Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
LUCA
We were in the best fucking mood we’d been in since she pulled away.
Actually—scratch that.
We were in the best mood of our lives .
I couldn’t stop grinning. Bastion kept humming under his breath while he dismantled her bed frame, barely looking up from the power drill.
It was dangerous, the kind of high we were on.
A win we’d been starving for.
Because last night…
She’d snapped.
Walked into the dorm, tension on her face, hands in the air like she was surrendering to something that’d been chewing her alive.
And then she said it.
“I like you both.”
Just like that. With her voice shaking.
With those big, gorgeous eyes of hers going glossy—nearly in tears.
Not because she didn’t want us .
But because she did. So fucking much it scared her.
“I can’t choose,” she said. “You’re not the same. You’re… different. And I like you both for different reasons.”
Her voice cracked. “And I don’t want to ruin you. You need each other. I won’t be the thing that breaks you apart.”
If that didn’t make us want her more…
She wanted us.
She wanted this. As much as we did.
And somehow she still thought she was the problem. Like her loving us equally was going to damage something.
No, baby.
That was the whole fucking point.
I didn’t care that she’d walked out right after, retreating to her brother’s wing of the dorms like the confession had short-circuited her.
She’d said it.
We heard her.
And now?
Now we were building the fucking bed.
One bed.
No more pulling her between ours.
No more separate beds, separate touches, separate secrets.
We’d already taken her heart.
Now we were claiming the space.
“Get the slats,” Bastion muttered.
I tossed them over, still grinning like a maniac. “Think she’ll cry when she sees it?”
“She’ll cry when she feels it,” he said, tone dark with promise.
We still had to dismantle our own beds.
This wasn’t about me and Bastion.
This was about her .
I caught one of our cousins lingering outside the door earlier, eyes narrowing when he saw the size of the new frame. He knew what it meant. Knew it wasn’t just some fancy mattress.
It was a declaration.
She's not on the market. She's not on offer. She's ours.
But what I really couldn’t wait for…
Was the look on her face.
Her bed? Gone.
Ours ? Gone.
Just this one now.
One bed, one answer.
The kind of answer you feel in your body long before your mind catches up.
She’d walk in, probably tired, probably expecting to crash in her usual corner like nothing had changed.
Except everything had.
This bed gave her no escape route.
No cushion of neutrality.
No safe zone to fake distance or pretend like last night’s confession hadn’t happened.
She’d be climbing into this bed. Every night.
Between us.
No more armchair curling.
No more different shower routes.
No more pretending we didn’t notice her slipping away like she hadn’t carved her name into both our chests.
This bed was the final word.
And I wanted to watch her process that.
Wanted to see her eyes flick across the room, realize hers was gone.
Then ours.
Then that this frame—the king-sized, custom-ordered, one-mattress answer to everything —was right there in the center .
Where she belonged.
Where we belonged.
I wanted to see her lips part.
Wanted to see her take that slow step forward, already unraveling under the weight of it.
Because this?
This wasn’t furniture.
It was a statement.
You’re ours, baby.
You told us you couldn’t choose.
So we didn’t give you the option.
And if she thought that bed was just for sleeping?
She had no fucking idea what we had planned.