Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“The wall safe. The superglue was . . . an improvisation.”
Knox appears beside me, reaching for a knife. “I’ll help.”
“Do you know how to chop vegetables?” Liam asks.
“I was in the Marines. I can follow instructions.”
“Debatable.”
But Liam’s grinning, and Knox is rolling his eyes without any real irritation, and I’m standing between them peeling potatoes
in a kidnapper’s cabin surrounded by Christmas lights.
This shouldn’t feel as normal as it does. It absolutely shouldn’t.
It does anyway.
We argue over garlic. Knox thinks Liam’s using too much; Liam thinks Knox wouldn’t know good seasoning if it hit him in his
pretty face. I nearly burn the rolls because I get distracted watching them bicker, but I rescue them in time, only slightly
singed.
The kitchen fills with the smell of roasting chicken and herbs, and Liam makes us taste the gravy three times to confirm it’s
perfect. It is. I tell him it needs more salt just to watch his eye twitch.
“You’re messing with me.”
“Maybe.” I steal another taste. “Maybe I just have a refined palate.”
“Your palate thinks Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are a food group.”
“They are a food group. It’s called joy.”
Knox laughs, a real laugh, and Liam’s outrage melts into warmth.
We set the table like civilized people. There’s a tablecloth in one of the drawers—white linen—and we lay out cloth napkins
and the nice dishes and even light candles. The flames flicker alongside the fairy lights, and the whole scene looks like
a magazine spread about holiday entertaining.
And that’s exactly the point.
Because Marlena is watching. We know she’s watching. And the best thing three captives with a plan can do is look like three
captives without one. So we give her a show. Happy prisoners enjoying their gilded cage, grateful for the gourmet kitchen
and the fancy linens, too comfortable and too broken to cause any trouble. Every laugh is real, but it’s also a performance.
Every candle we light is us saying, Look how tame we are. Look how we’ve accepted this. Don’t worry about us at all.
If she’s buying it, good. If she’s not, at least we’re eating well while the clock runs down.
“Should we say grace?” Knox asks, completely deadpan.
Liam folds his hands, equally serious. “Blessed be this meal we’re about to eat in our luxury prison. May our captor choke
on her caviar. Amen.”
I snort wine up my nose, which hurts like hell and is completely worth it.
Dinner is incredible. The chicken is perfectly crispy on the outside, tender and juicy inside. The vegetables are caramelized
and sweet. The gravy is rich and savory and I want to bathe in it. We eat until we’re stuffed, then eat more because it’s
that good.
And we talk. Really talk. Not about the diamond or Marlena or the countdown clock ticking toward whatever nightmare she has
planned. We talk about other things. Normal things. Things three people who aren’t being held hostage might discuss over dinner.
“Worst first date. Go.” Liam points his fork at Knox.
Knox considers. “High school. Took a girl to a nice restaurant, ordered oysters to be sophisticated. Turns out I’m allergic.
My face swelled up like a balloon, and I spent the rest of the night in the ER. She never spoke to me again.”
“Oh my god.” I’m crying with laughter. “Please tell me there are pictures.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I will find them.”
“You will fail.”
“I’ve broken into bank vaults. Your high school yearbook archive is nothing.”
Liam raises his glass. “I’ve seen the pictures. They’re magnificent.”
Knox’s head whips toward him. “How?”
“Remember Porter? From Kandahar?”
“That son of a bitch.”
“He keeps a folder. Labeled ‘Knox’s Oyster Incident.’ Very organized.”
Knox drops his head into his hands, and Liam and I laugh until our stomachs hurt.
My turn. I tell them about the date who took me to an escape room and got so competitive he started screaming at the teenage employees for hints.
Liam confesses to accidentally setting a girl’s hair on fire with a candle at a fancy restaurant.
“The waiter threw water on her head, it was a whole thing.” Knox admits he once forgot a date’s name and called her “sport” for three hours until she called him on it.
“Sport?” I wheeze. “You called a grown woman sport?”
“I panicked!”
“What happened after she called you out?”
“I pretended I had food poisoning and Ubered home.”
“Knox Bishop, you absolute disaster.”
“I was twenty-two. We all did stupid things at twenty-two.”
“At twenty-two, I was stealing diamonds,” Liam says thoughtfully. “Still less embarrassing than sport.”
We move through topics like we have all the time in the world. Favorite movies—Knox loves action, Liam loves documentaries,
I have a weakness for horror that makes them both question my sanity. Places we want to travel—Liam wants to see Japan, Knox
wants to go back to Scotland, I want somewhere warm with no extradition treaty, which makes them both give me looks.
Knox tells a story about a mission in Kandahar that went sideways, but the way he tells it turns disaster into comedy. The
interpreter who accidentally propositioned a village elder. The goat that ate their radio. The sergeant who got lost despite
having GPS and a map and three people giving him directions.
“He walked in a circle for forty-five minutes,” Knox says. “We could see him from the ridge. Just . . . circling. One of the
guys started taking bets on how long before he figured it out.”
“Did he figure it out?”
“No. The goat found him.”
“The same goat that ate the radio?”
“Different goat. This one was angrier.”
Liam does impressions of their old commanding officer, a colonel with a thick Boston accent. Knox nearly chokes on his wine.
I’ve never seen him this relaxed, this unguarded. The vigilance softened by food and wine and company.
I tell them about my grandmother. The woman who raised me after my parents split, who taught me to pick locks for fun on rainy Sundays, who always said rules were just suggestions for people without imagination.
She would have loved this, I think. Drinking wine in a decorated cabin with two beautiful men, making the best of a bad situation with style and humor.
“She sounds incredible,” Liam says.
“She was.” I trace the rim of my glass. “She would have liked you both. She had a thing for charming men with questionable
morals.”
“I have excellent morals,” Knox protests.
“You stalked me for three months.”
“. . . Situationally excellent morals.”
After dinner, we migrate to the floor by the fireplace. Someone brings out the chocolate—the fancy stuff Marlena stocked—and
we break off pieces and let them melt on our tongues. Outside, snow drifts past the windows. The lights cast everything in
gold.
I end up with my legs across Liam’s lap, my shoulder pressed against Knox’s, some part of me touching both of them. It happens
without thinking, natural as breathing. Knox’s hand rests on my knee, his thumb tracing absent patterns. Liam’s palm is warm
against my ankle, fingers curled loosely around the bone.
“This is the strangest date I’ve ever been on,” Knox says.
Liam hums. “Is this a date?”
I consider the question. The cooking together, the talking, the way we’ve arranged ourselves like we’ve been doing this for
years instead of days. “I think it might be. Our first real one.”
“First dates don’t usually involve armed guards and potential death.”
“Ours does. We’re unique.”
Knox’s hand tightens on my knee. Just a little. Just enough.
“We might die in seven days,” he says quietly.
“Yeah.” Liam’s voice is equally soft. “We might.”
They both look at me. The firelight catches their eyes—Knox’s gray-blue, Liam’s warm brown—and I see the same thing reflected
in both. Want. Fear. Hope. The desperate need to hold on to something real before it’s ripped away.
“So we should probably make the most of it,” I say.
The playfulness falls away. What’s left is just want, bare and obvious.
This has been building since the first day we arrived.
Since before that. Since Knox started following me through Bryant Park.
Since Liam sent that first message after five years of silence.
Since the moment I realized I’d been running toward them both my whole life and never knew it.
I lean forward and kiss Liam. He tastes like chocolate and wine, and his mouth opens under mine immediately, welcoming me
in. His hand slides from my ankle to my calf, pulling me closer. It’s been five years since I’ve kissed him, and my body remembers
everything—the way he tilts his head, the soft sound he makes when I bite his lower lip, the heat of his palm through my jeans.
When I break away, Knox is watching us. Not jealous. Wanting.
I turn and kiss him too. Different but just as right. Knox kisses like he does everything else—thorough, intense, completely
focused. His hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, tilting me exactly where he wants me.
Then I’m pulling back, and they’re looking at each other, and I hold my breath.
Knox reaches for Liam. Liam meets him halfway.
Watching them kiss feels like witnessing something inevitable. The tension between them, all those years of wanting and not
having, finally given permission to exist. Liam makes a sound against Knox’s mouth—relief, desire, everything in between—and
Knox’s hand fists in his shirt like he’s afraid Liam might disappear if he lets go.
When they separate, we’re all breathing hard.
“Bed?” I ask.
They both answer at once.