Chapter 1
"You’re married, aren’t you, Elena? How did you know that you’d found The One?"
It was a silly question, asked by a silly girl, and I probably shouldn’t have answered it. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic. Maybe the baking heat of summer was getting to me - or maybe I just wanted to stir up the pot at work a little.
“Oh,” I said casually. “Its easy really. It's just a case of waking up one summer morning with the sun staining the inside of your eyelids raspberry-red, and finding yourself tangled up in the arms and legs of your lovers, and you just…know.”
It got very quiet in the staff room after that. Oops. Silly Girl stared at me with her mouth open. Had I just said “lovers”? Yes. Yes I had. I took my tea, went back to my office, shut the door and grinned to myself remembering how it had all begun, really. Because I really did wake up one morning to raspberry-red, blazing sun having drank wine, danced all night, and woken to find myself very, very tangled up in my lovers.
It was Jules that first suggested the trip. On a Thursday night over beers at the local pub, he flat out told me. “Joy, you need to get away from all this. Take a vacation. You look awful. You really do. Why don’t you take a break and come to Vernon with me and Trevor next week?”
Jules and Trevor. Trevor and Jules. Best friends that had practically grown up together. I was a late-comer to the group, meeting Trevor while at university. He’d introduced me to Jules and somehow they’d both found me worthy of admission to their own private “boys club”. Only with me included it was “two boys and a girl club”.
Jules pretended not to notice and always called by my surname, Joy, in a casually formal, old-school kind of way. Trevor just made friends with girls easily and was unmoved by any gcooties on my part. He had no trouble calling me Eleana, Ells, or Ellie. Since then we’d been a sort of inseparable Three Amigos. Or maybe Three’s Company. Tough to say. We were just us.
Jules came from shipping wealth—old Vancouver money built on cargo, docks, and port contracts. But he’d never fit the mold. Intense, intellectual, and brooding, he chafed against his family’s quiet expectations of legacy, discretion, and shareholder returns. His fair hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks gave the impression of a golden boy—but his politics were anything but. Anti-corporate, radically curious, and unrepentantly critical of the systems that funded his education, Jules didn’t just embarrass the family at dinner. He unsettled them. And that made him a black sheep in the most polite, privately disappointed way possible.
Trevor, however, was Jules’ negative image—his shadow in reverse. Where Jules was intense, Trevor was uncomplicated and merry. Girls loved him. Children loved him. Mothers loved him. Even stray dogs seemed to follow him home. And he loved them all right back. One-liners, jokes, pranks, funny faces—those were his currency. His motto, unofficially, was anything for a good time, and anything for a lady. People were drawn to him, and parties coalesced around his orbit. I have too many memories to count of Trevor at parties—glass in hand, dark hair ruffled, eyes shining, girls hanging off him every which way—always winking at me from across the room as if to say, isn’t this fun?
Jules was right. I was hollow, empty and dull. The year before, I’d lost my younger brother in a car accident and the loss knocked me flat. I’d struggled ever since to re-weave the threads of my life, and to convince myself that it wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t doing so well. While Trevor and Jules had moved from university into good jobs and nice apartments, I’d struggled. I drank too much, behaved erratically, and as a result had been fired from a string of dead-end jobs. I had little motivation, and no heart for anything. Strangely, I still had pride and somehow thought that I could hide it all and pretend I wasn’t really touched by it. That Jules wasn’t fooled was hardly a surprise. He was smart and knew me well. That he would say so though, so uncharacteristically transparent, stung. If Jules - master of the oblique comment - was telling me I needed a break, then it was worse than I knew, and I really wasn’t hiding anything as well as I thought I was.
Hurt, I ducked my head and tears prickled behind my eyes. I might even have said “no” at that moment, except Trevor, serious for once, put his arm around my shoulders, his lips close to my ear and whispered, “Come for a ride. Let go.”
There was a moment then, when the bar seemed to suck in around me, all noise seemed muffled, and I seemed to stare right down the futile hole I was digging for myself. Trevor and Jules floated there - close, concerned, and wanting to help pull me out of it. What could I do? I nodded. I let go. I went for the ride.
That weekend we headed out in Jules’ fathers van. Jules had borrowed it, and the summer house in Vernon with the excuse that we would drive out and repair the wobbly pilings on the boat-jetty. The wobbly jetty was a family legend at Jules’ house. The jetty had wobbled since day one, and so far as everyone knew, would continue to wobble for all its days. How Jules convinced his dad loan us the van on top of the house, I’ll never know. Jules had his own car. I can only think it was that because Jules drove with German-tuned precision and fluid grace, few people had misgivings about lending a car to Jules.
Very solemnly, Jules looked around the spotless, leather interior. “I told my dad we’d be careful with it,” He said. The corner of his mouth quirked. Shoulder checking meticulously, he pulled on to the on-ramp, accelerated seamlessly into traffic, and smoothly removed the no smoking tag dangling from the rear-view mirror. Stuffing the whole thing in his mouth, he chewed savagely. We hit the highway pressed into our seats from the acceleration with Jules yowling like a berserker spitting fragments of the tag out the window. As it turned out, it was not the only rule that would get broken on that trip.
The farther east we drove, the quieter it got inside me.
City noise faded. Deadlines, inboxes, awkward run-ins at the corner store,all of it slipping away as the highway climbed and the cell signal faltered. The mountains rose around us, and with every twist of the road, I felt something loosening in my chest.
We passed through tunnels, past glacial lakes, into that hazy Okanagan warmth where the air smelled like pine and dry grass. It wasn’t dramatic, not all at once—but the tension I’d been wearing for months started to lift. Like shrugging off a coat I hadn’t realized was soaking wet. I let the millstone I wore around my neck fall by the wayside. By the time we stopped for a coffee-break mid-afternoon, I was feeling like I just might be part of the human race after all. Stopping to change drivers in a small mountain town late in the afternoon, I was sure of it.
Leaning against the van, cigarette in hand, I caught sight of myself in the strip mall window—slouched, wilted, and wearing every bad decision of the last year.
Sweatpants, baggy and saggy.. A yellowing T-shirt. Runners that had seen better decades. I looked like I’d just rolled out of a laundry fire.
I’d come on this trip to shake things loose, to feel better. Lighter. But in that moment, I felt like the human equivalent of a wet towel—drab, sagging, and painfully out of place. Like showing up to a summer party in funeral clothes.
Something in me flinched. I don’t have to keep being this version of myself, I thought. I can change. Right now.
“Hey,” I said, flicking ash toward the curb. “I need sandals. Let’s check out that—what is it—‘Village Family Closet’ over there.”
Jules looked at his watch and cocked an eyebrow in mild disbelief. Shopping, particularly for shoes bored him to distraction. That, and we had at least an other hour to go before we got to Vernon. Trevor thumped him on the back and shrugged.. “Hey man, the lady says she needs a new pair of shoes... Let’s go.”
I’m sure the good and dowdy matrons of Village Family Closet thought we were absolutely insane. Trevor and Jules camped it up and played it over the top, pulling over folding chairs and sitting outside the change room pretending to snap photos and write fashion reviews as I twirled and strutted about in a variety of dime-store fashions and flip-flop sandals.
I tossed the sweats and yellowed T-shirt in the trash on my way out of Village Family Closet. Quietly. No ceremony. Just a silent goodbye to the sad-sack version of myself I didn’t feel like dragging any farther.
I was still a bit of a prat—but at least I didn’t look like one.
I walked back to the van in a denim skirt and tank top that Trevor had picked out with far too much enthusiasm. A thrift-store bag dangled from one hand, full of floaty summer clothes that smelled faintly of lavender and dust. The breeze kissed my bare shoulders, the sun warm against my skin, and for the first time in what felt like a year, I didn’t feel like I was carrying a corpse on my back.
The skirt was a bit too short. The beaded sandals were cheap and barely holding together. But I’d wriggled out of my old skin.
And that felt surprisingly good.
The Lakehouse in Vernon wasn’t really in Vernon—not unless you counted “just outside city limits, turn left at the apple orchard and pray the road’s been graded.” It was a rambling old farmhouse, half-renovated, full of mismatched furniture and soft corners worn in by time.
I’d been invited to stay more than once over the years, and to Jules’s father’s ongoing amusement, I always requested the attic room.
It was the highest room in the house, tucked up in the unrenovated wing and hotter than hell in the summer—but I adored it. Light poured in through a stained glass window patterned in curling vines and ripe purple grapes. The bed was an enormous old feather monstrosity you could drown in, and the room came with its own little Juliette balcony.
From there, it was easy enough to climb out onto the roof—something the three of us had done countless times, stoned and barefoot, just to lie back and watch the stars. We used to talk for hours out there, letting the cool air and sky make the rest of the world feel small and far away.
Even now, years later, the attic still feels like mine.
It was almost dark when we arrived. Without much discussion, we pulled snacks from the cooler and wandered down to the wobbly jetty to eat, drink and smoke. The summer place sits in a secluded nook . At night the skies are so dark stars are reflected perfectly in the water. With a little wine and weed in you, its easy to imagine that there is no sky and there is no lake - just a vast, never-ending field of stars. Our conversation turned to wondering if we were alone in the universe, the nature of space-time, and the meaning of god. It was nice, and lazy, and not too serious until Jules got all intellectual on us. He started expounding on theories, debating arguments, and got lost in his own voice. He lay on his back, waving his arms to emphasize his points, and was almost three quarters of the way to proving there was no God, when Trevor and I met each other’s eyes across him. Trevor winked and I grinned. Acting as one, we both reached out and smoothly rolled Jules off the jetty and into the lake mid-sentence.
Jules surfaced like a Viking berserker—spluttering, roaring, long blond hair plastered to his face, water streaming down his shoulders.
Trevor and I collapsed in laughter, doubled over on the jetty. I laughed until my ribs ached and tears streaked my cheeks.
“Son of a BITCH!” Jules bellowed, flinging water everywhere. “Oh, you think that’s funny? You ingrates! Who’s laughing now?”
Before Trevor could so much as blink, Jules surged forward, grabbed him by the waistband, and hauled him clean off the dock.
Trevor—tragically—screamed like a schoolgirl all the way in.
“Dickhead,” Jules declared, dunking him under for good measure.
I was beside myself, gasping, clapping like a fool. “Oh my god,” I wheezed. “You should’ve seen yourself, Jules! You were still talking as you hit the water. Mouth open. Swallowed half the lake!”
Trevor surfaced, coughing and flipping me off.
“And you!” I pointed, still shaking with laughter. “You squealed like a stuck pig!”
They were both glaring at me now, chest-deep in the lake and slowly advancing toward the jetty with synchronized menace.
“Oh, no,” I said, backing away. “Don’t even think about it. Don’t you dare.”
Trevor caught my ankle first. “My new shoes!” I protested, wriggling.
Jules grabbed the other. “My skirt!” I shrieked.
“Will you come quietly?” Trevor asked, tightening his grip.
“Fuck that!” I shouted, kicking as they hauled me toward the edge. “You’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming!”
So they did.
Under the surface, water filled my eyes and ears like healing balm. Kalamalka Lake has a current to it, and surfacing I let the flow take me gently away staring up into that endless field of stars. Dreamily, I heard Trevor and Jules sporting in the water and swapping insults with cheerful abandon. After a minute or two, things got quiet and I turned around, flutter-kicking my way back to the Jetty. Standing, I found the water deeper than I had judged, and the current more powerful. Nothing serious - but I stumbled and went under. Under water I bumped up against something large and solid, and for a frightening moment thought I had met Ogopogo, the mythical lake-monster.
Not the monster. Jules.
He steadied me, my back pressed to his chest.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, arms wrapping around my waist, anchoring us both against the current.
His body was warm and solid behind me, thighs braced on either side of mine. I could feel the shape of him—present, real—in a way I hadn’t before. Something shifted. Something surfaced. Maybe it was the way he held me. Maybe it was the way he said it. But in that moment, something unspoken rose up between us like a buoy breaching the deep.
I turned in his arms and looked up at him.
His gaze was steady. Calm. Unflinching. And there it was—something I should have seen ages ago. Something that had always been waiting for me to notice.
“How long?” I asked.
An oblique question. But I knew he understood.
“Since the second time I saw you,” he said, still holding my gaze.
“The second time?” I teased, the corners of my mouth lifting. “What happened to the first?”
“The first time I saw you, you were with Trevor. I thought you were one of his girls.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jules, every girl is Trevor’s girl. You know that.”
“Yeah,” he said, quiet. “But he’s my best friend. And there are some lines you don’t cross. Number one? Don’t mess with your best friend’s girl.”
And then he kissed me.
Soft, deep, and deliberate. A kiss that didn’t ask for anything—it just gave. I was already floating under the stars, but this? This made me weightless. The lake held us, the water pushing me into him. I felt suspended between the sky and the earth, wrapped in heat and motion and mouth.
He kissed me again, deeper this time, and my legs slid around his waist almost without thinking. His hands found my thighs, gripped and lifted, held me up. I clung to him, tasting him, breath caught somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.
His fingers slid lower, bold but not demanding—found the hem of my panties where they clung to skin, and slipped just under the edge of the elastic.
The contact startled me.
I made a small, surprised sound—a splash and a gasp all tangled together.
Not a no. Not yet a yes. But it was a boundary, lightly touched.
“Hey!” exclaimed Trevor, abandoning his own floating star-gazing experience. “Jules? Are you hogging Eleana all to yourself over there?”
“I was. Yes.” said Jules matter of factly with no trace of rancour and not breaking our embrace either.
Oh,” said Trevor, bobbing closer through the water. “No fair. Can I have a kiss too, Elena?”
He slid his hands gently onto my hips from behind—an invitation, not a demand. A question written in touch.
I looked at Jules.
He cocked his head, one brow arched—not jealous, not possessive. Just curious. Waiting to see what I’d choose.
I could have sworn he shifted slightly, loosening his hold, turning me. I could have sworn Trevor’s grip firmed, just enough to draw me toward him.
Later, they’d both deny it. Swear up and down that it had been me—only me—who moved.
Kissing Trevor was like being drunk on wine and wrapped in soft velvet.
There’s no other word for him but pretty. All high cheekbones and sharp angles, full sensuous lips, and that unfair combination of charm and geometry that made people stare. He had strong white teeth, an aquiline nose, and—as I discovered in that moment—a wickedly talented tongue.
Ever the consummate seducer, he didn’t pull me in. He let me come to him, arms loose, posture easy. I rose onto my toes, closed the distance, and kissed him.
It was a knee-buckler.
When it ended, I sagged back into Jules’s arms, a little dazed, a lot breathless.
The end of that kiss could’ve gone awkward. Could’ve turned weird.
Instead, it turned out funny. Easy. The three of us falling right back into who we were—messy, ridiculous, and tangled up in each other.
“I really want to get out of these wet clothes,” I blurted, without a trace of innuendo.
“Rowl!” Trevor gasped, clutching his chest in a dramatic swoon.
“Hoho!” crowed Jules, “She’s got to have it!”
We all cracked up—until someone spotted the half-full bottle of wine still sitting on the jetty. And just like that, the unspoken decision to leave the water became a mad scramble for the prize.
It was a ridiculous slow-motion race—chest-deep in the lake, splashing, laughing, jostling, cursing. I reached the dock first, snatched the bottle, and bolted up the lawn barefoot, shrieking as Trevor and Jules gave chase.
Up the stairs, through the door, all three of us crashed into the attic room in a breathless, dripping heap.
“It’s mine!” I shouted, clutching the wine like a trophy. “All mine!” I took a long, triumphant swig, then set it down and began peeling off my clammy clothes.
“Ah, shit,” Jules groaned. He kicked off his jeans and collapsed onto the bed in mock defeat.
Trevor, still tangled in his belt, couldn’t stop laughing. “God, Elena. It’s good to hear you laugh,” he said. “We haven’t carried on like that since... before the crash.”
It was a perfectly natural thing to say. It was the perfectly wrong thing to say.
The laughter evaporated. The heat of the room felt suddenly cold. I didn’t cry. I didn’t speak. I just stood there, bare shoulders frozen, every muscle gone tight with dread.
Jules exhaled, long and low. He laced his fingers behind his head and looked up at the ceiling like it might have the answers. “Joy,” he said gently. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He sat up a little. “You lent your brother your car. That’s it. What happened after that—what he did in that car, what happened to that car—none of it was you. None of it was your choice. I don’t know why you keep ripping yourself apart over something that was never yours to carry... but goddamn it, I’d do anything if I could get you to stop punishing yourself.”
Despite the muggy air, I went ice-cold.
My skin drained white. My ears rang. I stared at Jules, wanting to run—wanting to vanish under the floorboards. He’d struck too close.
Behind me, I heard Trevor exhale.
Jules’s voice dropped. “Oh god,” he said softly. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
I nodded. Just once.
The truth was out. There wasn’t any drama in it. Just... truth. Quiet and ugly.
I did think it was my fault. It was my car. If I hadn’t lent it to him, he might still be alive. And no matter how hard I tried—drinking, flailing, failing, cutting myself off from joy—I couldn’t seem to make myself suffer enough to balance the scale. Couldn’t pay the price I felt I owed.
Jules sat up fully and held out his arms. “Oh, Jesus,” he murmured. “Come here, you poor fucked-up thing.”
He wrapped me in his warmth, pulling me close to his chest. I think he expected me to cry.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was still ice inside.
He held me anyway.
I felt him look over my shoulder at Trevor, and I knew—I knew—that this was hurting them too.
And I hated that.
I wanted to care. I should have cared.
But I couldn’t feel anything at all.
The silence stretched, long and aching.
Then, after what felt like forever, Trevor broke it.
And that was the moment we learned just how far he was willing to go with his “anything for a lady” attitude.
Turns out-- it was farther than either of us expected.
You can read the main story, Bred By My Two Husbands for FREE here: www.inkitt.com/stories/1509289
