Chapter 21 #2
I swallow another mouthful of whiskey. “He put her in a position where she had to choose between her safety and her privacy. I’m not calm about that, Gid.”
“I’m not either,” he says. “Which is why we need a plan that isn’t murder.”
It would be easier if we didn’t care about the kid at all. If he were just some asshole at my company or club. But he’s not. He’s Minx’s brother. He’s my brother’s son. He’s ours, in the stupid way family is yours even when they mess up badly.
“You heard her,” Gideon says after a moment. “She let him touch her in the closet. She’s not meek. If it had been anything but her choice in that moment, she would've lit the whole building on fire.”
I nod slowly. The anger shifts slightly, away from pure rage and into something more complicated. “She said no to him for weeks. She drew the line. If she crossed it, she did it knowing she was stepping over it.”
“Exactly,” Gideon says. “We don’t take that away from her just because we don’t like who she chose for a panic orgasm.”
I huff out a dark laugh. “Panic orgasm. I hate how accurate that sounds.”
He smiles too, small and crooked. “I’m not saying Talon is off the hook. I’m saying this is not a single-villain situation. He threatened her; that’s on him. She chose to let him touch her; that’s on her. The only one who gets to decide how to handle their dynamic is her.”
“And in the meantime?” I ask. “She still has class. He’s still her student.”
“We let her lead,” Gideon says simply. “We lay out our lines. We ask what she wants from us. We back her play. If she wants distance from him, we help enforce it. If she wants to confront him, we make sure she doesn’t do it alone.
If she wants to pretend nothing happened, we watch at the edge and step in only if he crosses another line. ”
I roll his words around for a second; they make sense. I hate that it makes sense, but it does.
“You’re serious about her,” I say.
He looks up, eyes steady. “Very.”
“Me too,” I admit, and something eases in my chest just saying it out loud.
We stand there for a moment, two men who have been through enough together that jealousy feels pointless.
“We could walk away,” I say, a little hoarse. “One of us. Both of us. Make things simpler.”
He snorts softly. “When have we ever taken the simple option?”
I think about her laugh. Her mouth. The way she softened when I took her to dinner. The way she looked at both of us tonight right before her brain shut down, like she had already started mentally rearranging her life around us and was both terrified, and intrigued.
“I’m not walking away,” I say. “Even if you told me you were. Which you’re not.”
“I’m not,” he confirms.
Something like relief settles between us.
“So we both stay,” I say. “We both show up tomorrow. We both tell her the truth about what we feel. We see if she wants that. All of it. Not one or the other.”
He nods slowly. “Throuple, full steam ahead.”
I roll my eyes, but smile. “Don’t ever say that phrase out loud again.”
“I’m absolutely saying it again,” he replies.
We finish our drinks in a more comfortable quiet.
After a minute, he sets his glass down. “She knows about me,” he says. “That I’m a pleasure dom. That I’m here to pull sound out of her until she goes hoarse.”
I swallow and chuckle. “Of course you said it like that.”
“She knew what she was signing up for,” he says.
“She doesn’t just know about my kink,” I tell him. “She feeds it.”
He raises a brow. “The cum thing.”
“And the breeding thing,” I admit. “We don’t use condoms. I pay for her birth control and for her testing panel every month.”
He lets out a low whistle. “You don’t play around.”
“I play very specifically,” I correct. A small smile pulls at my mouth. “She was worried you would kink-shame me.”
He snorts. “As if. I’m grateful. One less logistical worry on my side.” His gaze softens. “Thank you for that, by the way.”
“We knew we were not exclusive,” I say. “She told me from the start. She told you too. That’s the point. She wants more than one person. She deserves more than one person.”
I nod. “Good thing we like each other.”
“Terrible thing,” he says dryly. “Makes it much easier to imagine how this goes very right and very wrong.”
I laugh quietly. “Come on. We shouldn’t leave her alone all night.”
He arches a brow. “You planning to ask, or just crawl in beside her and hope she doesn’t kick us out?”
“We ask,” I say. “We always ask. Even if she’s half asleep.”
We head back down the hall to her bedroom. The door is still cracked. The room is dim, lit only by the streetlight filtering through the blinds. She’s curled mostly on her side, one hand tucked under her pillow, the other splayed over the blanket at her waist.
I knock gently on the doorframe.
Her eyes blink open, heavy with sleep. “You’re still here,” she mumbles.
“We’re heading to bed too,” I say quietly. “Do you want us on the couch or in here? Your call. We can leave if you want.”
She squints at us, blinking through cotton. “I don’t want to be alone,” she admits.
The words hit me somewhere deep.
“In here is fine,” she adds. “No funny business. No touching anything that isn’t yours to touch.”
“Understood,” I say.
“Always,” Gideon echoes.
We strip down to our underwear in the half dark, folding our clothes over the chair. I’m in boxers. Gideon in boxer briefs. Nothing fancy. Just enough so that we’re not climbing into bed in suits like lunatics.
I move to the far side of the bed and slip under the covers behind her. Gideon takes the other side. The mattress dips and adjusts, cradling the weight of all three of us.
For a moment we’re careful not to touch too much. It feels almost clinical. Three inches of air between every limb.
Then she sighs and rolls back, fitting herself against my chest like she remembers the shape of me. Her hand reaches across the bed in her sleep, fingers brushing Gideon’s forearm.
His breath hitches softly.
I rest my arm lightly around her waist, hand on top of the blanket, nothing more. Gideon slides his palm over her hand, just enough contact to answer the unspoken request.
She settles, body relaxing between us, breathing slowly and deeply.
I stare at the ceiling for a long time, listening to the rhythm of her breath and Gideon’s, feeling the warmth of their bodies next to mine.
My nephew is out there making threats he doesn't understand. Abi is playing hostess while her true self rots under the floorboards. Minx is away somewhere she shouldn’t be.
There’s a lot to fix.
But right now, in this small bed with this stubborn, complicated woman between me and the only man I trust with my worst days, it feels like we have at least chosen our side.
We’re not going anywhere.
I close my eyes and let myself believe, for just a few hours, that choosing her and choosing each other is the first step in untangling the rest.