“I know what you meant, Drake.” I’m smiling now, which makes him smile, biting his lower lip as he turns away. It’s a bright, toothy grin that stretches across his face, and it literally warms my belly. Drake has the best smile, one I’m sure drives the ladies crazy.
“We, uh, have to use protection. Every time.”
“I’m on the—" I start, but he holds up a hand.
“I don’t want this getting any more complicated than it needs to. I want to use protection.”
I close my mouth. “If that’s what you want, it’s fine with me.”
A few quiet minutes go by before I add, “And Hunter should just…watch, right? You don’t want him…getting involved?”
Drake’s head snaps up to stare at me, his brow arched. “I don’t mind. Do you?”
My mouth falls open. “No, I don’t mind. I just thought…”
“I don’t think that needs to be a rule,” he adds, going back to the weights. It almost looks like he’s avoiding eye contact on purpose. Did that question make him uncomfortable? I just assumed that Hunter being his friend, and strictly wanting to do this because he wanted to watch, would make things easier if Drake said he couldn’t join in at all. We’re trying to avoid awkwardness, but Drake almost seems to…want Hunter involved.
I can’t stop thinking about it as I finish my tenth mile on the bike. I know Drake sleeps with men from time to time, and Hunter has always been supportive of that, but I’ve noticed that he doesn’t seem to love it. Whenever Drake would talk about a man he hooked up with, Hunter would clench his jaw and change the subject.
And I never noticed any signs of attraction between them. So why would he suddenly be encouraging Hunter to join in?
Drake is doing squats now with a long barbell draped over his shoulders. I notice the way he winces on each drop, shaking out his leg as he stands.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, my hamstrings are just tight as fuck.” He sets the barbell back on the rack and rubs at the back of his leg.
“Let me help you stretch it.” I hop off my bike and grab a mat from the corner, rolling it out on the floor between us.
“You don’t have to do that,” he replies, and I tilt my head toward him.
“It’s literally my job. Come on.”
With a sigh, he gets down on the mat, sitting with his legs extended.
“Lie down.”
“Don’t hurt me,” he replies playfully.
“No promises.”
Once he’s lying on his back, I lift his right leg and hold it against my chest as I press it toward his body. He lets out a long groan, and I can tell immediately just how tight his muscles are.
“You need to stretch more. You’re way too tight.”
“I hate stretching.”
I roll my eyes, pressing his leg a little farther to his body. “Don’t be such a baby. I do this for Hunter all the time.”
“Well, maybe if I was married to a beautiful yoga instructor, I wouldn’t hate it so much.”
I let out a giggle, pressing his leg even deeper into the stretch, but when neither of us say anything for a few minutes, it starts to grow tense again.
Our eyes meet, and it’s a loaded gaze. I’ve looked Drake in the eye a million times before, but suddenly, any eye contact between us now feels different, as if our connection has been magnified, blown up to one million percent its original size, and I’m not sure how I get it back to the way it was. I’m not sure I even want to.
“Why haven’t you ever settled down?” I ask carefully.
He swallows, gazing back up at the ceiling. When I push his leg a little closer to his body, he winces. “I don’t know. I never felt what Hunter did.”
“What do you mean?”
“I remember the day he saw you for the first time. When you were walking across the street in that emerald green dress and those black sandals, he couldn’t take his eyes off you. Then, he couldn’t stop talking about you, and we started going back to that corner every day just to see you. It was a really big deal, and I just kept waiting to feel what he felt that day, but it never really happened.”
“I remember that dress,” I reply, distracted by the fact that Drake remembered what I was wearing that day ten years ago.
“I never saw you wearing it again after that day.”
“You know…not everyone meets their spouse like that. It’s not actually that normal to be as sure as Hunter was. Some people know their soul mates for years before realizing it.”