Chapter 42
REID
My hand is on something warm and soft and I'm about half a second from—
Wait.
I squeeze. Nothing happens. No response. No sound. No—
That's a pillow, Reid.
My brain comes online in stages, like an old computer booting up. Fact one: I'm in my bed. Fact two: my arm is wrapped around a pillow. Fact three: my hips are doing something to that pillow that I should probably apologize for.
Fact four: Laine is not here.
I open one eye. Confirm. Pillow. Just a pillow. A pillow that smells like her shampoo, which is honestly worse because now I'm spooning a pillow and smelling it like a creep.
Great start to the morning. Really nailing it.
I flop onto my back. Stare at the ceiling.
The other side of the bed is cold. She wasn't here when I fell asleep — she was in Blake's room last night.
Movie ran late, she was already dozing on his shoulder, and I'd kissed her forehead and said goodnight because that's what we do.
That's the system. Nobody calls it a system, but it is one, and—
My door bangs open.
Laine. Bra and underwear. Hair like she lost a fight with a wind tunnel. She is not here for romance.
She goes straight for my dresser. Top drawer, second drawer, bottom drawer. Shoves things aside. Moves to the closet. Pulls shirts off hangers, checks behind things, drops to her knees to look under the bed, mumbling to herself the whole time.
Her head pops up beside me, scaring the shit out of me. "Have you seen my scrubs?"
I'm still holding the pillow against my chest like a stuffed animal.
My brain is maybe sixty percent online. She's on her hands and knees in her underwear two feet from me and I can't even appreciate it because she's radiating a stress level that suggests this is not a good time to comment on the view.
"The — which ones?"
"Any of them, Reid." She's up again. Back to the closet. "I have four sets of scrubs. Four. And I cannot find a single one in this entire house."
"Did you check the—"
"I checked the dryer. I checked the laundry basket.
I checked the bathroom, the couch, and the floor of Blake's room.
" She pulls a hoodie off a shelf, stares at it like it's personally offended her, shoves it back.
"I have a dresser in a room I don't sleep in, clothes in two closets that belong to two different men, and I'm going to be late for my shift. "
From across the hall: "What are we looking for?"
Blake. Already up, apparently. Already dressed, because Blake is the kind of person who wakes up at five and puts on actual pants.
"Scrubs!" Laine calls back. "Any color. I'm not picky anymore."
I hear his door open. Footsteps. The third bedroom door — the junk room, the catch-all, the room where Laine's flea market dresser that looks like a million bucks lives alongside moving boxes she hasn't unpacked and a couch that doesn't fit anywhere else.
I finally release the pillow and drag myself vertical. Pull on shorts. Follow the sound of drawers opening and closing.
The third bedroom looks like a storage unit had a baby with a thrift store.
Laine's dresser — the one Blake found at a flea market and spent two weekends refinishing — is pushed against the far wall.
Her couch is angled in the corner. Three boxes are stacked by the window, still taped shut.
A laundry basket sits on top of a suitcase she never fully unpacked.
Blake's standing by the chair in the corner. The one that has my dumbbells on it. He lifts the dumbbells.
Scrubs.
Neatly folded, underneath thirty pounds of iron. Because at some point I apparently used that chair as a weight rack and buried her work clothes under my equipment.
"Oh," I say.
Laine stares at the scrubs. Stares at me. Stares at the dumbbells in Blake's hands.
"How did my scrubs get under your dumbbells?"
"I... don't know."
"In a room that none of us sleep in."
"That's a fair question."
She takes the scrubs from Blake. Holds them to her chest. Closes her eyes.
"Thank you." It's directed at Blake. Then she opens her eyes and looks at the room — the boxes, the dresser, the displaced couch, the general chaos of her life since she. moved in. "I have stuff in every room of this house and none of it is where it should be."
She's not angry. She's tired. There's a difference, and I can hear it.
"I know," Blake says. Quiet. Like he's been thinking about it too.
She gets dressed. Grabs her bag. Kisses Blake on the cheek, kisses me on the mouth — quick, distracted — and she's out the door.
The house goes quiet.
Blake looks at the room. I look at Blake.
"She needs her own space," he says.
"Yeah."
He nods once. Heads for the workshop.
I stand there for another minute, looking at the flea market dresser and the boxes and the couch that doesn't fit anywhere. Three weeks she's been here and her life is still in boxes. Not because she hasn't committed — because we haven't given her anywhere to land.
Fix it, Garrison.
Tony and I grab lunch in the rig between calls — sandwiches from the gas station, the kind where you don't look too closely at the expiration date. We're parked in the shade behind the station, windows down, engine off.
"You look like shit," Tony says. Lovingly.
"Thanks, man."
"No, like — more than usual. You okay?"
"Yeah. Just..." I pick at my sandwich. "Laine stuff."
Tony nods. He's been good about this — better than I expected. When I first told him about the three of us, he was a little weird about it. But now he asks about Blake and Laine the same way he asks about anyone's partner. No big deal. Just life.
"What kind of Laine stuff?"
"The living-together kind." I lean my head back against the seat.
"She moved in three weeks ago and it's great.
It's really great. But we've got two bedrooms and three people and every night it's this.
.. thing. Whose room does she sleep in. And nobody talks about it, we just kind of — she picks, or it happens naturally, and it's fine. "
"Doesn't sound fine."
"It IS fine. Except—" I rip off a piece of bread.
Chew it. "I miss her. On the nights she's in his room.
I wake up and she's not there and I just..
. miss her. And I know he feels the same way on the nights she's with me.
And she's the one stuck in the middle trying to be fair about it, like she's managing a schedule. "
"That sucks."
"It's not anyone's fault. It's just math. Three people, two beds."
Tony looks at me like I've said something incredibly stupid.
"So get a bigger bed."
"It's not that simple."
"Dude. Get a bigger bed. One room. All three of you." He takes a bite of his sandwich. Chews. Swallows. "Problem solved."
"We can't just—"
"Why not?"
I open my mouth. Close it.
"You guys can share a bed without—" He crosses his index and middle fingers together, poking them through a circle he makes with his other hand.
"Tony."
"I'm just saying. It's just sleeping."
I sit with it. The idea. It's so simple it's stupid. One room. One bed. Big enough for three. No more counting. No more empty pillows that smell like her shampoo. No more waking up and reaching for someone who's not there.
Tony reaches over and slaps my shoulder. "You're overthinking this, bro. You always overthink this."
"I don't—"
"You do. Every time. Just talk to them."
The radio crackles. Dispatch. We're moving before I can argue.
But the idea stays. Lodges itself right behind my sternum and sits there all through the next call and the one after that.
One bed. One room.
Why does that feel like such a big deal?
Because it is. Because right now, even though we're all together, there are still two rooms. Two doors. Two separate spaces that Laine moves between. And she does it gracefully and lovingly and it's still logistics. It's still a system.
One bed means no system. One bed means this is just... how we sleep. How we live. No rotation. No negotiation. Just us.
Talk to them.
Laine beats me home. She's on the couch in sweats, feet tucked up, looking more relaxed than she did this morning.
Blake's in the kitchen — I can smell garlic and hear the sizzle of something in a pan.
Normal evening. The kind I used to take for granted and now I appreciate every detail of because I know what it feels like when it's gone.
Dinner is some creamy mushroomy thing that is so fucking good I lick my plate. We eat at the kitchen table, knees bumping. Laine tells us about a kid who came into the ER with a Lego stuck up his nose.
It's easy. It's good.
I help Blake clear the dishes. Laine pours herself a glass of wine. The kitchen is warm and smells like garlic and the evening is settling into its routine — couch, something on TV, the slow drift toward bedtime and the question nobody wants to ask.
Whose room tonight?
"So can we talk about something?" I say.
Blake turns off the faucet. Laine looks up from her glass.
"This morning," I say. "The scrubs thing."
"Reid, I wasn't mad at you about the dumbbells—"
"I know. That's not—" I lean against the counter. "It's not about the dumbbells. It's about..." I look at Blake. He's drying his hands on the dish towel, watching me. Waiting. "It's about the bed situation."
Silence. The fridge hums.
"Okay," Laine says carefully.
"I've been counting." It comes out before I can package it better. "Which room you sleep in. How many nights with me, how many with Blake. And I hate that I'm counting because it makes me feel like a jealous asshole, and I'm not jealous, I'm just—"
"You miss her," Blake says.
I look at him.
"On the nights she's not with you," he says. "You miss her."
"Yeah." My throat's tight. Stupid. "I just want to go to sleep next to both of you and wake up next to both of you, well, mostly Laine, and not have it be a — a thing every night. I don't want to count anymore."
Laine sets her wine down. "I've been counting too."
"You have?"
"Of course I have. Do you think I don't notice? Every night I'm doing math in my head — who did I sleep with last night, whose turn is it, is Blake going to say he's fine when he's not, is Reid going to joke about it when he's hurting—"
"I don't joke about—"
"You do." She's not accusing. Just honest. "And Blake goes quiet. And I'm the one in the middle trying to make it fair and it's never fair because there are two of you and one of me and someone always wakes up alone."
The kitchen is very quiet.
Blake folds the dish towel. Sets it on the counter. Precise. Neat.
"I've been thinking about the layout," he says.
We both look at him.
"The third bedroom. It should be Laine's. Her own space. Couch, books, door she can close." He pauses. "I'm working on something for that room. Workshop's off limits until it's done."
Laine's eyes soften. "Blake—"
"And the downstairs room," he continues. Not looking at either of us. Looking at the dish towel he just folded. "It's bigger than either of ours. Has its own bathroom. It's dated, but—"
"Wait." My brain catches up. "You mean—"
"One room. One bed. Big enough for three."
I stare at him.
The idea I've been carrying around all day, the thing Tony made sound so simple — Blake's already thought it through. Of course he has. He's been solving this problem in his head the same way he solves every problem: quietly, practically, without telling anyone until he has a plan.
"The bathroom needs work," he says. "Tile's old. Fixtures are original. But it's functional for now."
"Blake." Laine's voice is strange. Thick. "You've been planning this."
"I've been thinking about it."
"That's planning. For you, that's basically blueprints."
The corner of his mouth twitches. Almost.
"Would it work?" he asks. "For both of you?"
I look at Laine. She looks at me.
"Yeah," I say. "That would work."
"Really work?" Blake's eyes move between us. "Because I don't want to—"
"Blake." I put my hand on his shoulder. "One bed. All three of us. No more counting. That's what we all want. Right?"
Laine nods. Her eyes are bright.
Blake lets out a breath. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
"But what about you guys? I would love a room of my own, just to—well, sometimes, you guys are a lot. Not in a bad way, but honestly, what does it matter if Lorenzo kicks a basket? I just want to curl up and read my book in peace."
Blake's eyebrows wing up. "Lorenzo kicks a basket? Laine—"
She waves a hand at him. "Whatever. It doesn't matter. But when you get away you go to the workshop. What's Reid's space?"
"I'm good," I say.
"You don't want—"
"I've got the couch, the kitchen, and the entire outdoors." I shrug. "I don't need a room with a door. I just need to know where my people are."
Laine shakes her head, but she's smiling. "Do you promise that if that changes, you'll tell us?"
"Promise Lovebug." I'm testing out pet names. This is my current favorite. I like the way she rolls her eyes when I use it.
"Okay," Blake says again. "So. Bed."
"Bed."
We end up on the couch. Laptop balanced on Laine's knees. Mattress shopping.
"California king," Blake says.
"Bigger."
"There's not much bigger than a California king."
"There's an Alaskan king. Look." I reach over, type it in. "A hundred and eight inches. That's nine feet."
"We don't need nine feet."
"We might need nine feet. Laine, tell him we need nine feet."
"That's big right?"
"There's a Wyoming king. Eighty-four by eighty-four."
"That's seven feet square."
"Seven feet square." I look at Blake. "That's the one. That's the bed."
"Where are you going to find sheets for a seven-foot square bed?"
"The internet, Blake. It's 2026. You can find sheets for anything."
"The frame—"
"You're going to build the frame. Obviously."
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Something shifts in his expression — that look he gets when his hands are already designing something his brain hasn't approved yet.
"I could do a platform style," he says. Slow. Like he's testing it. "Low profile. Keep it simple."
"See? He's already building it in his head. Blake will build an epic platform. It'll be the best bed ever."
Blake shakes his head, but he's smiling.
"What about the mattress?" I ask. "Memory foam? Hybrid? I run hot, so we need something with cooling—"
"You run hot because you sleep wrapped in a blanket burrito."
"That's my process, Laine. Don't shame my process."
We argue for another twenty minutes about mattress specs. Foam density. Edge support. Whether pillow tops are worth it. Blake has opinions about materials that I didn't know a person could have. Laine keeps adding throw pillows to the cart.
I roll off the couch onto the living room floor. Spread my arms and legs out. Full starfish.
"This is how much space I need." I look up at Blake. "Get your tape measure."