20. Cole
Chapter 20
Cole
S oft, golden light leaked through the thin crack in the curtains that Colton had tugged shut last night as I stirred awake. There was an arm against my back, and a small, warm body tucked into my chest, my body resting fully on my right. My arm was completely numb, and as my bleary eyes adjusted to what was in front of me, the reason for that was clear — not only was Annie resting her head on my bicep, but Xavi was perfectly content on my wrist.
I didn’t fully remember Xavi and her coming back in last night after Annie had woken up on my chest, whispering adorably about needing the bathroom. I had the vague recollection of blankets shifting and her body curling up against my side, but the rest was a blur.
The scent of the three of them hung in the air, Xavi’s and Colton’s so far in the background from their familiarity, but Annie’s overpowered the rest. She smelled like cherries and something deeper, darker, heartier — like fresh brewed black tea. I tucked my nose into the top of her head, careful not to wake her, and breathed her in for a moment, letting the heaviness of last night sink into my bones, letting myself feel the weight of it all. What we were doing. What we were trying.
She’d taken up that new spot between us like she belonged there. And maybe she did. Hell, maybe that was the wildest part of all of this.
But even as I held her, I couldn’t help but notice Xav. He looked more peaceful than I’d seen him in months—granted, I didn’t often see him this zonked—but even the hint of darker-colored skin beneath his eyes seemed to have lightened just a tad.
I held still for a moment longer, taking a deep breath, then painstakingly slowly slid my arm out from under Xavi and Annie, the blood rushing back in and leaving me with pins and needles. Annie twitched a little, and I held my breath, watching as Xavi tucked her into him tighter. But Colton was out like a log behind me.
I felt like a kid at a sleepover slipping beneath the covers and crawling my way backward down the bed, trying not to wake them, and when I finally emerged out the other end triumphant, I couldn't help but take in the scene. Three bodies, Colton further off from the rest, and an empty spot where I’d been. It beckoned me back, but I took a deep breath and grabbed my discarded clothes from the floor, knowing damn well I’d only end up with a headache if I stayed in bed.
The house was quiet as I padded down the hall, pulling on my shirt and boxer briefs as I walked. The hall light was still on from last night, and I flipped the switch as I passed it, checking the thermostat with bleary eyes before stepping through to the kitchen and down our personal hallway.
I slipped into my room and ducked into the en-suite, shutting the door behind me, and leaned onto the sink, staring at myself in the mirror.
There were shadows under my eyes. Not the standard ones I always wore, but new ones. The kind you earned from something new weighing on you like an anchor.
It wasn’t exactly a bad anchor, though.
I brushed my teeth, splashed my face with cold water, and ran a damp hand through my sleep-wrecked hair. My shirt was wrinkled from it lying crumpled on the floor all night, and I considered changing, but I didn’t have the energy to. Especially not when the scent of her lingered on it.
What I desperately needed was coffee, but Xavi was still fast asleep and he was the only one who knew how to work the damn espresso machine. But I also knew we needed to talk, without Annie, about what happened last night. So I had two good excuses to wake the guys.
I pulled on a pair of pajama pants and stumbled groggily back into the hall, passing Colton and Xavi’s rooms, and back across the house to the guest room. The door creaked lightly as I pushed it open, but they were still out, all three of them. Annie was curled up with her back against Xavi’s front, her arm taking up half the space I’d left behind, and Colton had moved a little closer in, his hand resting on top of Annie’s like it was the most natural thing in the world, the three of them so deep in sleep as if the world hadn’t somehow changed overnight.
But it had. At least, it felt like it had.
I crossed to the bed, coming up behind Xavi, and grasped his shoulder, shaking him lightly. “Xav,” I whispered, trying not to stir him too much so I wouldn’t end up waking Annie. “Xav, up and at ‘em.”
His eyes blinked open slowly, confused and bleary, his forehead tucked against the back of Annie’s head. He shifted slightly, looking up at me, then closed his eyes and turned his head back into her in defiance.
Fucks sake.
“Xav,” I whispered again. “Come on, you can come back to bed in a few if you want to.”
He took a deep breath in before exhaling and slowly detaching himself from Annie, his movements careful but annoyed. He pushed back to the edge of the bed and I moved, walking to the other side, and prayed to whatever god existed that Colton wouldn’t be a nightmare this morning.
I shook Colton a little rougher, his body far enough from Annie’s that I wasn’t too worried, and he grunted his disapproval, his hand slapping at mine. “Fuck off,” he grumbled.
My eyes darted to Annie, but she was still completely out. “Colton, up,” I whispered. “Don’t wake Annie.”
He scrubbed at his eyes and looked across the bed at her, his tensed body softening just a hair, and let out an exasperated sigh as he glanced over his shoulder at me. “Why do I have to get up?”
“Because the three of us should chat before she’s awake,” I said quietly, my patience waning. “I’ll make you breakfast to sweeten the deal.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Pancakes.”
“Fine.”
“With chocolate chips.”
“Are you a child, now?”
“Fine, I’ll add my own chocolate chips,” he murmured, throwing the covers off himself and scooching to the edge of the bed.
Xavi stretched on the other side of the room, his boxers on, his hoodie hanging limply around his bare chest. Colton pushed up and out of the bed, still naked as the day he was born, and I rolled my eyes, throwing his sweatpants at him in a desperate, silent plea for him to put on something .
————
The kitchen smelled of freshly ground coffee and sizzling batter. I stood in front of the stove, my eyes glued to the pancake on the pan, waiting patiently for the little bubbles to form on the wet side. Xavi hovered a few feet away, his hair pointing in every which direction and his hoodie’s sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he pulled a few shots of espresso. Colton, on the other hand, was half draped across the breakfast bar behind me, his ass firmly planted on a barstool, his head resting on his folded arms like he could fall asleep right there.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
I grumbled a few choice words as I reached for the chocolate chips, dipping my hand into the bag of semi-sweets and dropping a few of them onto the batter side of the pancake before flipping it.
“Are you complaining?” Colton muttered, and I turned to face him, watching as his head lifted just a hair off his arm.
I stared at him unblinking as I dumped half the bag of chocolate chips into the batter with theatrical reluctance. “Your high-maintenance sweet tooth is a menace.”
He grunted and let his head fall back onto his folded arms, his voice muffled. “If I didn’t have a sweet tooth, you’d have no Girl Scout cookies to steal from me in the dead of night when you think I won’t notice.”
I snorted. “Girl Scout cookies and desecrating my pancake integrity are vastly different things.”
“You’re desecrating my peace. ”
“Can you two please not bicker before I’ve had coffee?” Xavi muttered, sliding a cup of something black across the breakfast bar to Colton before passing me a cappuccino with a little heart on top of it. He picked up his own mug, a smaller and stronger milky thing that I could never remember the name of, and leaned onto the counter beside me. “You said you wanted to talk about last night. The floor is yours.”
I let the pancake sizzle a second longer before picking it up with my spatula and depositing it onto a waiting plate beside it. I ladled in another scoop of batter and cringed at the burning chocolate. “How’s everyone feeling about it?”
“Fuckin’ fantastic,” Colton yawned.
“Surprisingly positive,” Xavi shrugged.
“She’s just…” Colton wrapped his fingers around the mug of coffee and peeled himself up off the counter like his limbs weighed twice as much as normal. “I don’t know. Words are hard when I’m tired.”
“So the three of us are on the same page, at least.” I glanced at the pancake again, watching, waiting for the bubbles. “I was genuinely worried I’d be a little jealous after walking in on Jenny, but… nothing.”
Xavi gave me a small, genuine smile that looked like it took everything in him to give at this hour, and Colton watched me warily from his spot at the breakfast bar, his eyelids still heavy from sleep.
“That’s probably an improvement on your part,” Xavi chuckled lightly. “Last time we shared, I’m pretty sure it was you who got cagey about sharing.”
I flipped the pancake over and nudged him with my shoulder. “Yeah, well, guess I passed on the torch.”
Xav swirled his coffee around in his tiny cup, the movement so precise that not a single drop slipped over the rim. “Felt like a goddamn lunatic last night,” he said. “I didn’t want to let go of her, even when you were pushing me to.”
Colton snorted. “Yeah, it was obvious.”
“You’re not exactly subtle, Xav,” I added.
Xavi glanced between us over the rim of his mug as he took a sip, but he didn’t argue it. “She just makes me… possessive, I guess. It’s not just about the sex, either. I keep thinking about someone else getting close to her, keep thinking about Elliot , and I just want to punch something.”
I let out a low chuckle and removed the pancake before ladling another one in. “Yeah, it’s not just you.”
“Wow. The old man wants to punch something? You’re never like that off the ice,” Colton said, raising his mug to his lips to block out his view just as I turned to glare at him.
“Look, I just… I don’t want to freak anyone out, but you guys know I’ve not really been open to any kind of relationship since… But I’m open to it with her. With you guys,” I explained, the words feeling a little foreign on my tongue. “I think a good way to balance it is some alone time, with each of us. Not always all three of us at once. As long as she’s still happy to do this. I just want time with her where I can feel like she’s mine. To know it.”
Xavi hummed thoughtfully, his eyes locked on his coffee. “Yeah. But she’s mine too.”
Colton chuckled as he set his mug back down. “All of ours,” he corrected. “But I get what you mean. I think you’re right.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward or heavy—just steady, grounded, all of us feeling varying degrees of the same thing.
“We can do this, I think,” I said finally, flipping the pancake. “As long as we each get our own time with her now and then. I don’t mind all of us together, too, but we can try to work it out so no one has her more often than anyone else since we’re all halfway obsessed already.”
Xavi shook his head slightly, his gaze locked somewhere in the middle distance. “Is it bad that it’s not halfway for me?”
“Nah,” I answered. “You lock on quick.”
“I say we just jump headfirst,” Colton said, pushing his hands back through his untied hair. “Fuck just bringing her to LA, let’s just bring her to the whole stretch.”
“The whole Pacific Division?” I asked, raising a brow at him. “That’s, like, two weeks.”
He nodded. “Two weeks of knowing she’s safe, two weeks of time with her where we can squeeze it in. If she wants to be with us, she might as well see what that entails upfront. Otherwise, we won’t see her for two weeks. We might as well offer it.”
Xavi trained his eyes on him. “You sure you want to do that?” he asked. “It’s not that I don’t, it’s just a lot of time, and a fuckton of logistics if we’re going to try to keep her on the down-low. A lot of flights we’ll need to buy for her, a lot of potential questions if the guys notice she’s at every game.”
“And a lot of us for her to handle,” I added. “It’ll be harder to convince her to come for two weeks than it was for two days.”
Colton’s voice was gruffer than before, his hand scrubbing over his face like he didn’t want to admit it out loud. “Fuck if I care. I’m crazy about her.”
Xavi looked at him like he was trying to piece a puzzle together. “Yeah. Me too.”
I plucked the pancake off the pan and poured out another one, my heart a little unsteady in my chest. “Then we ask her.”
Colton leaned back in his stool, his grin growing. “Later. Let’s not scare her off before she’s eaten and had a coffee.”