Chapter 9 — The Ferris Wheel Problem
The Ferris Wheel Problem
The kitchen was too full for a bachelor house.
Not crowded. Crowded would have been easy.
Crowded was chairs pulled too close and coffee mugs left wherever people found space.
This was something else. This was sunlight cutting across bare legs and rumpled shirts.
This was Kiki moving through my kitchen in one of my gray T-shirts, blonde hair loose, face soft from sleep and sex, reaching for the butter like she had known where I kept it for years.
This was Shay perched sideways on a stool in cutoffs and a tank top that had given up on modesty before the coffee finished brewing, one bare foot hooked around the rung of my chair, her knee pressed against mine under the island like contact was the price of admission.
This was evidence.
Kiki's hair tie on the counter beside the coffee filters.
Shay's black one on the tile near the fridge.
A streak of jam on the edge of the island that someone had probably licked from someone's finger.
Kiki's shampoo already in my shower from last night because she had forgotten it there, or maybe because some part of her had wanted to leave proof behind.
Tatum and Penny stood just inside the kitchen doorway, not newly arriving anymore, not innocent enough to pretend they had not been watching the whole morning gather itself around Kiki and Shay like gravity.
Tatum went quiet for half a second, which from Tatum Bell counted as a medical event. Her blue eyes moved from Kiki's bare thighs to Shay's mouth to my shirt hanging loose on Kiki's frame, and the restless bounce in her body stilled into something bright and hungry.
Penny noticed even more. Of course she did.
Penny Rourke could read a room the way other people read stop signs.
Her green eyes tracked Kiki reaching past me, Shay stealing toast from my plate, the way both of them touched me without asking and without thinking.
Her mouth curved like she was amused, but the look behind it wasn't amusement.
It was calculation.
No. Not calculation.
Want.
"Coffee?" Kiki asked, already pouring. "Or orange juice? I bought the one with pulp because Tatum gets personally offended by smooth orange juice."
Tatum made a noise so delighted it should have had sparkles around it. "You remembered."
"You gave a fifteen-minute speech about it in May."
"It was an important speech."
Kiki slid the glass across the island. Tatum wrapped both hands around it like Kiki had handed her a crown.
Penny took her mug from Kiki a second later. Their fingers brushed. It was brief, too brief for anyone's parents to call attention to if parents had been present, but Penny's eyes flicked to mine over the rim of the coffee, and the heat there made my hand tighten on my mug.
Tatum saw that too. Her attention jumped from Penny's fingers to my hand to the hem of Kiki's borrowed shirt, and for once the look on her face wasn't a joke trying to become noise. It was want with nowhere to go yet.
Shay caught it and grinned.
"Careful," she said. "Breakfast is already indecent enough."
"Your shirt is indecent," Penny said.
Shay looked down at herself. "This shirt is doing heroic work under difficult conditions."
Tatum leaned across the island and kissed Kiki on the cheek, quick and impulsive, leaving a little orange gloss from her mouth on Kiki's skin. "For the juice."
Kiki laughed, delighted and pink. "You're welcome, sweetie."
"Needs tongue next time," Shay said.
I should have said something adult.
Instead, I looked at them.
I let myself do it. Let my eyes move from Kiki's bare legs to Shay's throat to Tatum's flushed face to Penny's polished, dangerous stillness.
Four women in my kitchen. Four different kinds of want.
Two of them already in my bed and my bathroom and my morning, two of them watching that belonging like it was a door they were planning to kick open.
I wanted them.
All of them.
That was the problem and the truth, and the truth was getting harder to hide in rooms this small.
Kiki shifted closer as if she had heard the thought anyway.
The soft cotton of my shirt pulled across her hip, the hem riding high enough to show the crease where her thigh met the white bikini briefs underneath, and every careful thing in me took one long look at her standing barefoot in my kitchen and gave up.
"You're quiet," Kiki said.
"My kitchen's never been this loud."
Shay lifted her mug. "Get used to it, Lake Luke. This is the new baseline. Women, carbs, emotional damage, and at least one questionable towel situation per day."
"Towels are replaceable."
"Good answer."
Kiki smiled into her coffee, but it went soft around the edges, and I knew I had reached the moment before I opened my mouth. The one where I could make this smaller and safer, or I could say what I meant.
I set my mug down.
"Bring your stuff."
Kiki blinked. "Stuff?"
"Clothes. Bathroom things. Whatever you need to feel comfortable here. Not emergency comfortable. Not overnight-bag comfortable." I looked at her, then Shay. "Comfortable comfortable."
The room changed.
It didn't go quiet exactly. The coffee maker still hissed. Someone's phone buzzed on the counter. Tatum's ice clinked in her orange juice. But the air tightened around the words.
Kiki's fingers curled around her mug. "Luke."
"I mean it. The second shelf in the bathroom is empty. There's space in the closet. I can clear drawers. Bring whatever you want."
Shay's grin came fast, but her hand found mine under the counter and squeezed so hard it almost hurt. "I've got a weighted blanket."
"I know."
"No, you don't know. You've seen the blanket. You haven't accepted the blanket as a permanent resident. It's huge."
"Bring the blanket."
Her smile slipped for one naked second, and underneath it was the softest thing in the room. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Kiki set her coffee down carefully. "If I bring my good conditioner, I'm not taking it back and forth."
"Then don't."
"And groceries."
"Fine."
"You say that now, but I've got opinions about butter."
"I can live with your butter opinions."
Kiki laughed, but her eyes shone. She came around the island, slid her hand to the back of my neck, and kissed my cheek with a tenderness that made my chest feel too full. "Okay," she said near my ear. "We'll bring things."
Shay leaned across me and kissed my other cheek, messier, warmer, her hand still crushing mine under the counter. "You realize your house is about to become ninety percent girl products and ten percent fishing gear."
"Worth it."
Tatum had stopped bouncing again.
She watched Kiki and Shay like she was seeing something sacred and filthy at the same time. Her mouth was slightly open, her freckles dark against her flushed skin, and I could see the ache hit her. Not envy exactly. Not resentment. Want. She didn't want Kiki and Shay to have less.
She wanted her own version.
Penny saw it too. Her gaze moved to Tatum, then to me, then to the way Kiki stood with one hand still resting on my shoulder. Penny's smile was controlled, but her fingers had gone white around the handle of her mug.
"That's sweet," Penny said. Her voice was light enough for anyone to hear and miss the heat under it. "Very domestic."
Shay's eyes sharpened with mischief. "You say domestic like you're taking notes."
"I take excellent notes."
"Then note this," Tatum said, suddenly launching back into motion like stillness had started to burn. She planted both hands on the island and looked at me. "You're coming with us today."
"I am?"
"Yes." She pointed at me. "Bell and Rourke family fair day. County fair. Rides. Games. Food that will shorten every life in a fifteen-foot radius. My dad already asked if you were coming because he thinks you keep me from bad decisions, which is adorable and deeply inaccurate."
"Danny's not wrong."
"He's wrong about the prevention part. You mostly provide emergency response." She bounced once on her toes. "But today you're our date."
Penny's hand slid to my shoulder, warm and firm. "Our chaperone, if anyone asks."
"Our date," Tatum repeated, louder.
Penny smiled at me. "Plausibly deniable date."
That should have made me hesitate. The word date in my kitchen, with Kiki in my shirt and Shay's hand locked around mine, should have made some old responsible part of me sit up and start filing objections.
Nothing rose.
Not one objection.
I looked at Tatum's bright, hungry face and Penny's composed, dangerous smile, and I wanted the day they were offering. I wanted the risk of it. The handholding and the games and the little public touches no one could prove meant anything until they meant everything.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll go."
Tatum squealed and launched herself at me. Her arms went around my neck, her body hitting mine with a force that rocked the stool back. I caught her by reflex, hands landing at her waist, and she kissed my cheek hard enough to leave a damp spot.
"You'll regret this," she whispered.
"Probably."
"I'm going to make you win me something enormous."
"I assumed."
Penny leaned close enough that her perfume slid under all the kitchen smells, clean and expensive and warm. "I've got plans too."
"I figured."
"Visible plans."
My pulse kicked.
Kiki, merciful and absolutely not merciful at all, took her mug to the sink. "Go have fun with them. Shay and I'll get our things."
"And groceries," Shay said.
"And groceries."
"And maybe lingerie," Shay added.
Kiki sighed. "Probably lingerie."
Penny's mouth curved. Tatum was in my arms, too close and grinning like she had won something before the fair had even started.
Five minutes later, the kitchen had broken apart into motion.