Chapter 30
Reid
The air wraps around us, thick and suffocating, like a held breath. No one moves. Not really. Even the fire seems hesitant, its first few flames licking uncertainly at the logs as if it, too, feels the weight pressing in on us.
Sierra doesn't look surprised. She knew this was coming. Her shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly, and she folds her hands together in her lap like she's afraid they'll move and give something away.
Her expression is resigned. "Yeah, we do."
Luke is still focused on the fireplace, crouched slightly as he adjusts one of the logs, nudging it into place with the poker.
The fire crackles a little louder in response.
The scent of woodsmoke drifts out, mixing with the warm amber note of old varnish and the sharper, sour edge of spilled ale that’s never quite left the floorboards.
It’s a lived-in smell. Grounding. Familiar.
Sierra’s gaze drifts to the small deer head mounted above the fireplace. She stares at it for a second too long, like she’s studying it, but I know she’s not really seeing it. She’s waiting. Waiting for Luke to turn around. Waiting to pull him into this whether he wants it or not.
We should probably wait for Talon to finish whatever he’s doing to the furnace downstairs, but who knows how long that’ll take.
At that moment, the door swings open as though answering the thought.
Talon steps in, wiping his hands on a clean rag, his expression unreadable as ever. “Done.”
“You fixed it already?” I ask, straightening slightly.
“He did!” our host calls from the hallway before Tal can answer.
Her voice is bright, almost giddy with relief as her footsteps approach, quick and uneven against the old boards.
“In just two minutes, he did the impossible, and now we have hot water rushing through our pipes again. Oh, praise be! That would have taken Hal a whole decade to fix, and he would have charged us an arm and a leg for it, too.” She beams up at Tal like he’s just performed a miracle.
“Oh, thank you, thank you. You have no idea how much you’ve helped me.
How about you take the room for free today, as payment for the help? ”
“That’s not necessary,” I say automatically, even as Tal shakes his head beside me. “He’s happy to help.”
“No, I insist! He’s the best plumber we’ve ever had, and I’m sure he must charge an arm and a leg for his services. I can’t in good conscience take the help without giving him something back.”
“No, it’s really okay,” Tal says. “I’m fine.”
“No, but—”
“How about some apple pie as payment?” Luke cuts in, rising from the fireplace at last, clearly sensing this is going nowhere fast. “Can’t lie, I’ve had a craving for it since I left, but couldn’t justify driving all the way up here just for that.”
“Oh yes.” She claps her hands together, delighted. “Of course. I’ll make a whole tray just for you. Will supper at six-thirty be alright for you?”
“Perfect.”
“Great. Thanks again.” She squeezes Tal’s arm warmly before heading off down the stairs, still muttering to herself about hot water and miracles.
The door swings shut behind her.
Talon steps fully into the room and pushes it closed with a quiet click.
The sound seems louder than it should be.
Final.
The silence settles over us again, heavier now, thicker. There’s no interruption coming to save us this time.
Someone has to start this.
“So—”
“Actually, now there’s hot water, I think you should take a shower first, Sierra,” Luke says, cutting across me before I can get any words out. “We really don’t want you to get a cold.”
“Uh… yeah, that seems like a good idea.” She crouches down, rummaging through her bag for something to wear, then stands and moves between us toward the bathroom.
As she passes by, her scent hits me—clean soap beneath damp fabric, something warm and unmistakably her—and every muscle in my body tightens in response.
The door closes behind her a second later.
The room shifts again.
It sinks in, all at once, that we’re all in this room together. That we’re going to be sharing it. With us… and her.
I hadn’t thought about that.
The whole drive out, all I could think about was getting to her in time. About not missing her. About not arriving to an empty stretch of road and nothing else, or worse, an overturned vehicle, or a car swept into a culvert by a flash flood.
I was terrified I’d never see her again.
Maybe that sounds dramatic. It probably is. But it didn’t feel like it out there in the storm. It felt real. Immediate. Like something was being ripped out of me while I drove.
But I couldn’t let myself spiral. I had to focus on the road. On staying between the lines. On keeping the truck steady while the rain hammered down hard enough to blur everything beyond a few feet.
The harder it rained, the worse my head got. That quiet voice starting up, telling me something would happen to her. That visibility was shot. That her car wouldn’t hold up.
And to think her car actually gave out on her out there…
Fuck.
A cold wave runs down my spine.
If anything had happened to her… I don’t even know where I would begin with that.
“We need to get our story straight before we talk to her,” Luke says in a deliberately low voice, so what he says won’t carry through to Sierra in the bathroom.
The walls aren’t exactly thick, but the sound of the shower starting up a moment later might just be enough to cover us.
“Our story straight on what?” I ask, shifting a step closer to him and keeping my own voice low despite the sound of the shower.
“On what we’re going to do moving forward.” His expression is serious now, no trace of humor left. “You’re the one who said in the car you’re not letting her go.”
Yeah… fuck.
I did say that.
“What did you mean by that?” Luke asks.
I wish he hadn’t.
Because I don’t even know what I meant. Not fully. All I knew in that moment was the feeling—this tight, suffocating dread that she was slipping away. That she’d leave without getting what she came for.
That I’d let that happen.
I drag a hand down my face, exhaling slowly. I don’t have a clean answer. I don’t have any kind of answer.
“We need to do this together,” Luke continues. “Or it’s not going to work.”
I frown slightly. “Do what?”
“Share her.”
For a second, I think I misheard him.
Something sharp and instinctive hits me low in the gut before I can even process the words properly.
I blink.
Then again.
“Huh?”
Luke exhales, shaking his head as he glances between me and Tal. “God, do I have to spell everything out for you two? She wants us—all of us. We all want her. The only way this works without tearing everything apart is if we share.”
“Whoa.” I lift a hand, instinctively pushing back. “Hold on. That’s… that’s way out of left field. No one wants that. Anyway, it’s not what I meant when I said I wouldn’t let her go.”
“What did you mean then?”
Fuck if I know.
“We can’t share a human being.”
“Obviously not without her permission,” Luke says, like I’m the one being unreasonable here. “But I don’t think it’s that far-fetched. I think she might surprise you.” He shrugs. “Talon and I have done it before. It worked out fine. Right, Tal?”
Talon leans back against the door, arms loose at his sides.
Not untypically, he says nothing.
"Talon, you and Luke also almost killed each other this afternoon. Or did you forget?"
"That's because we were both sick of bottling things up. That's where the jealousy came from, and it made everything worse. But apart from that, we've always been good at sharing. Right, Tal?"
Once again, Talon remains silent, neither nodding nor shaking his head.
"Do you hear yourself?" I frown. "We're talking about a human being, not a toy."
"I know what we're talking about."
"People don't live like that."
"Maybe not people where you're from, but I've met plenty who do. Polyamorous relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't." He shrugs. "We should at least give it a chance. It's literally the only solution I can think of."
"Well, think harder. Hell, Luke, this isn't even supposed to be about us. This is about her and what she needs." I can feel my voice starting to raise, not so much in anger as frustration. Can’t Luke see what a bad idea this is?
"She needs us too." Luke explains, patiently, making me stand up and start pacing.
"She needs space,” I exclaim, throwing my arms up. “Space to heal, to focus on herself. Not to deal with our shit."
"We can do both." Again, he tries to reason with me, calm me down.
"We don't fuck clients." I say, sullenly.
"She’s not a client, she’s a guest, and anyway, we don't just want to fuck her," Luke says using his most reasonable tone. "If this was just about sex, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. This is deeper than that."
"You're saying you have feelings for her?"
"Obviously." Luke doesn't hesitate, which somehow makes it worse. "You do too. Tal too. She has feelings for us, as well. Yeah, we don't usually cross that line, even just with guests, but there are exceptions to every rule."
"Not when it comes to something like this."
"Oh, come on, Reid. It's not like we're her therapists. We're not her doctors, not her spiritual guides. We just run the place. She can come and go whenever she wants. There's not some massive power imbalance here."
"I hate that you're trying to justify this right now."
"No, what you hate is that I'm making sense." He exhales. "Look, we already tried the alternative. Avoiding her. Pretending we felt nothing. That wasn't working. In any case, if we don't figure something out, she's going to leave. Do you want her to leave?"
I shake my head. Talon does too.
"Good. Then this is what we do. Unless you've got a better idea."
I don't. That's the problem. Fuck, how the hell is Luke half drunk and still winning this argument?
Maybe because he's right.
The bathroom door opens, and all three of us turn.
Sierra steps out, hair damp, face bare, skin flushed from the heat of the shower. Somehow, she looks even more beautiful like this—softer, almost ethereal, yet also somehow more real. Like something you could almost believe in.
Her eyes flick between us. Alert. Thoughtful.
"You heard us talking, didn't you?"
"Kind of hard not to," she says. "Thin walls, and you suck at whispering."
No one answers.
In the silence, other sounds creep in—the wind and rain against the window, a door closing somewhere down the hall, the distant rumble of thunder outside. But it all feels far away. None of it matters inside this room.
Sierra turns to Talon. "I heard these two like I was in the room with them. But I don't think I heard you say a word that whole time. I want to know what you think."
Talon doesn't answer right away. He just looks at her, like she’s the only thing in the room worth seeing. Slowly, something shifts in his expression. Something raw.
"You left," he says.
"I had to."
"No, you didn't. You shouldn't have."
"My being there was causing a problem."
"It wasn't your problem to fix," he says, and the hurt in his voice is impossible to miss. "I would have… we would have…" He trails off, unable to finish.
She smiles, but there's nothing light about it. "What? Avoided me? Reid would’ve kept skipping breakfast so he didn’t have to see me.
Luke would’ve kept acting like it was torture just being in the same room as me, dumping me off on Key every chance he got, and as for you—you wouldn’t even enter the building if you thought there was a chance I was there. You think I wanted to stay in that?"
Luke winces. Talon looks away. I feel it too—that sharp twist of guilt sitting heavy in my chest.
"I'm so sorry, baby," Luke says. "I was trying to—"
"I know," she cuts in gently. "I heard." She pauses, then adds, "I also heard everything else."
Her gaze moves between us. "What I want to know is how Talon feels about it. After that, I want to know what you really feel too."
"I want you," Talon says, the words dragged out of him like they cost something. "You know I want you."
"I don't know that, actually."
He nods, accepting it. "I stayed away because after what happened… I was hooked. Addicted. Couldn't stop thinking about you. Dreaming about you. Smelling you everywhere."
She swallows, her cheeks flushing.
Jesus. Even I feel that one.
Then she turns to me.
My pulse kicks hard, like my body knows what's coming before my brain catches up.
She moves toward me slowly, deliberately, each step measured. Giving me time to pull back. To stop this.
I don't move. I can't.
"And you?" she asks, voice low. "Do you really think I should go?"
Say yes.
End it.
Do the right thing for once.
My throat is dry. I open my mouth, ready to push her away like I always do.
But nothing comes out.
Because it's a lie.
And I can't say it.
"I don't think there's a single universe where I don't want you."
A slow smile spreads across her lips.