’re not.”

“If you keep telling me enough, I might start believing it.” He smiled at her and got a smile in return. She brushed her fingers through his hair.

“Okay. I will keep telling you. But I’m also going to tell you when you are acting like a jerk.”

“Oh man.” And there it was. All his life he’d acted like a jerk to push people away and she and Nick were the only people in the world who wouldn’t let him get away with that. Somehow she’d gotten inside him, where he never let anyone get. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. She snuggled into him so warmly, so perfectly, and once more they just lay like that, wrapped in comfort and bliss.

The sound of the apartment door opening and closing caught his ear. Quiet footsteps approached down the hall. Nick. The bedroom door was open and Tyler dragged open heavy eyelids and smoothed his palm over Kaelin’s butt.

Nick paused at the open door to glance in, and stopped. His eyes widened at seeing Kaelin in bed with him. He stared. Tyler started to smile, but something in Nick’s expression had his gut tightening. The moment stretched out, Nick’s eyebrows drawing down, his mouth thinning. “Sorry,” he said quietly. He reached for the door and closed it with a soft snick, leaving Tyler and Kaelin alone.

She stirred against him half asleep and made a noise.

Tyler closed his eyes, the pain he’d seen in Nick’s face like a knife twisting in his back.

Kaelin barely heard the door close but she felt Tyler go rigid against her. She opened sleepy eyes to look at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Shit.”

She shoved her hair out of her face to lift up and look at him. “Tyler? What?”

“Nick’s home.”

“Oh.” A feeling of pleasure filled her. She’d missed Nick that week too, had longed to see him, to talk to him more. She tried to sit up. “Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know.”

She frowned at him. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know.”

He was closing off again, not meeting her eyes, not saying much. “Tyler. Talk to me. What is going on?”

“I think Nick might’ve been…surprised to see you here.”

“Well, yeah.”

“He didn’t look happy about it.”

“Oh.” A pang of disappointment stirred in her. She wasn’t sure how to take that, what to say. She just looked at Tyler with her questions in her eyes.

“He saw us together. He knows…he’s always known how I feel about you.”

“Oh.” Ooooh. Things started coming together in her head. Nick telling her that he loved Tyler. This time the word came out on a sigh. “Oh.” She met Tyler’s eyes. “He loves you.”

Tyler turned away from her, eyes closed again. “Fuck.”

“Tyler.” She grabbed his jaw, turned his head back. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know what’s going on in his head,” he growled.

“Maybe we should ask him.”

“You’re really gonna be a pain in my ass, aren’t you?” But the wry smile and the warmth in his eyes when he said it reassured her that he wasn’t really angry.

She smiled. “Yeah.”

“Maybe I need to figure out what’s going on in my head, first,” he muttered.

She blew out a soft breath. “And maybe I do too.”

He looked into her eyes. “Kaelin?”

She shrugged. She was bugging him to talk about his feelings, to talk to her and to Nick, to find out what Nick was thinking, but she was just as confused. She’d come to Chicago to see both of them. The whole drive there, she’d been thinking about Tyler, yeah, but about Nick too. She’d gotten past the shame of it, the shame of wanting two men, last weekend when she’d slept with both of them at the same time, she supposed. But now, uncertainty filled her. Nick had told her he wanted her too, even though he’d also told her he loved Tyler. For some reason, coming there to see them, while scary, had seemed like the right thing to do, but now she wondered if she’d only created an even more snarled up tangle of weirdness.

“Nick and I have always…had this thing, you know,” Tyler said.

“Yes.” She nodded, remembering their conversation last weekend in their hotel room.

“I always thought Nick felt different for me than I did for him.”

“He loves you,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and nodded, his mouth tight.

“But you don’t love him?”

His lips tightened and he looked at her with anguished eyes. A frown tugged at her eyebrows. Her stomach tensed.