Chapter 24 Reid
REID
This is as good as it gets.
Maya's thigh under my head, warm through denim, while I lay resting on the sofa. Her sketchpad balanced on her knee, pencil moving in quick, precise strokes, and the sound of graphite on paper is the only thing in the room competing with the fire.
The fingers of her other hand are in my hair. Absent, rhythmic, tracing the line behind my ear and down my neck while she draws.
The fire pops. Owen is in the armchair to my left, book open, reading with that particular stillness he has. Every few minutes his eyes lift from the page. To her.
He's been doing that all week. Since whatever happened between them. The boundary he maintained for weeks has been replaced by something quieter and more certain.
If someone had told me six months ago that this would be my life, I'd have checked them for a concussion.
But here it is.
It's not smooth. I won't pretend it is.
Tuesday, Jace came up behind her while she was cooking and put his mouth on her neck and she tipped her head back into him and laughed, and I watched from the doorway and something in my gut tightened.
Not anger. Not even jealousy, exactly. Just the awareness that the version of Maya who laughs like that with Jace is a version of her I haven't unlocked yet.
I'm not built for sharing. Years of holding the line alone.
Every decision running through me. The Marines trained it.
Guardianship confirmed it. And now I'm learning to stand beside two men who care about the same woman I care about, and some days it works and some days I catch myself noticing threats that aren't threats at all, just Jace's hand on her hip or Owen's voice going soft in the other room.
Good-hearted jealousy. That's what Jace called it.
The front door opens. Cold air. Boot steps.
Jace comes in pulling his jacket off, cheeks red from the cold. Late March, and the valley is starting to thaw. The days are longer. The snow line has retreated up the ridge. The air today had that particular edge to it, still cold but with something underneath, something alive and turning.
"It's Friday," Jace announces. "And we are sitting in this cabin like monks and I'm calling it. We're going out."
Owen closes his book. His index finger marks the page. He looks at Jace with the expression he uses when he's evaluating whether something deserves engagement. Apparently it does, because he doesn't open the book again.
I lift my head from Maya's lap. Look at her. "What do you think, sweetheart? Want to go out?"
She hesitates. I see it, the quick calculation behind her eyes, the risk assessment she runs on every interaction with the outside world. Then something settles and she nods.
"Yeah," she says. "I think I'd like that."
"The Rusty Nail," I say. "There’s a karaoke night. It’s supposed to be a fundraiser of some sorts.”
"Karaoke." Jace grins. "Reid, are you going to sing?"
"No."
"You should sing."
"I should not."
"Owen, tell him he should sing."
"He should not sing," Owen says, without looking up.
Maya laughs and it fills the room.
"Go get ready," I say to all of them.
She slides out from under me, taking the warmth of her lap with her, and disappears down the hall. Jace drops into the spot she vacated, and I give him a look that moves him to the other end of the sofa.
The three of us. The living room. The fire settling into coals.
I don't build up to it. That's not how I work. I just state it plainly.
"How are we doing with this?" I say.
Jace looks at me. Owen sets his book on the armrest.
"I need to hear it," I say. "Let’s talk straight."
Jace leans back. Runs a hand through his hair. "I'm good," he says. "Better than good. And I think... The way to do this is we follow her lead. She sets the pace. She decides what she's comfortable with." He looks at me. "That's how I see it."
I nod. That's Jace. Freedom as framework.
Owen takes longer. I expected that.
"There are no other men I'd trust with this," he says. "And I wouldn't share her with anyone else. The fact that it's the two of you is why it works."
He pauses. Looks at the fire.
"I spent a long time watching from the outside," he says. Quieter now. "I'm not doing that anymore. Whatever this is, I'm in it."
The room holds the words.
"Good," I say. Because that's enough.
I hear her footsteps in the hall.
Maya comes around the corner and the room changes temperature.
Jeans. Red sweater. Simple. Her hair is down, which she almost never wears it, dark and falling past her shoulders. She's put something on her lips, just a touch of color, and her eyes have that slight brightness that means she's nervous and trying not to show it.
She looks beautiful.
I go still, all attention narrowing to a single point. Her.
Jace grins, slow, his eyes tracking from her face down the red sweater and back up, and the grin is the kind that makes promises.
Owen stands from his chair. He looks at her in a brief unguarded moment before the composure returns, and if you weren't watching for it you'd miss it entirely.
"Let's go," I say.
We all pile into my truck. And although it has bench sitting in the front, Jace and Owen both insist on sitting in the back with Maya in the middle.Which means her knee is against Owen's thigh and her shoulder is against Jace's arm and I'm driving and watching the rearview mirror more than strictly necessary.
The road unspools in the headlights. The valley is dark except for the scattered lights of Briarhaven ahead.
The Rusty Nail is packed. The parking lot is full and the bass from the band inside vibrates through the truck doors before we're out of the cab.
Jace navigates the crowd like water finding cracks and secures a table near the back wall.
We order. Beer for me and Jace, whiskey for Owen, a glass of wine for Maya.
I watch her acclimate. She's scanning. Exits, faces, the distance to the door. I recognize the behavior because I have run the same calculations since I was twenty.
A hand lands on my shoulder. Heavy. Familiar.
"Well, holy hell. Reid Calloway in a bar on a Friday night." Colt Mercer. Big grin, beer in his other hand, wearing the flannel shirt he wears to everything that isn't the veterinary clinic. "Somebody check for signs of the apocalypse."
"Colt."
"Seriously, man. I was starting to think you'd gone full hermit. Building a compound. Training the wolves to bring you groceries."
Lucinda appears at his side. Dark hair, sharp eyes, a smile that suggests she manages Colt with patience and selective hearing.
Colt looks at our table. At Maya between Jace and Owen. At the way Jace's arm is draped on the back of Maya's chair. At Owen's hand resting on Maya's knee under the table.
His grin widens. "I see you’ve all come down to party."
"Colt." Lucinda's hand connects with his chest, the flat of her palm, a gesture that has the practiced efficiency of long repetition. She steps forward and extends her hand to Maya. "Don't mind him. He was raised by animals. I'm Lucinda."
Maya takes her hand. "Maya."
"It's good to meet you, Maya." Lucinda's eyes are warm, direct, and carry the specific understanding of a woman who knows exactly what she's looking at because she lives a version of it. "We should head back. Gabriel's holding our table and Beau is threatening to sign us all up for duets."
She says the names easily. Gabriel and Beau. Two more husbands at a table in the same bar, in the same small town, on the same Friday night. She lets the information land without emphasis. Then she looks at Maya, and the look is brief and clear and says: you're not alone on this.
Maya's shoulders drop a quarter inch.
They leave. Maya watches them go.
"So," Jace says, leaning toward Maya, "about that dance. I've been told I'm an excellent dancer. Mostly by myself, but the point stands."
He's already standing, hand extended, performing the full Jace charm offense. Maya looks at his hand. Starts to reach for it.
I stand up.
"My dance," I say.
The moment holds for one beat, two, and then Jace grins and sits back down and raises his beer in a salute that is equal parts concession and amusement.
"By all means, old man. Age before beauty."
I extend my hand to Maya. She takes it. Her fingers are cool from the wine glass and they tighten around mine as I lead her through the crowd to the small clearing near the band where a few couples are swaying in the amber light.
The band is playing something slow. Country, old school, the kind of song that doesn't need to be good to serve its purpose.
I pull her in. My hand finds her waist, the curve of it through the soft red sweater.
Her other hand comes up to my shoulder and her fingers curl into the fabric there and she steps close enough that I feel her breath against my throat.
We move. Not much. The slow, gravitational sway of two bodies that have already learned each other's rhythms in private and are now, for the first time, letting the public see.
Her forehead tips against my jaw. The music vibrates through the floorboards and up through my boots and into my bones. And I feel her shiver.
"This okay?" I ask. Low. Against her hair.
"This is okay," she says. And then, quieter: "This is really okay."
I hold her.
And I want to believe that this is enough. That what we're building has a foundation that goes deeper than these good weeks.
The song ends. I don't let go.
Not yet.