30. Annie
Chapter 30
Annie
T he city passed in streaks of gold and white and red through the passenger window of Cole’s Escalade. Rain threatened above the skyline as the sun started to set to the west, clouds hanging heavy, waiting — like the sky knew something was about to break and was just holding its breath.
I felt the same way.
Cole hadn’t said much since we’d pulled out of my complex, his left hand loose on the steering wheel and his right resting on the center console between us like he was waiting for me to need it. I hadn’t taken it yet. I barely knew what to do with my hands other than clutch the Publix plastic bag between my fingers.
My duffel bag was at my feet, hastily packed. Colton’s shirt, a handful of my own, a couple of pairs of leggings and underwear, two bras, socks, a toothbrush, cables, and some of my notebooks. My guitar was in the back, along with a handful of random equipment Cole grabbed. He’d gotten me out of there as quickly as possible, muttering something about not wanting me to stay in the mess I’d created for a second longer than I needed to.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know if I was running away from my problems or crawling back into them. Maybe both.
The house wasn’t far now, and my stomach turned with every streetlight we passed, threatening to make me lift the plastic bag to my head. But I held out.
I didn’t know what I was going to say to Colton or Xavi. I didn’t know how I was going to explain the pregnancy, or why I’d suddenly changed my mind. But more importantly, I didn’t know what I was going to do when this baby showed up and I had no money, no promising start in music, and no space for a dream left.
I bit the inside of my cheek hard, trying to let it ground me and take my mind off my spinning thoughts. It didn’t matter — my trust fund was already basically gone in every way that mattered. Dad had made that clear. Even avoiding the guys, Dad still hadn’t let me access it, telling me I needed to get back with Elliot. I’d chosen the wrong side of Dad’s version of how my life should be even before the last few weeks.
I probably shouldn’t have gotten in the car.
I probably shouldn’t have let him back into my life. Shouldn’t have agreed to let any of them back in.
If I hadn’t met them, hadn’t sung my set that night, left quicker, something — if I hadn’t let myself fall for them — I could’ve kept chasing music, could’ve kept pretending that I was happy with Elliot and playing the part my father had come to terms with. I could’ve had music and my fund.
But…
I looked at Cole from the corner of my eye. His sharp jaw was tight but his shoulders were relaxed, his brow furrowed the way it was when he was thinking too hard. He hadn’t asked me what I wanted. He’d given me what I needed.
I dragged my hand over my face, trying to calm the nausea, and let it settle gently over my stomach. It was barely there but already the most real thing I’d ever carried, ever owned.
No. No, I didn’t wish I’d never met them. I didn’t wish for a life without this, without him, or Colton, or Xavi, or the wild, reckless decision growing inside of me. I just wished I didn’t feel so scared about it.
I’m going to figure this out, I said to it in my head, my palm resting flat against myself, protective and soothing. Even if I have to give everything up, I’ll make it work.
For you.
————
Cole’s Escalade rolled to a stop in front of the house, smooth and quiet, but it wasn’t an overarching relief to be here like I wished it was. It felt different now, like the weight of everything hadn’t quite lifted just because Cole was okay with this.
He cut the engine, his hand grasping mine. “You all right?” he asked softly.
I nodded a little too fast. “Yeah. Just… nervous.”
He kissed the back of my palm, his mouth lingering there for a moment like he wasn’t quite convinced all of this was real. But then he was getting out, circling around to my side before I could do more than get the door open. His hand was warm when it met mine again, his eyes softer than I’d ever seen from him, like he could see all of it — the weight I was carrying, the future of my life pressing down on me — and couldn’t bear the idea of letting me shoulder it alone.
Like he loved me.
I swallowed down the guilt of being too much of a pussy to say it back when he’d said it. The feeling was there, I knew it was, but I didn’t want to give it to him before I knew if everyone was on the same page. I didn’t want it to feel like I was giving someone more.
Cole led me in through the garage, a motorcycle I didn’t even know existed sitting in there, and opened the door into the kitchen. Familiar scents hit me first — their laundry detergent, Colton’s cologne, the faint scent of coffee. But then Cole moved a little, his massive frame no longer blocking my view, and Colton stood in the kitchen, his hair a mess but still tied low and his eyes wide, wearing grey sweats and a Fire hoodie.
“Annie,” he breathed.
He crossed the kitchen in two strides, his breathing a little shaky, and pulled me into a hug so tight it nearly knocked the air from my lungs. My body trembled as I wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my head in his chest, not sure if my shaking was from how much I needed to see him or from nerves — but my chest cracked open, my fingers digging into him through his hoodie.
“You’re really here,” he murmured, his voice caught somewhere between disbelief and relief. “I didn’t think—Cole said, but I didn’t…”
His arms tightened around me, his head resting on top of mine, and a flood of desperation to just tell him and get half of this over with now hit me, but Cole started talking instead. “Xavi?” he asked quietly.
Colton nodded against my head. “Distracted him before he could start for the night. Told him to shower and said I was ordering dessert delivered. He’s mostly fine right now.”
I wanted to ask what he meant, but Colton just tucked me in tighter, his hand coming up to cup the back of my head. “Should I warn him?” Cole asked.
The sound of a door creaking open had Colton reluctantly releasing me. “No time for that now,” he chuckled lightly.
Footsteps padded down the hall, heavy and casual, and just as he came into view, he paused. Xavi stood in the entryway of the hall that led down toward their bedrooms, his chest bare and a pair of black joggers hanging low on his hips, a towel slung over his shoulder, his hair damp and dripping. A fresh cut on his chin looked angry and red, but it couldn’t compete with the shock of blue in his tired, darkened eyes as he stared directly at me like I was some kind of horrifying figment of his imagination.
“Annie?”
His voice cracked in the middle of my name. My eyes were already burning from seeing Colton, but they were starting to spill over, and I couldn’t hold back the little choked sound that crawled up my throat.
Xavi crossed the space like we were kids playing the floor is lava and he truly believed it, heading to me like I was the only safe space he could be in. His arms locked around me in an instant, lifting me right off the floor in a crushing hug, one hand tucking my head into the crook of his neck and the other wrapped around my waist and back. His chest was shaking, his breathing uneven, and I wrapped my legs around his hips, pulling myself closer.
“I don’t understand,” he croaked. “You… You said?—”
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” My words were barely more than a whisper — I couldn’t handle much else. I didn’t want to cry again, but the tears were already coming, and they only hit harder the longer he held me, faster than I could blink them back.
I tried to speak again, tried to tell them why I was here as Xavi slowly but reluctantly set me back down on the ground. I wanted to, desperately needed to explain why I’d made that choice, what had been tearing me up for weeks , but my throat closed and the tears wouldn’t stop.
Colton stepped up behind me, his hand on the small of my back. “Annie…?”
I shook my head. “I need to—” My voice broke. “I need to tell you?—”
I tried, tried over and over, but it wasn’t coming, not through the sobs, not through the paralyzing fear that they wouldn’t react the same way as Cole.
“Hey, hey, you’re all right,” Cole soothed, his hand coming up to move the hair from my face, his fingers swiping through the tears and wiping them away. “Do you want me to tell them?”
I swallowed. Cole was calm, I wasn’t. Easy choice. I nodded.
He pressed a kiss to the side of my head and looked between them. “She’s pregnant.”
The room went silent. Dead silent.
Xavi blinked at him like he hadn’t quite heard him right. Colton’s head tilted a little, his gaze locked on me, his brows furrowing and the cogs clearing pausing in his head.
“She’s… what?” Colton breathed.
“Pregnant,” Cole repeated. “Seven weeks. It’s one of ours. No way to tell whose yet.”
For a long, stuttering second, it felt like time moved at a snail's pace. Xavi breathed heavily, his gaze locked on Cole’s, but Colton let out a breathless laugh, partly in disbelief and partly something I couldn’t quite place. He ran a hand through his hair, grasping it like he needed something to hold onto. “Holy shit. Holy shit , you’re serious?”
A little grin broke across Cole’s lips. “Yeah.”
Colton grabbed me with one arm around my shoulders and tucked me right back into his chest, those chuckles still occasionally hitting him like he had no other idea how to react. “Oh my god,” he said, pressing kisses to the top of my head, the side, anywhere he could reach. “Oh my god .”
Xavi reached out for me, his eyes glassy, his chest rising and falling a little roughly, and Colton let me go to him instead while muttering something excitedly to Cole. Did he… was he?—
Xavi’s hands cupped my cheeks as he dragged me to him, his lower lip wobbling, his touch far more gentle now. But he kissed me, soft and strong and tasting faintly of salty tears and beer, and as much as I wanted to melt into him, I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t until I knew this was fine.
He pulled back slowly, his eyes searching mine, his tears welling in the corners.
“We’re going to be dads !” Colton practically shouted from behind me, and Cole laughed, the sound of him clapping him somewhere on his body hitting me. “Do we need a nursery? We need a nursery. Three nurseries. No, wait, one baby, one nursery. And—oh my god, what if they want to play hockey? What if they don’t ?”
“Hey. Look at me,” Xavi murmured, drawing my attention back to him from Colton’s frantic questioning of Cole. His lips turned up just slightly, pulling at that wound on his chin, a single tear dripping from his left eye. “I’m not afraid of this. Not in the slightest. I want this. Baby, I’m happy .”
“What if they’re into, like, I don’t know, bugs or clouds or taxidermy?” Colton went on, taking two steps to the kitchen counter to grab his phone. “I know nothing about those. I need to learn everything.”
“Colton, chill, you’ve got over seven months to learn taxidermy,” Cole laughed.
Xavi’s grin cracked wider, and it was infectious, the corner of my mouth twitching. “This is going to be a mess,” he chuckled. “But I don’t care. And I don’t care if we never find out whose DNA it’s got. It’s ours. It’s yours. That’s enough to make it mine.”
My chest cracked open, the weight falling off my shoulders. “How are you guys all okay with this?—”
“Oh my god, did you know newborns can’t hold their heads up? That’s, like, a serious design flaw.”
I laughed, then, finally , for what felt like the first time in months. “Colton, that’s baby one-oh-one. Everyone knows that.”
He moved to me, pulling me gently from Xavi, and lifted me up by my waist to deposit me on the edge of the counter, my legs falling to either side of the corner. He settled between them like it was the most natural thing in the world, his hands sliding down to my hips, his grin lopsided and too big for his face, that dimple assaulting my senses. “Well, excuse me for not being up to date on the structural integrity of infants,” he said, eyes locked on mine, and for a second, everything else faded away.
He leaned in, slower than usual, like I might vanish if he rushed it. I didn’t breathe. His lips brushed against mine, gentle for once in his life, like he was asking if he was allowed.
“You know you’re allowed to kiss a pregnant woman, right?” I wiped my eyes with the back of my thumb. “You’re the only one who hasn’t yet.”
“Honestly, sweetheart, I’m gonna have to Google all of this, but thanks for telling me,” he murmured, pressing his lips to mine fully, drinking me in.
Every bit of anxiety that had built in me faded as he kissed me, the last piece of the puzzle slotting into place.
They were okay with this.
They were…
They were happy.
It hit me in a rush, flooding me, overwhelming me, threatening to drown me. I choked on whatever my mind wanted to say, nothing coming out, and reached up instead to grasp the back of Colton’s neck, burying the sound against his mouth.
I kissed him like I needed him. Like I was going to fucking die without them .
Part of me felt like I might. I had no idea how long I’d have lasted if Cole hadn’t shown up when he had.
Colton responded to my shift immediately, his hands wrapping around my waist, his mouth opening against mine with a low groan like he’d been just as desperate for this as I was. The kiss turned urgent, messy, real , and I didn’t care that I was sniffling, didn’t care that my fingers were shaking against his neck. I just needed him, needed all of them, and I needed to admit that to myself.
I could hear Xavi muttering something to Cole, his voice breaking a little, but I couldn’t quite catch what it was.
Colton pulled me flush to him, like he couldn’t stand the distance anymore. “Missed you,” he muttered against my lips, clinging to me as if the world would drop from under him if he didn’t. “Missed you so fucking much, sweetheart.”
His tongue swept against mine, rougher, more insistent, and I whimpered into it, pouring weeks of bottled-up fear and depression and anxiety and love into the way I kissed him back. My whole body shook with it, my lungs trying to pull in air that just couldn’t seem to find room, my sobs breaking through the kiss.
He tried to pull back, tried to comfort me, but I couldn’t let him. I needed more. Needed another second, another minute, another lifetime of the certainty they brought me.
They were okay. They wanted this. Wanted me.
And for the first time after weeks of feeling like a teenager back under the control of a man who was supposed to love me unconditionally and seemed to do anything but, I didn’t feel like a mistake. I felt like something chosen .
Colton let out a strangled sound when I pulled him back in, something between a gasp and a broken breath, like I’d hit a nerve. There was no teasing now, no smirk, no clever comment. No joke to mask what he was feeling. His mouth moved over mine with a desperation that seemed to crack him open, both of us moving like neither of us knew how to stop.
And then I felt it, heard it — a shudder that rippled through his chest, a hitch in his breath.
He broke the kiss to press his forehead to mine, his eyes squeezing shut like he was trying to hold it together. But his body betrayed him. His shoulders shook, his hands trembling against my back, and when his mouth found mine again, there was salt on his lips, and I had no idea if they were my tears or his.
“I need you,” he croaked. “We need you.”
He pulled me tight enough against him to lift me back up off the counter, taking every bit of my weight. Colton actually stumbled as he took one step toward the hall.
“Please tell me one of you put sheets on the new bed,” he said, his voice still cracking, one arm holding me up and the other gripping onto the wall for stability.
“I did,” Cole said. “You want her alone?”
I looked at them over Colton’s shoulder, saw the way Xavi’s eyes were already tearing up as he looked away from us, saw Cole’s unreadable expression. I knew Colton probably wanted me to himself right now, but I couldn’t bear the idea of leaving them out when it meant putting one above the others after weeks.
Colton didn’t answer. Just started moving.
I reached out over his shoulder toward them, my eyes burning, and they followed immediately.
We moved through the house in a blur, Xavi practically jogging to catch up, taking my outstretched hand in his. Cole moved casually, letting them have a moment when we’d already had a bit of alone time already.
Colton pushed open the door, his chest still shaking, his breathing ragged. He set me down on the mattress, a little springier than I remembered and a lot wider, but I didn’t have time to focus on it before Xavi was climbing on behind me as Colton ripped off his hoodie.
Arms wrapped around my waist, tugging me into Xavi’s chest, one hand flat and gentle on my stomach and the other around my chest. He didn’t kiss my skin, didn’t try to take off my clothes. Xavi just buried his head in the crook of my neck, breathing deeply like he might forget how to.
Cole appeared in the doorway a second later, his lips slightly quirked in a soft grin as he leaned back against the wall. “We about to fight over who gets to be inside of her first, or…?”
“Don’t care,” Xavi muttered, his grip tightening around me. “She’s here, that’s what matters.”
My chest cracked at that. For Xavi specifically to not insist that he was first, that he needed it, needed me, even after weeks — that was massive.
“I’m not stopping unless she asks, so good luck fighting me off if you want that,” Colton said to Cole, pulling his sweatpants off his ankles and crawling onto the bed in just his boxers, his face still damp. His mouth met mine again, softer this time, pushing me back into Xavi’s chest.
Xavi fisted my shirt in his grip, still keeping his head tucked into my neck, just breathing. Just holding .
“Tell me what I can do,” Colton muttered against my lips, but it wasn’t an order like it usually would be coming from him. It was a request . His fingers pulled on the waistband of my leggings, one hand on Xavi’s shoulder to steady himself. “Tell me what you need.”
“You,” I croaked. “All of you.”
Xavi’s arms tightened around me.
Colton took a deep, shuddering breath, and Xavi lifted me up just a hair, just enough for Colton to get my leggings and underwear down over my rear and down my thighs. Colton sat on his knees, his mouth moving languidly against mine. He pulled the fabric off my ankles and tossed it to the side, then his boxers, and snuck an arm around my waist between my body and Xavi’s, his hold gentle for once.
My chest ached as Xavi pulled at my shirt, raising it up my torso, exposing my lack of a bra. He let me go just long enough to get it up and off me, then slotted himself back into the crook of my neck, his chest shaking as he took in a trembling breath.
“Can I have her?” Colton breathed, breaking from my mouth and nudging the top of Xavi’s head with his nose. Colton never asked, just took, and the strange shift wasn’t lost on me. “Just for a minute. Please.”
Xavi took a long, deep breath in, hesitated, and untucked himself from my neck.
He let me go.
“Thank you,” Colton rasped.
He pulled me fully into him, his arms wrapping around me, our bare bodies flush against each other, my rear sitting on his lap as he sat on his knees and ankles. He kissed me desperately, not roughly, just like he needed it to survive — then lifted me enough to sink me down onto every inch of him.
I cried out against his mouth, my body not used to the stretch of it anymore, and he just held me tighter, giving me a moment to recover.
His hands went to my hips, his fingers sinking into the soft flesh, his grip tight but not bruising. He pulled me forward, encouraging me to ride, to grind on him, to take whatever I needed.
And I took. I took greedily.
Grasping him around the back of the neck for balance, I moved like god himself had ordered it, drawing a groan so deep from Colton that I wondered if I was breaking him. One hand slid around my back fully, his fingers splaying out across my ribs, and the other went to his hair, pushing it back like he couldn’t quite believe what was happening as he broke from the kiss to watch me.
“Christ, sweetheart,” he rasped, wide-eyed, mouth parted, eyes locked on my body as I moved against him with everything I had. “You… you can’t just do that and expect me to survive it.”
His head fell forward onto my shoulder, his other arm coming around me now, too, guiding me forward faster, his length hitting every spot inside of me that made me gasp and stutter.
And Xavi and Cole just… waited. Watched.
Until they didn’t.
Xavi’s clothes were gone when he tucked himself up behind me, his hand sliding around my front and dipping between my thighs. He gave me the extra friction I needed, his other hand pushing against my tailbone, urging me forward and forward and forward, over and over again.
Cole came up beside us, still in his shirt but his jeans gone, sitting up on his knees to tower over me in Colton’s lap. He took my face in his hands, looked down at me like I was the entire fucking world, and kissed me.
They were too much. Too gentle. Too nice to me about all of this. I’d abandoned them for six weeks, and it felt like they were rewarding me for it when I felt like I deserved anything but a reward.
“You’re staying,” Cole murmured against my lips. “You’re staying.”
I broke in an instant. My release washed over me, my hands fisting in Colton’s hair, his ponytail pulling loose. Xavi coaxed me through it, and Colton made me move when my body wouldn’t cooperate, keeping me going with just his arms alone.
We blurred into a mess of limbs and moans and gasping breaths. Xavi pushed Colton and me down gently, getting behind me, stretching me with his fingers as Colton lifted himself into me, before Xavi was inside of me too — that insanely overwhelming, full feeling making my head spin. Cole was patient—they all were really—and stayed near my head, adding in hands where hands were needed, kissing me to distract me when things got too much. He swapped in when Colton had found his release and mumbled things I couldn’t hear against my skin.
Even when Xavi had broken, too, he didn’t leave me. He stayed wrapped around me, refusing to let me go.
And Cole… Cole was always patient, always gentle, but it was like tonight was different. He was more than that. He was calm, happy to let them have their way first, happy to just breathe the same air as me, even though I hadn’t said it back, even though it hung in the air like a secret between us.
He still kissed me like he loved me. Touched me like he did.
They all did. He was just the only one who had said it.