“No,” Jessie snorted with a laugh. “I’m not . . . Well, yes, maybe I am. But that’s not the point.”
“You love him,” Kylie said. “Braydon.” It wasn’t a question and Jessie wasn’t in the mood to come up with a lie, so she just stared at Kylie. If her sister looked close enough, she would see everything right there in Jessie’s eyes.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jessie finally said. “Braydon does what Brendon wants him to.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Kylie snapped.
Jessie sat up straight and faced her sister. “No. It’s not. Remember back at Christmas? Brendon tried to give me an ultimatum. He tried to make this about me and him, tried to push Braydon out.”
“I’m not following. I thought you weren’t with either one of them exclusively.”
“I wasn’t!” Jessie exclaimed. “I’ve just been sleeping with them both.”
Kylie looked at her as though she were a complex puzzle that couldn’t be figured out. “I . . .”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jessie sighed. “The point is, when Brendon pulled that stunt, telling me to pick him, Braydon didn’t do or say a damn thing. He just let it happen. If I hadn’t refused, he would’ve just let it be. God, Ky. I don’t know when this got so damn complicated. It was fun at first. None of us were looking for anything more than . . .” Jessie let the words trail off.
“It got complicated when you added three people to the mix.”
Jessie stared at Kylie, knowing her expression reflected her bewilderment.
“What? You think just because Gage, Travis, and I love each other that it’s easy? It has never been easy. But that’s what makes it worth it.”
“I don’t have what you have,” Jessie explained. “This was just supposed to be about . . .”
“Sex. That’s what it was about at first,” Kylie finished for her.
“Yeah.” Jessie didn’t need to explain the threesome arrangement to her sister because Kylie was married to two men who were married to one another. At least in a figurative sense. The difference was that in Jessie’s situation, Brendon and Braydon were only in it for the woman. Period.
Jessie never wanted to admit to anyone that she had wanted Braydon from the beginning. Just him. And maybe, just maybe, she had settled for both of them just so she could be close to Braydon.
And that’s how she knew this was all her fault.
She had let Brendon seduce her. Of course, Brendon had insisted that Braydon be there when they were intimate. At first it had been intriguing, she had to admit. But then it became a little off-putting. As though Brendon didn’t want to be alone with her. After a while, she had accepted it for what it was. Naked entertainment. And then it just got more complicated because Jessie actually wanted Braydon because . . . Because she had fallen for him.
Granted, she didn’t get the same vibe from Braydon that she did from Brendon. Of the twins, Braydon didn’t have the ability to hide his feelings. He wasn’t prone to pretending there weren’t feelings there. She knew, if given half a chance, she and Braydon could be together. Alone. But where would that leave Brendon? And that was why all of this was so convoluted.
There were emotions involved, although she’d made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t want anything more from them than just sex. All of this was supposed to be a brief escape from her reality, from her life back in Dallas, from all the mistakes she had made in her past.
But then she’d fallen in love with Coyote Ridge, the people she met, seeing her sister every day, and she didn’t want to leave. She still didn’t want to leave, but now that Braydon was home, she wasn’t sure she could stay.
Kylie was right. Jessie loved him, and the thought of him with someone else was too much to bear.
“You still haven’t talked to him?”
“Nope,” Jessie answered. She didn’t want to, either. Not yet.
For now, she just wanted to be content with him being home. She didn’t want to think about him being with other women while he was away; she didn’t want to think about all the heartache she’d endured while he was gone. For three months she’d put herself through hell worrying about him, and it was obvious that he hadn’t given her the same consideration.
“You want to get out of the house? I’ve got a few hours before I have to worry about getting ready for dinner.”
Jessie knew that sitting around the house wasn’t going to do her any good. And she loved hanging out with Kylie. It didn’t matter what they did.