27. Leah
LEAH
I wake up sore in places I didn’t know could be sore, and I lie there for a while without opening my eyes, taking inventory.
Someone’s arm is across my ribs. Someone else’s leg is thrown over mine. There’s a chest under my cheek, and by the smell of him, cedar and skin, it’s Declan. We must have rearranged ourselves in the night. I don’t remember it.
When I finally look, Declan is already awake and watching me.
“Good morning,” I croak.
“Good morning.” His hand comes up and pushes the hair off my face. His thumb stays on my cheekbone. “How do you feel?”
“Like I got hit by a truck. A very handsome truck.” I stretch, carefully, and my body reminds me exactly what happened last night, and I make a face. “Three trucks.”
He doesn’t laugh. He just keeps looking at me.
“Leah.”
I kiss his cheek. “Hm.”
“I love you.”
I open my mouth, and what almost comes out is a joke. I feel it right there on my tongue, something about how he must be delirious from lack of sleep. I close my mouth again. I’ve spent my whole life pushing people away, so they’d be easier to leave.
And I don’t want to push him away. I want to accept every ounce of affection he’s giving me.
“I love you too,” I tell him.
His thumb presses once against my cheek. Then Emmett groans behind me.
“Is it morning? Why is it morning?” Emmett’s face appears over my shoulder, hair flattened on one side and standing up on the other. He looks at Declan, then at me, then down at the tangle of the three of us. “Where’s Rowan?”
“Right here.”
Rowan is on the far side of Declan, flat on his back with one arm over his eyes. He doesn’t move it.
“He’s alive,” Emmett reports. “Excellent. Everybody’s alive.” He kisses the back of my neck, once, then again, then a third time lower, and I feel him start to get ideas. “So, Little Mouse. How are we feeling about round—”
“No,” I blurt out, knowing I will need at least a day to recover.
He laughs. “You didn’t let me finish.”
“I have a pretty good guess where that sentence was going.”
“Fair.” He flops back onto the pillow. “In that case, I’m making breakfast. Declan, is there any actual food in your kitchen, or do you just eat at the office?”
“There’s food.”
“There’s food, he says. Let’s see if you’re lying.” Emmett is already rolling out of bed. He finds a pair of boxers on the floor, decides they’re his, and pulls them on. “Nobody get up. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
We get up anyway. Rowan finds me a T-shirt of Declan’s that comes down to my thighs, and by the time I’ve brushed my teeth with a finger and made it out to the kitchen, Emmett has commandeered the entire counter, Rowan is doing something quiet and competent with the coffee maker, and Declan is leaning against the island in a T-shirt and sweatpants.
I like this look on Declan—relaxed, casual.
“Sit,” Emmett orders without turning around. “Coffee’s coming.”
I sit. Rowan puts a mug down in front of me and rests his hand on the back of my neck for a second before he goes back to the pot. Declan watches him do it and smiles.
I watch Emmett cook. I’ve never done that before, not properly. He moves around Declan’s kitchen like he built it, cracking eggs one-handed, whisking something yellow in a pan over a low flame without ever looking at it, toasting muffins, laying out ham.
He isn’t talking, which is how I know something’s different. Emmett is always talking. Right now, he looks completely at peace.
“Eggs Benedict,” he says when he finally sets the plates down. Four of them. “My mom made it best, but I think mine comes pretty close.”
Rowan pauses with his fork halfway up. Declan looks up.
“Your mom’s recipe?” I ask.
“Her favorite breakfast.” Emmett pulls out the chair next to mine and sits, and for a second, he just looks at the plate.
“That ragù at the lake house was the first one of hers I ever made. I told myself it was a one-time thing.” He turns his fork over in his fingers.
“Turns out it wasn’t. Turns out I only ever want to cook her recipes for someone I love.
” He looks up at me. “She’d know, Leah. My mom would see it in my eyes. And she’d love you too.”
Nobody says anything. Declan is looking at his brother like he’s never quite seen him before. Rowan has put his fork down.
I don’t have anything clever. I lean over and put my arms around Emmett’s neck and my face against his shoulder, and he lets out a breath and holds on.
“I love you too,” I say into his shirt. “I wish I could have met her. I wish I could have told her that myself.”
“Yeah.” His voice is rough. “Yeah, me too.”
Then he clears his throat, lets me go, and picks up his fork. “Okay. Eat. Protein. You need your strength back.”
I cut into the egg, and the yolk runs. “For what?”
“Rowan and I have a bet on how long ‘at least a day’ actually is.”
Rowan doesn’t look up from his plate. “Six to eight hours.”
It’s the first thing he’s said all morning, and all three of us look at him. He shrugs.
Emmett chews and swallows. “I’m the optimist. I said four hours.”
“You’re both wrong.” I go back to my eggs. “I’m not deciding anything until I can sit down without wincing.”
“So, noon,” Emmett says.
I laugh. “Don’t you three have to get to work?”
Emmett’s head drops back. “Ugh. Don’t remind us.” He straightens up. “So, noon isn’t happening?”
Rowan takes his plate to the sink. “Looks like I’m winning the bet.”
They go to work after that. Declan in a suit again, Emmett in whatever he found on the floor, Rowan with a roll of drawings under his arm that he wouldn’t let anyone see.
I go down to my condo and shower, alone this time, and sit at my desk in front of a book cover that’s due Thursday, and get almost nothing done.
By the time the sun goes down over the city, I’ve given up on the cover and gone back upstairs, and all four of us end up on Declan’s couch.
I’m sitting between Emmett and Rowan with my feet in Declan’s lap, and his thumb is working at the arch of my foot, and I’m so comfortable I could fall asleep sitting up.
It’s Rowan who breaks the quiet. “We want you to stay with us.”
I turn my head. He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at his brothers, and something passes between the three of them that I’m not a part of.
“The three of us have talked about it,” he goes on. “We want you to stay and be with us, all of us together. We want to make this permanent.”
I’ve been here one night. One night, and a breakfast, and half a day of not working, and they’ve already had a meeting about me.
“I want that too,” I say, and I’m surprised by how fast it comes out.
There’s no hesitation in it. “But how would it work? We all live in separate places, even if they’re in the same building.
And what about how a relationship like this goes over publicly?
It would be a scandal for your reputations.
I’m not sure how your family, your investors, or your business would do under the weight of the gossip about the four of us. ”
“We’ve talked about all that.” Declan’s thumb doesn’t stop moving on my foot. “As for the gossip and any potential scandal clickbait, none of us give a fuck about that. Our companies are strong enough to take a momentary hit of rumors. We aren’t worried about that at all, Leah.”
“And our family has had enough drama of its own.” Emmett tips his head back against the couch. “Dad’s trying to make things right with us, Madeline already loves you, and none of us give a shit what Kian thinks. So we’re good there too.”
“And the logistics of living together,” Rowan says, “just so happen to be my area of expertise.”
The roll of drawings. I look at him, and he finally looks back, and there’s the smallest lift at the corner of his mouth.
“I can build us a place where we can all live together. A place where we all have our own rooms and spaces when we need individual time, and a place with space that can accommodate all of us together when we want to spend the night with you. I’ll design something I think would be perfect, and then we can all take a look at it and see if it works.
After that, we get it done and move in together. ”
“What do you think, Leah?” Emmett asks. “I know we just gave you the deed to your own condo, and this doesn’t come without affecting you too.
It’ll probably be a lot to live with three men at once.
Especially three men who have a near-constant sex drive and want to fuck you every time they get within two inches of your body. ”
I laugh, because that part isn’t a deterrent at all. “It’s exactly what I want. I want to be with all three of you, all the time, and never have to go home to a condo without all of you in it.”
Rowan’s whole face changes. Emmett lets out a laugh that’s half a whoop. And Declan pulls my feet off his lap and pulls the rest of me across the couch to him and gets his arms around me, and I feel him breathe out against the top of my head.
“I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure you’re cared for in all the ways you always should have been,” he says quietly, just for me. “If you’ll let me.”
“I’ll let you.”
“It’s settled, then,” Declan says. “We’ll start making this happen right away, because every night that we can’t be together with you, Leah, is a night we need to make up for.”
“I have a few ideas on how you can make those nights up to me,” I say into his chest.
“Jesus Fucking Christ, Leah.” Emmett gestures down at the front of his pants, where the ideas have already registered. “You can’t just say things like that.”
Rowan checks his watch. “Twelve hours.”
Emmett rolls his eyes playfully. “That’s not six to eight hours.”
“It’s closer than four.” Rowan gets up from the couch, and he doesn’t sit back down on the other side of me.
He comes around and sits on the arm of it, right beside Declan, so that when he reaches out, his hand lands on the top of my head, and Declan’s arms are around me, and Emmett is already leaning in.
“And when she’s ready, she shouldn’t have to take an elevator to tell us.
” He looks down at me. “That’s why I want us to live together.
Not the sex. Because this is what we are now. A family.”
I close my eyes.
Somewhere in this building, a few floors down, there’s a condo with my name on the deed and a book cover on the desk that’s due Thursday. I’ll go back to it tomorrow. Tonight, I have three men and a couch and nowhere else in the world I want to be.
It turns out that’s what staying feels like. I just never held still long enough to find out.