Chapter Thirteen #4
Mitch’s grin was immediate. I felt it against my shoulder, the stretch of his mouth, warm and certain, and his arm tightened across my stomach in a way that was possessive without being tight.
“We’ll get a bigger one,” he said. His voice was rough. Sleep-softened at the edges, the sound of Mitch after sex—slower, warmer, the performance dialed down to something that felt like the man underneath. “King-sized. Solid frame. The kind that doesn’t squeak when you—”
“I didn’t say that was a problem,” I said.
The contradiction hung in the air between us. Pure Sterling: complaining about something I had no intention of changing. The bed was too small. It was also exactly right, and we all knew it, and the knowing was mutual and unbearable in the particular way that good things often were.
Mitch laughed. Low, warm, the sound bouncing off the low ceiling and landing in my chest with a warmth that had nothing to do with the wood stove.
“You’re impossible,” he said. “You know that? Actually impossible. The bed is too small, but don’t change it, the eggs need more salt, but they’re perfect, I don’t know how this works, but I’ve been thinking about it for months.
You’re a walking contradiction, Sterling Callahan, and it’s extremely entertaining from where I’m lying. ”
“It’s charming,” Caleb murmured against my shoulder. His voice was soft. Slurring slightly at the edges, the sound of him drifting toward sleep—warm, trusting, completely surrendered. His hand stayed flat on my chest, thumb tracing idle circles against my sternum, and the contact was deliberate.
Chosen. Not accidental.
We adjusted. Mitch shifted his weight, rolling partially onto his side, which created approximately two inches of additional leg room that my feet immediately claimed.
Caleb curled closer, his knee hooking over my thigh, and the coordination of it—three bodies finding a configuration that worked on a surface built for one—was either impressive or pathetic, and I was leaning toward impressive because the alternative meant admitting defeat.
My arm found its way around Caleb’s shoulders. My hand settled on Mitch’s hip, fingers curling into the warm muscle there, and the contact was deliberate in a way that cost me nothing and meant everything.
Twenty years of not touching people. Twenty years of treating contact as operational rather than personal. And here I was, one hand on Caleb’s back, one hand on Mitch’s hip, and the walls I’d built stood in ruins around me and I didn’t miss them.
Caleb’s breathing slowed. His eyelids got heavy, the long lashes dark against his cheeks.
Caleb Pruitt falling asleep was something I’d been watching for weeks from a distance and was now experiencing firsthand—warm, trusting, completely surrendered, his body going slack against mine with a confidence that said he believed, without question, that the person holding him would still be there when he woke up.
The belief was its own kind of gift. One I hadn’t earned and couldn’t refuse.
“It works,” Caleb murmured. The words were soft. Barely there, directed at no one and everyone, and they landed in my chest with a weight that had nothing to do with their volume and everything to do with their certainty.
Mitch’s hand squeezed my hip. Once. Firm. Wordless.
I looked between them. Caleb sleeping, warm and certain against my side. Mitch watching me, his eyes dark in the low light, that direct, unhurried gaze that cut through every defense I’d built and landed somewhere behind my sternum.
Something cracked open. Not dramatically. Quietly. The way I did everything—in increments, measured, each decision standing on the one before it until the structure was sound enough to hold weight.
I’d been building toward this since morning. Since yesterday. Since the first time I’d seen them working in Jackson’s greenhouse.
The walls were down. The maps were forgotten.
The cut fence and the boot prints and the dark truck on the county road waited beyond the ridge, patient and cold, and I would handle them tomorrow the way I handled everything—methodically, completely, with the flat precision of a man who had decided that some problems were worth solving.
But tonight, in this bed, with Caleb’s weight against my side and Mitch’s warmth along my flank and the particular reality of me lying in a space that was too small and somehow exactly right, none of that mattered half as much as the fact that I was here, and they were here, and the door was closed, and I hadn’t reached for it once.
The lamplight held. The window stayed black. Beyond the glass, the ranch stretched cold and silver toward the eastern ridge, and whatever threat waited there—the cut fence, the boot prints, the diamond tread pattern sharp in the morning light—would keep until sunrise.
I closed my eyes. Breathed. Felt Caleb’s hand on my chest and Mitch’s arm across my stomach and the wood stove ticking in the great room, steady and patient, counting seconds in a rhythm that had been running long before I arrived and would keep running long after.
For the first time in a very long time, the rhythm included me.
And that, right there, was enough.