Disastrous Desires (Disaster Bi Design #3)

Chapter 1

ONE

KAT

One text is all it takes to throw our day into chaos.

Not that I’m surprised. Things tend to be chaotic when it comes to Ollie “I once licked a parking cone because my best friend said I wouldn’t” Ashburn, my boyfriend Vince’s best friend.

Today was supposed to be an easy-going day of packing the van, gathering road trip snacks like we’re a bunch of ten-year-olds let loose in a convenience store, arguing over who gets to pick the music, and three hours of open road on our way to escape the city to the cabin Vince recently inherited from his late grandmother.

Just us, Ollie, and Ollie’s boyfriend Justin. However, instead of the open road, we’re standing on the marble stoop of Ollie’s Baltimore City rowhouse, hearts and fists pounding.

“Come on, Ollie, let us in,” Vince yells, rapping at his best friend’s front door with the side of his fist.

It’s been less than twenty minutes since her text came through in a new group chat with just the three of us—Justin excluded.

OLLIE POP: Not going. Got dumped. Have fun.

Have fun? Does she really believe we would leave her to wallow in self-pity and still be able to have fun? Who the fuck does she think we are?

“Ollie, open the damn door!” Vince bellows, his expression a mix of concern and frustration.

Ninety percent of Vincent Garrett is a calm and passionate cuddle monster that wears his heart on his sleeve, literally.

Mixed into a patchwork sleeve of flash tattoos, most of them done by Ollie, on his right arm is an atomically correct heart, inked right into his skin, shaded with pinks, yellows, and blues, just like the heart that beats in his chest.

The other ten percent is a quiet violence for the people he loves. A sleeper cell of bloodlust that is only activated when one of us is hurt, and Ollie is definitely hurting.

Vince is the poster child of predictability and structure, whereas Ollie is usually the scatterbrain full of grit and dynamite.

I knew from the moment we met that they were a package deal.

Vince approached me with a smile plastered to his stupidly handsome face as he hit me with cringy pick-up lines, just to see me smile, but it was Ollie’s laugh—loud and full of life—that I remember the most from that day.

Her eyes held a wildness that crashed into me like a tidal wave, pushing me under until Vince pulled me to the surface with a wink and a smile, and I have been dangerously hooked on their energy ever since.

Vince beats on the door a few more times before I pocket my phone and shoulder him aside to add my own—louder, faster, more desperate.

The thought of going to the cabin without Ollie feels like betrayal.

So much of Vince is intertwined with Ollie that we’re rarely without her, and when we are without her, I wish that we weren’t.

I mean, every good girlfriend should make an effort to get along with her boyfriend’s best friend, right?

So what if his best friend is a gorgeous, badass tattoo artist covered in tattoos? Who cares if she makes my stomach do a little flip whenever she smiles at me? That’s totally normal. Nothing to be alarmist about. Just…girl things.

Just girl things.

A few moments pass, and there are still no signs of life from inside her house.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” I suggest, but Vince immediately shakes his head.

“No way. She’s awake,” he mutters with confidence. “She’s just hiding from us. Like a opossum.”

“Don’t opossums play dead?”

“Exactly,” is all he says as he moves over to the small window to the right of the door. He cups his hands around his eyes, leaning against the frosted glass, peeping inside. “Ollie, open the door, or I’m throwing rocks through your window.”

Despite the stress of the situation, a smile creeps onto my face at his desperate attempt to lure her out of the house with the cringe of a long-dead meme.

A floorboard creaks from inside before the lock clicks and the door swings open.

“Holy shit!” I say. “I cannot believe that worked.

“Yeah, well, you throw rocks, I throw hands,” Ollie groans, standing in the doorway wearing a hoodie the size of a small country, hair in disarray. Her usually vibrant eyes are empty, hitting me right in the gut.

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Vince growls beside me.

Ollie sighs, and my heart drops straight out of my chest watching her shoulders slump.

“No, you’re not. And neither am I. He doesn’t deserve the death penalty because I wasn’t enough.” Ollie’s voice is surprisingly steady, but her eyes tell a different story. I’ve never seen her so broken.

“I’ll burn his house down. Just say the word.” I offer, only half joking.

Ollie’s eyes finally meet mine with the smallest smile at the corners of her lips.

Stomach. Flip. Fuck me.

I keep telling myself that I do not have a crush on my boyfriend’s best friend, but my sudden desire to burn the world down says otherwise.

“You guys are stupid,” Ollie scoffs, but the humor is lost from her face.

Vince doesn’t wait for an invitation. His tall, solid frame is an unstoppable force against her token resistance as we spill into the dim light of her living room.

Ollie’s place is a mix of cozy maximalist clutter and mismatched thrift store furniture. Soft enough to feel comfortable, messy enough to feel real.

Picture frames litter the walls with some of her favorite tattoo designs and clients.

I’m honored to be featured in a photo on the wall above her couch, a mid-session snap of the time she tattooed the tops of both of my shoulders in a beautiful floral outline.

The sensation of her fingers sliding down my bra strap mixed with the pain from the tattoo needle was an eye-opening experience I have yet to unpack.

“Why are you here?” Ollie asks, closing the door behind us. “Shouldn’t you be on the road by now?”

“We weren’t going to leave without checking on you,” Vince practically barks, hurt wrinkling his brows. “Look at you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she whines. “I just need to re-center.”

“We both know that’s code for couch rotting and eating cereal straight from the box.”

They glare at each other for a moment like an old married couple trying to decide if this is the hill they are choosing to die on, but Ollie surrenders quickly, knowing full well she doesn’t have a good enough argument against his assumption.

“We're allowed to be worried about you,” I say, stepping closer to her. “If you try to push us away, we'll just latch on tighter. Really sink our claws in.”

“Joke's on you, she’s into that shit,” Vince murmurs as he moves to the window and yanks the curtains open.

Ollie hisses as light fills the room, illuminating her dangerous brown eyes that are looking right at me.

“Show me your claws,” she says, her voice low.

I raise both hands, showing off the fresh manicure I got yesterday. Almond shape. Dark Brown. Matte.

The kind of nails that look like they’ll break skin but are soft enough to glide over even the most sensitive areas. Ollie’s gaze lingers on them for a beat too long before throwing me a wink, and my world stutters for a moment.

A tiny, electric jolt, so brief I almost convince myself I imagined it.

Almost.

Vince walks around the room, gathering discarded coffee mugs and bits of trash, his movements efficient and familiar. I wonder how many times they’ve gone through something like this.

Ollie was the one who usually had her shit together, the one who kept Vince from spiraling into his own head too much. But right now, she looked like a different person entirely, and Vince stepped in without hesitation to pick up her pieces.

I grab a few tissues and chip bags from the floor when I see her sketchbook and headphones resting on a plump army-green duffel bag next to the couch.

Is she already packed?

I grab a few more pieces of crinkled-up paper and follow Vince into the kitchen.

"I fucking hate seeing her like this,” Vince says, placing the cups in the sink. “I hate the thought of leaving her alone."

“What?” I bark a little too quickly as I toss the trash in the can. “We’re not leaving her alone! She’s coming with us!”

"You don’t think it would be weird if we asked her to come?"

"It would be weird if we gave her a choice! Vince, her bag is already packed. Whatever happened between her and Justin must have happened late last night. She's coming with us whether she wants to or not.”

Vince grabs my wrist and pulls me into a kiss, his fingers digging into my hip like he's afraid I might vanish.

“I fucking love you,” he says between kisses. When he pulls back, his dark blue eyes are alight with our new mission. "Alright, let's go get our girl."

The way he says *our girl* sends a shiver down my spine. It’s possessive, it’s protective, and it’s hot as fuck.

Our girl.

I follow him back into the living room, where Ollie is sprawled on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, a makeshift nest of pillows and blankets nestled around her.

“Oh my god! You’re still here,” Ollie groans, rolling her eyes.

“Not for long. Kat and I decided you’re not in a state to be making decisions for yourself right now,” he says, sitting on the edge of the coffee table facing her. “You’re coming with us.”

“No, I’m not,” she says, a laugh bubbling in her throat.

She thinks we’re joking.

“Yes, you are,” I reply, in my firmest tone, leaving no room for argument.

Ollie wraps her arms around herself, a stubborn gesture that reminds me that the real Ollie is still in that giant sweater somewhere. “You can’t make me.”

Vince stands up and reaches out a hand. “Get up. We’re leaving.”

Ollie just stares at his offered hand, her expression blank. “No.”

“Ollie.”

“Vince.”

His patience visibly snapping, Vince bends forward, hooking his arms under her armpits, and hauls her off the couch.

Instead of resisting as expected, Ollie goes completely boneless.

A dead weight of stubbornness that even Vince struggles to manage.

His balance thrown by her sudden surrender to gravity, and they both crash to the floor in a tangle of limbs, Vince curling to take the brunt of the impact on his back.

“Real fucking mature,” he groans.

In the downfall, the massive charcoal-gray sweater she’s drowning in rides up her torso, exposing a strip of her stomach and the fact that she’s only wearing tiny black shorts beneath it.

The skin of her midriff is pale and smooth, interrupted by the bold black lines of a snake tattoo slithering up into the hem of her bra.

My breath catches. I know I’m gawking, but I can’t stop staring at the contrast of the soft vulnerability of her skin against the sharp, permanent ink, or the way the shorts cling to her thick thighs with just enough fabric to cover her ass.

My eyes are never respectful around Ollie, not that I think she minds. If she even notices.

Ollie is splayed half on top of Vince, her face buried in his chest. A low, shaky sound escapes her. She’s laughing.

“You brought this on yourself!”

Vince wraps his arms around her, one hand cradling the back of her head. “You’re a pain in my ass,” he murmurs into her hair.

Suddenly, the air in the room changes, thickening, until a suffocating, sharp ache blooms behind my ribs. It’s not jealousy. It’s something worse. So much worse. Hunger. A hunger for something I’ve never had and never knew I wanted.

I watch the way her body relaxes into his, decades of absolute trust in her surrender, and every nerve ending in my body is screaming, I want this. I want to be the piece of meat in a Vince and Ollie sandwich. Tucked right in the middle of the uncomplicated way they fit together.

I kneel beside them, squeezing myself between Ollie’s ass and the couch. “The cabin has that big porch swing,” I say softly as if that would be the deciding factor. “And Vince packed that terrible whiskey you like.”

She turns her head, one dark eye peering up at me. A single, traitorous tear cuts a path through the faint freckles on her temple. “The one that tastes like gasoline and regret?”

“That’s the one.”

“When have we ever left you behind?” Vince asks.

Her jaw tightens. A lifetime of history passes between them in that instant—childhood scrapes, teenage rebellions, late-night talks about everything and nothing. I’m the one who slipped into the space between them, and sometimes the intensity of their bond still steals my breath away.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” she mutters, but the fight is draining out of her as I help her to her feet.

“Who said anything about babysitting?” I crouch down and sling her duffel bag up on my shoulder. “We’re kidnapping you, sweetheart.”

She squints past me at Vince, who’s slowly making his way off the floor. “You agree with this kidnapping?”

He gives a slight shrug. “It’s more fun this way,” he says.

“Kidnapping’s illegal, you know,” she retorts.

“Only if we get caught.”

A ghost of a smile touches her lips. “You’re both insane.”

“Takes one to know one,” Vince says, his own tension easing. He reaches out and ruffles her already disastrous hair.

She turns her head to the floor, then looks at both of us in turn. “You really want me to come?”

“Yes,” Vince and I say at the same time, a single, unplanned beat of unity.

Her gaze lingers on my face, searching. I don’t look away. I let her see whatever she needs to see.

She sighs, a long, shuddering sound that seems to come from the depths of her soul. She looks from Vince’s worried face to my hopeful one, and finally, she nods. Just once. A small, defeated surrender.

This is happening. We’re really doing this. A week in the woods with my boyfriend and the woman who somehow, without ever trying, makes my world feel both infinitely larger and terrifyingly small.

Maybe if I play into this being a rescue mission, I don’t have to think too hard about who’s actually being rescued.