Free Bayard[Bedtime stories 3] by Joyee Flynn

understand,” I whispered, shivering as if cold from his swirling emotions when he stepped away.
“Real love is being willing to sacrifice what you hold dear for the one you love,” he said, his back to me. “You were willing to leave Callum, Brix, and Dromio because it would hurt you to see me unhappy and leave my home.”
He walked away and I stared after him as he went into the barn. A few minutes later I heard him banging his hammer.
“I still don’t understand,” I repeated as I stared at the other three. “I wasn’t willing to give any of you up. He wanted me gone or he was going to go. It’s not my house, it’s his. It’s not fair that me being here would drive him away.”
“He’s saying that if you left, you would have left us behind,” Dromio explained. I felt my eyes go wide as his meaning sunk in.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I blurted out.
“So you’d have decided for us that we’d all leave?” Brix offered, raising an eyebrow
“I didn’t mean that either!” Okay, now my head just hurt.
“What did you mean then?” Callum asked gently.
“That I didn’t want Ansel to hurt and leaving his home would hurt him,” I answered, scrunching my eyebrows together in thought. “I wasn’t thinking of anything else right then because all that mattered was making his paingo away because I caused it.”
“And yet you didn’t,” Callum said with a smile. “He did. But you were so focused on his pain you agreed to give up everything else you loved just to make it stop.”
“I don’t love you guys any less,” I whispered, his meaning sinking in.
“We know that,” Dromio said firmly as he pulled me into his arms. “Ansel’s and our point is that you love us so completely, so soul filling, that when you focus on one of us, it’s all about that person. You don’t bring the others into your thoughts of that person. So it’s not really sharing your love or focus because there’s so much in you that you have enough for each of us as individuals.”
“I think I get it but it’s still making my head hurt,” I mumbled as I snuggled against him. “And Ansel’s still miserable.”
“Go scream at him. It worked for me,” Callum offered as we headed back to the house.
“No.” I shook my head and looked up at him. “He just broke my heart in a way I didn’t think possible. I’m not sure I could forgive that. He just tried to banish me, toss me away as if I was easy-toreplace garbage. I don’t want him hurting but I don’t want him near me anymore either.”
“That’s more than understandable,” Brix said gently. We went to his room because it was the second to the largest with a bigger bed and talked about easy things, light topics.
Callum suggested that maybe we should knock down one of the walls of the room and make a bigger one for all of us.
Dromio was going on and on about getting some real clothes made for me so I could go out in public one day. But that I’d still have to race around the property naked all the time because it was hot.
And on and on they went, trying to comfort me and distract me. I nodded along, smiling and appreciating the effort, but there was still a huge hole forming in my stomach and heart. There was nothing that could be done about that.
* * * *
    Needless to say, Ansel and I avoided each other. But still it seemed like fate would bump us into each other at the most inopportune times. Like the next day when Callum was taking me down by the stream and I was screaming in bliss. I open my eyes and Ansel is standing off in the distance watching us, crying.
    Then later on that day I walked into the barn to shift and help plow and walked in on Ansel having a small breakdown. He was sobbing in the corner of the barn, holding onto a blanket we’d made love on just a few days before. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to tell him everything was okay and that I loved him.
But how could I say that when I wasn’t sure how I felt anymore or if I even wanted to love