Page 60 of Dangle

Upstairs, we parted ways, Ryan and Ethan heading to their rooms and Isaiah, Isaac, and I heading to ours. Once inside, I muttered something that I didn’t know and turned toward my side of the room, the side I shared with Aiden Mercer until a few short weeks ago. Now, I had the whole side to myself. I’d moved my desk into his room, bought some bookshelves and a couch, and created a cozy homework spot. I studied better and retained more information if I didn’t study on my bed or even in the same room I slept in. Why that mattered, I didn’t know; I just knew it did. So, as much as I missed Aiden, even though I’d thought he was a prude—boy, was I wrong—I enjoyed having both rooms on this side to myself.

“You’re really just going to walk away without saying anything to either of us,” Isaiah said. The tone of his voice told me all I needed to know about how he felt about the situation.

I sighed, my eyelids twitching and fluttering with the mounting frustration I felt at being questioned by my friends. Did we have no boundaries? Yeah, we fucked, and often, but we weren’t a couple. Or throuple, rather.

“What do you want me to say? What do you need to know?” I asked.

They looked at each other—Isaiah and Isaac—then turned back to me. Occasionally, they creeped me out with the way they moved like mirror images of each other. The three of us met in kindergarten. We played Mini Mites together and in every league and on every team since. We were many of each other’s first. Isaiah, my first blowjob. Isaac, the first guy I fucked. And back to Isaiah as the first guy to fuck me. Even with all that, we had never been more than friends with benefits, so I wasn’t sure what they were so torn up about that they were doing that creepy synchronized movement shit they did.

Isaac began, “Trey, you took off last night, man?—”

Only for Isaiah to cut him off. “With some fucking guy probably twice your age.”

“And…” I prodded, still not sure what they were getting at.

“Dude, you know what? Fuck it, never mind,” Isaiah said before he stomped off.

Isaac watched his brother go, then turned back to me. “If you’re done with our situationship or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, maybe tell us instead of fucking around with other people.”

“What the hell are you talking about? The two of you were acting like we were a couple or throuple or whatever. We’ve never been that to each other.”

Right?

Isaac shook his head with a humorless laugh. “You can be a fucking prick, you know that?” He turned and followed his brother.

Fuck my life. God, I was such a fucking screw-up. How the hell did I miss this?

The longer I stood there, the more I realized I couldn’t leave this until morning. I needed to talk to them. I needed them to understand I had to make changes in my life if I wanted to make The Show. And as much as my old man and his old man had screwed with my head and made me second and sometimes third and fourth and twenty-second guess myself, I knew I wanted that NHL contract. It was my lifelong dream, and I wouldn’t get it if I didn’t figure my shit out and buckle down.

Stalking toward their door, I knocked. And knocked again. And again.

“Guys, don’t be like this. Let’s talk.”

“Go fuck yourself, Malachek.”

This was bad. Really fucking bad, and I hated it. I hated that I messed this up so royally. They were my best friends. Or the closest thing I had to best friends. And I had no one to talk about it with. I’d not been exclusive with them. Hell, they’d caught me fucking other people so many times since we started screwing around with each other. And not once had they mentioned there was a problem with it. They never even acted like they had an issue with me fucking other people.

So, what was the issue this time? Was it Slone? Was it his age or something else? Did they know he owned a kink club, and that was what triggered this response?

“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”

The door flew open, and Isaiah—bigger and hotter-tempered than his brother—stood in the opening. “Because, of course, it’s all about what Donald Malachek III wants. Fuck what anyone else wants, needs, or fucking deserves as long as Donnie’s little boy is happy.”

“Okay. I probably deserve that.”

“Not probably,” Isaiah said, “you do. You’ve been fucking the two of us separately and together for ages, and you go off and hook up with some guy you just met?—”

“It’s not the first time I’ve hooked up with someone else, and it’s never made a difference to either of you. What changed?”

Isaiah sighed. “The guy, he’s not a one-and-done kind of guy. He’s a fucking Master or Dom or some shit. You’ve never hooked up with someone who wouldn’t approve of you…of us.”

“His buddies?—”

“Maybe in a two-way relationship with two other guys, but they aren’t the ones warming his bed. They aren’t his slaves or submissives or whatever kinky ass shit he’s into,” Isaac added from deep inside the bedroom, my view of him blocked by Isaiah still standing in the doorway. “Allyship doesn’t mean he would condone it with his partner or whatever role you’d fill for him.”

“Guys—” I began, only for Isaac to cut me off.

“Trey, you’ve been our best friend since we were five years old. You think we don’t know what excuses you’re getting ready to spout? We do. We’re not mad you found someone. You’re right. You and we have fucked around with plenty of others. We just thought you would have the decency to tell us you were ending it before you started something with someone else that was more than a hookup.”