Chapter 7 — The Morning After Math #6
“I second the compensation,” Penny said, elegant even on a dock chair, platinum blonde hair sleek in the humidity, green eyes sharp behind her sunglasses.
“Strongly second. With interest. The kind of interest that involves your hands on my body in a semi-public location sooner rather than later.” She smiled, that polished Rourke smile that contained absolutely zero innocence.
“Visibility matters, Luke. As does timing. And my timing is getting very, very impatient.”
Reese didn’t stand. She stayed seated, glossy chestnut hair catching the light, honey-brown eyes warm behind her sunglasses, and the smile she gave me was so tender it made my chest tight.
“I’m good,” she said, quiet and certain.
“Really good. Kiki and Shay deserve this. They’ve earned it.
And watching them be happy together makes me happier than rushing my turn ever could.
” She reached over and squeezed Kiki’s hand, then Shay’s, and the simple generosity of it, Reese Madden, who had known me through thunderstorms and dock photos, putting her friends’ joy before her own want, hit me somewhere behind my sternum and stayed there.
Eden clapped her hands once, the sound sharp and final.
“So. Motion carries. Kiki and Shay, first chance after lunch, Luke’s place.
The rest of us get a real queue instead of hovering around his dock looking hopeful and pretending we're above logistics.” She grinned, that bright, wicked Eden grin that made everything feel like a game worth winning.
“Tatum gets chaos. Reese gets something quiet and memory-soaked.
Penny gets visibility and whatever terrifyingly elegant plan she's already pretending not to have. I get to make sure nobody wastes a perfectly good summer being noble and stupid.”
She lifted her phone like she was calling the next song at a party, not making it homework, and her grin stayed warm enough that even my panic had trouble finding purchase. “There. See? Fun. Decisive. Minimal paperwork.”
The objections came, playful, hungry, the bright complaints that carried no actual hurt and a great deal of sharp want, and Eden batted them away with the ease of someone who’d been turning the next move into a party game and had no intention of slowing down now.
I stood on the Hollis dock with a trash bag in one hand and six women’s wants converging on him with a coordination that should have been terrifying and instead felt like the only answer that had ever made sense.
Resisting one woman had been hard. Resisting two had been harder. Resisting six, moving in concert, loving each other as fiercely as they loved me, plotting my pleasure with the delighted focus of women who saw no reason why joy should be scarce, that wasn’t hard anymore.
It was impossible. And the impossibility of it felt like coming home.
Kiki caught my eye across the cluster, her smile warm and certain.
Shay winked, that dirty, delighted wink that contained absolutely zero regret.
Tatum was already describing her boat-day fall in graphic detail to anyone who would listen.
Reese was touching Penny’s arm, saying something warm that made Penny laugh.
Eden was typing into her phone with the grin of a woman already planning the after-party.
They’d decided. Not if. How. In what order, with what combinations, with the cheerful certainty of women who had loved each other first and saw no reason why loving me should change that.
And I had decided too, somewhere between Kiki’s golden certainty and Shay’s wild hunger and the easy warmth of five women putting their friends’ joy before their own want.
The decision wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a speech or a surrender or a single moment of clarity.
It was quieter than that, warmer, the slow certain knowledge that I wanted all of them, exactly as they were, exactly as they wanted to be together, and the only thing left to figure out was how to build a life big enough to hold it.
The queue was real. And I wanted every person in it.
And the fact that they wanted each other too, that Kiki and Shay’s happiness made Reese happy made Tatum happy made Penny happy made Eden happy, turned the whole impossible arrangement from something I should resist into something I could only embrace.
Soon. Kiki and Shay. My bed. Their bodies. Their wants converging on a single point that happened to be me, and the logistics, as Shay had so eloquently put it, were going to be bendy.
I dumped the last trash bag by the road and turned back toward the cluster of women on the dock, and the look on my face must have said everything, because Eden’s smile widened, Kiki’s eyes softened, and Shay pumped her fist in the air with a cheer loud enough to turn heads at the main house.
“Fifty,” she called. “Minimum. Starting soon. Double count for threesomes. I did the math. It’s a lot. You might want to hydrate.”
I laughed, the sound rusty and real, and walked back toward them with the clear, terrifying understanding that resisting one woman at a time had been the easy part.
This was going to ruin me. And I was going to enjoy every fucking second of it.