28. Maya #2
"Confirmed. In front of you. You heard the call."
"Richard has the data. No one says where it came from. He received an anonymous tip. That's the story."
"That's the story."
"The drawer is closed. Permanently." I hold his eyes. "If you open it again, if you hide the opening, I leave. Because I'll be choosing to walk away from a man who makes decisions about my life while I'm sleeping."
"I understand."
"Say something real. Give me something besides 'I understand.'"
His jaw works. The composure is gone and what's left is raw. His hands shake against his thighs, the tremor visible from the table.
"I don't know if I can trust myself." His voice is rough, barely audible. "That's what scares me."
The refrigerator hums behind him.
"That," I say. "That's real."
I reach across the space between the table and the chair, take his hand, and turn it over. My thumb presses into his palm, where his pulse beats close to the surface.
"You broke my trust," I say. "Again. Rebuilding takes longer the second time."
"I know."
"But you told us. Yesterday morning, you walked into the bedroom and showed us the phone. You brought it into the room. You showed us the data instead of funneling it to Richard and pretending it never happened."
His pulse kicks under my thumb.
"Still, you chose to tell us." I press harder, pinning that pulse beneath my skin. "That matters. The man who raised you would never have walked into a room and handed someone the evidence of his own betrayal."
Cole pushes off the counter and steps behind Dante. He grips the back of Dante's neck, the grip Dante knows from six years. Dante's eyes close.
"You sat in that chair," Cole says quietly. "You could have stood up. Walking out was an option. You stayed." His grip tightens. "That's different from the version of you I was afraid of."
Dante's hand tightens on mine. His other reaches back and grips Cole's arm.
"Wednesday," I say. "The hearing. Richard presents the evidence. The parole violation, the letters, the campus visit, the surveillance data. We end this in a courtroom."
"And if the courtroom doesn't end it?" Dante asks.
The question he can't stop asking.
His thumb presses into the center of my palm.
"Then we figure it out together and in the open." I look at him. "My terms. All our voices. That's the deal. The only one."
He nods once.
I slide off the table, cross the kitchen, and stand in front of him. He's still in the chair, looking up at me.
My hand goes to his jaw and tilts his face up. His face rests in my palm, the dark eyes wet at the edges.
"I love you," I say. "I'm furious with you. I still love you. You're going to have to live with both for a while."
His hand comes up and covers mine on his jaw.
Holds.
"I can do that," he says.
"Good." I let go. Step back. "Now someone make me dinner. I haven't eaten since yesterday."
Cole is already at the stove before I finish the sentence. Dante stands from the chair. His legs are stiff from sitting rigid without shifting. He crosses to the cabinet. Takes down three mugs. Fills the kettle.
Three mugs.
Back on the counter, in my spot, I sit with bare feet dangling. Cole chops garlic. Dante stands at the stove with the kettle, the skin around his eyes still red, his hands steady on the handle.
The kitchen fills with oil and garlic and the low hiss of the pan. Dante sets my tea on the counter beside me at the right temperature. His fingers brush my knee when he sets the mug down.
The touch is tentative, testing. My breath catches for half a beat while the contact registers in the wrong part of my nervous system. Then my body settles.
I stay where I am.
Across from me, Cole plates pasta. Three bowls. He eats standing at the counter across from me. Dante eats at the table, in the same chair. My bowl stays warm in my hands. Cole doesn't sit. Dante doesn't look away from the table.
I finish eating, set the bowl aside, and look at Dante.
"Come here," I say.
He stands, crosses to me, and stops a foot away.
Waiting.
Still, he waits for permission to enter the space in front of the counter where I sit.
"Closer."
He steps in. My knees bracket his hips. His hands hover at his sides.
I take them and place them on my thighs. His fingers tighten, involuntary, and then ease. The touch is careful. His thumbs stay still until I breathe.
"You're shaking," I say.
"Yes."
Then I pull his shirt over his head. The tattoos, the chest, the body I've mapped with my hands and my mouth in the dark and in the light.
I run my fingers down his sternum. Lower.
Find the waistband. Lower still, over the denim, over the metal.
The ridges of the barbells through the fabric.
I trace the line of them, slow, deliberate, possessive.
Counting.
Six.
Mine.
His breath catches. His hands grip my thighs harder.
"This is mine," I say, my palm pressing against the piercing through his jeans. "All of this is mine. The drawer, the rules, the trust, this. You make decisions about what's mine by asking first."
"Yours," he says, the word scraped out.
"Cole." I don't look away from Dante. "Get over here."
Cole rounds the counter. His hand presses into my lower back. The three of us fill the space between the counter and the stove, garlic and olive oil still sharp in the air.
I unbutton Dante's jeans and push them low enough. My hand closes around him, the barbells warm under my palm, and his head drops back.
Half-naked, he stands in the kitchen with his throat working and his hands open at his sides while I touch him like I know exactly what belongs to me.
I trace each barbell. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. My fingers map the metal the way they've mapped it every time since the first time, but different now.
On the counter. In the kitchen. With the lights on.
My hand stays there until his breath breaks.
"Maya." His voice breaks. "Please."
I look at Cole. He's watching my hand on Dante, his eyes dark, his breath shallow. His gaze flicks from my grip to Dante's face, then back to me. The dishes are still in the sink.
"Both of you," I say. "Right here."
The playfulness arrives without announcement. Cole grins, the real grin, the one that breaks through the management, and pulls his shirt off.
Dante adjusts his jeans lower and lifts me off the counter. My legs wrap around his waist, the barbells pressing against me through the thin fabric of my underwear, the sensation sharp and familiar. He sets me on the edge of the table, the same table, six inches from where it started.
Cole is behind him, mouth on his shoulder, palms on his hips. Dante's breath catches with my mouth in front of him and Cole's hands on his hips.
My underwear comes off. Behind Dante's back, Cole tears a condom wrapper and passes it forward.
Dante rolls it on without breaking eye contact with me.
His mouth lands on my throat. Cole's hands reach around Dante's sides and close over my breasts, and the laugh that comes out of me is unexpected, real, the absurdity of six hands trying to coordinate in a space designed for chopping onions.
"This is logistically complicated," Cole says, his mouth against Dante's neck, his hands on me.
"You're a forward. Figure it out."
He does. They both do.
Dante pushes into me and the barbells do what they always do, the ridged pressure that changes everything, and I make the sound I always make. This time, I'm watching his face while Cole presses against his back. Dante's mouth parts. His eyes go dark. Both hands tighten on my hips.
Cole's hands slide down from my breasts, around Dante's hip, finding the space between us.
His fingers find my clit while Dante moves, and the coordination is imperfect, fumbled, human.
His finger slips. Dante adjusts. I laugh again, and the laugh turns into a gasp as they find the rhythm on a kitchen table beside cooling pasta.
"Harder," I say to Dante.
His hips snap. The barbells drag on the thrust. My hands grip the table edge.
Cole's mouth is on Dante's ear, his hand working me in steady circles. Dante's face is in my neck, his breathing ragged, his body caught between the two of us, the woman in front and the man behind.
I come first. My hand grips Dante's hair, pulling his face up so he watches me.
The orgasm rolls through me, and I hold his eyes the entire time.
He sees everything. My face, my body, my fingers in his hair, me undone on the table in the kitchen with his body inside mine and his piercing pressed against every nerve.
Dante follows. His forehead drops to my shoulder. The sound he makes is quiet, broken, grateful. Cole's hand is on the back of his neck.
The grip holds.
Against Dante's back, Cole finishes, his mouth muffling the sound against Dante's shoulder. Three people in a kitchen. Three bodies in a space too small for the scale of what they feel.
The room goes quiet around our breathing.
Dante's forehead is still on my shoulder. My fingers in his hair. Cole pressed against both of us, his arms around Dante, his hand lacing through mine on the table edge.
"The table moved again," Cole says against Dante's skin.
"The table is having a day," I say.
Dante lifts his head. His eyes are steady. The red has faded from the edges. He looks at me. At Cole behind him. At the kitchen around us, the three mugs on the counter, the dishes in the sink, the pasta congealing in bowls.
"I can do the dishes," he says quietly.
"You can do the dishes."
I sit on the counter again, in my spot, bare feet dangling. Cole drops into a chair at the displaced table and stretches his legs out. Dante runs water in the sink.
Water runs. Cole's chair scrapes against the floor. Tea cools beside my hip. Dante's hands move through soap and ceramic.
The table is a foot from where it started.