50 Shades of Drake 3 and 4

Torn: Chapter Seventy-Four

    "I'm sorry about tonight." The first words Brian spoke, approximately fifteen minutes into the limousine ride to his house.

    "You don't have anything to apologize for, Brian. This date was conceptually perfect." Destiny stared out of the back window. She'd been lost in thought, replaying the conversation she'd had with Aubrey in her head. She was worried about him. Her choice to return to the dinner table hadn't been heartless in nature. If she could have, she would have listened to him pour his heart out all night. That was what she wanted from him: for him to open up about his feelings. I should have never agreed to this, she thought now, turning her head and looking at Brian. Her gaze dropped down to their hands, each resting on the limousine backseat. But if I'd never agreed to this, there is so much about Brian that I wouldn't know. I had feelings for him – strong ones – but I didn't know just how perfect for me he actually is. Not to say that Aubrey isn't. Aubrey is perfect for me in an entirely imperfect way. Brian is perfect for me on paper. Aubrey is... Her brows knitted together, and she turned to look out of the window again. It isn't even possible to sum up Aubrey's and my compatibility on paper. There aren't words in the English language to summarize who Aubrey is as a person. He's...something else. Still. This weekend is supposed to be about me and Brian. If Aubrey was having a tough time dealing with this arrangement, he should have told me before. We've had nearly a week together when he could have talked to me about this. If he was being completely honest with me, he's been struggling since the beginning.

    It wasn't an easy situation. She hadn't expected for the arrangement to be easy. She had expected some difficulty, for all three involved. But she hadn't quite expected Aubrey to be driven to the point of acting out as he had last night – not considering the fact that he was the one who'd suggested the arrangement in the first place.

    But he suggested it because of me, she thought as feelings of guilt settled in. If I wasn't so torn between the two of them, there wouldn't have been a need for him to suggest something this crazy. So I can try to put this on his shoulders since he was the one to make the suggestion, but ultimately it's still my fault that we're all in this crazy predicament.

    "Maybe we should call off this weekend," Brian said, breaking into her thoughts.

    She whipped her head around and stared at him. "No! Why?"

    He gave her a look. "You really have to ask? You can't even stop thinking about him. Which... under the circumstances, I can understand. Feelings that intense shouldn't linger over a weekend."

    "But...I'm supposed to spend the weekend with you," she protested.

    "That isn't set in stone," he said.

    "It kind of is," she said, and remembered that Aubrey was once willing to hold her previous contract against her.

    Brian shook his head. "We're all adults. We can make changes. Tack on an extra weekend at the end of the contract period, if we feel like it's necessary. You and Aubrey have...shit that you should be dealing with. Not to mention, I have an irrational fear that he's going to spy on us while we're at my house, because of what he pulled tonight."

    "He wouldn't dare," she muttered.

    Brian chuckled. "I'm learning not to try to predict his behavior."

    She shook her head. "This is such a mess."

    "It was guaranteed to be a mess from the get-go."

    She nodded. "That's true. I knew there would be rough points, but thought that we could all handle this."

    "Sharing someone you love...it has to be one of the most difficult things to handle," Brian reasoned. "It ranks up there with losing someone you love."