10. Party Composition
Chapter ten
Party Composition
Griffin
Forty-eight hours of busy paramedic work gives you a lot of time to think—just not in full thoughts.
There are showers, drives back to the station after calls, meals eaten at strange hours, and those short stretches in the middle of the night when everyone else is sleeping, and I’m staring at the ceiling of the bunk room waiting for the tones to drop again.
Every one of those quiet moments has eventually circled back to Cami and Ronan.
I knew what was happening on Friday before I left for work.
And I’m okay with that.
I’ve asked myself the question enough times in the last two days that I’m confident in the answer.
What I haven’t figured out is whether knowing something is going to happen and coming home after it has happened will feel the same.
By the time I pull into the driveway Sunday morning, though, I’m exhausted enough that if my brain has decided to manufacture a jealousy-fueled existential crisis, it’s going to have to wait until I’ve slept more than ninety consecutive minutes and had some coffee.
Apparently if I failed a Wisdom save somewhere around hour thirty-six, I’m too tired to deal with the consequences yet.
The house is quiet when I let myself in. I drop my bag by the bottom of the stairs, toe off my shoes, and follow the smell of coffee to the kitchen.
Ronan is there alone, which doesn’t surprise me. What does feel a little unfair is that he somehow looks completely put together while I feel like I’ve been beaten with a fire hose for two straight days.
He looks up from his coffee. “Good morning.”
“Debatable.”
The corner of his mouth lifts as I head for the refrigerator.
“Long shift?”
“Too long,” I admit.
“Tired?”
I just glare at him.
“I guess I knew the answer to that,” he says, still with a small smile.
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Polite conversation.”
“You might need more practice.”
That gets an actual smile from him, and I turn back to pour myself a glass of orange juice.
For a few seconds, neither of us says anything, but there’s something different about the silence.
Or maybe there isn’t, and I’ve just spent entirely too much of the last two days thinking about the fact that not only did this man fuck my wife—probably several times—over the last few days, but he also did so creatively.
Which is a hell of a thought to have while I watch him add creamer to his coffee.
I take a sip of orange juice before leaning back against the counter.
“So…” I trail off—that’s all I say—just one word.
After a moment, Ronan lifts an eyebrow. “So?”
Asshole.
“You and Cami have a good time Friday night?”
His expression barely changes, maybe a little more guarded. “We did.”
I wait for more, but apparently that’s all I’m getting. “Good talk.”
That makes his mouth twitch into that smirk again. “Do you want details?”
“No.” The answer comes out fast enough that he laughs.
Pointing at him with my orange juice glass still in my hand, I affirm, “No. Absolutely not. I do not need details.”
“Then, I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Neither am I, which is probably the problem.”
I stare down at my glass before feeling like I need to defend myself. “I’m not jealous.”
His expression changes when I look up at him—not much, but enough that I know I finally said something he needs to truly respond to.
“I didn’t think you would be.”
“Neither did I, but I’ve had a long couple of days to wonder if I’d suddenly discover I was wrong when I got home.”
“And?”
I consider my answer seriously because Ronan will know if I give him an easy answer just to end the conversation.
“I don’t think I was wrong,” I pause, still considering my words, “it does feel different now, though.”
His head tilts. “How?”
“More real… I guess.”
He nods once. “That makes sense.”
There’s no immediate reassurance that everything is fine, no attempt to convince me I shouldn’t feel whatever I’m feeling. Just an acknowledgement that there’s probably a difference between theoretically knowing and standing in the kitchen next to him after.
Strangely, that’s all I need from him.
“Where is she?”
“Sleeping,” he answers, then adds, “in her own room.”
I glance at my watch.
“She had a long night,” he answers the unasked question, and his mouth twitches again.
My eyes slowly return to him.
Ronan takes another sip of coffee with a completely neutral expression.
Asshole.
“I said I didn’t want details.”
“I didn’t give you any.”
This time his smile is unmistakable.
I shake my head, but there’s no ugly twist in my chest, no sudden urge to ask him what they did or stake some ridiculous claim because he got something from her that—in some essence or another—belongs to me.
If anything, there’s a weird hint of competitiveness underneath my amusement.
But it’s not the kind where I need to win.
More like I know exactly what I have with her, and nothing he did on Friday or last night changes it.
I’ve had months with Cami. Ronan is building something entirely different with her, and somehow, I think I finally understand that those two things don’t need to compete for space.
I’m still thinking about that when I hear footsteps behind me.
I know they’re hers without looking.
When I do turn, Cami is standing in the doorway with her hair piled into some kind of beautiful disaster on top of her head, wearing sleep shorts and an oversized T-shirt.
The second she sees me, her entire demeanor changes.
“You’re home,” she greets me with a huge smile.
And there it is.
Whatever tiny piece of me spent the last forty-eight hours wondering whether anything would feel different disappears so completely that I almost feel stupid for worrying about it.
I barely set my glass down on the counter before she launches herself at me.
My arms wrap around her automatically, lifting her just enough that her feet leave the floor as she buries her face in my neck.
“Hi, baby,” I whisper.
“You smell like the station.”
I laugh into her hair. “Aren’t you full of compliments this morning?”
“I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
Intentionally, I didn’t text her very much this shift. I knew she had plans, and I didn’t want to intrude on those either by interrupting or making her feel guilty—not that I really thought she would, but still.
I kiss her temple and hold her for another few seconds before setting her back on her feet, but she doesn’t go anywhere. Her arms stay wrapped around me as she tips her face up, and I kiss her properly.
There’s nothing tentative about it. Nothing that feels like she is apologizing or needs to reassure me or prove something after being with Ronan.
It’s just us—familiar and easy and ours.
Something settles that I hadn’t realized was unsettled.
When she pulls away, she studies my face for a moment. “You okay?”
There are about six different questions in those two words.
“Yeah.”
She keeps studying me.
I smile and brush some of the disaster she calls hair away from her face. “Cami, I’m okay—really.”
Her shoulders relax a fraction. “Good.”
There’s enough satisfaction in the word that I narrow my eyes at her.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“That is absolutely something on your face,” she counters.
“I don’t have a something face,” I tease.
“You have approximately four hundred faces. I know all of them.”
Behind me, Ronan laughs quietly.
Cami looks over my shoulder at him.
And I see it.
It’s subtle enough that if I didn’t know every version of Cami, I might miss it. Her expression softens differently when she looks at him now, and something in Ronan’s face changes in response.
It’s not overtly sexual. It’s just familiarity.
A new kind of familiarity that I’m not sure was there when I left on Friday morning.
This is the moment I’ve been wondering about for two days—the part I couldn’t test while I was lying in a bunk room asking myself whether I was really as okay with all this as I thought I was.
Because now I’m looking at it.
Something shifted in them over the last few days, and I can see the evidence right in front of me.
I wait for jealousy.
For the possessive part of me that spent months believing Cami was supposed to be mine and mine alone to rear its ugly head.
It doesn’t.
What I feel is curiosity, relief, and—if I’m being completely fucking honest with myself—enough interest in what happened between them that I’m not examining that particular reaction before I’ve slept.
Cami looks at me. “You need a bed.”
I smile. “Desperately.”
“Come on.” She takes my hand, but before I follow her, my eyes flick to Ronan.
It’s instinctive.
Unfortunately, both of them catch it.
Now all three of us are standing in the kitchen thinking about the thing none of us has actually said out loud this morning.
Because we all know that I’ve become a bit impatient.
Something that used to terrify me, now I am amped up and excited for. Ever since that switch flipped for me, it has become something I want. Ronan wanted to have some time with her alone first.
Which, honestly, is completely fair.
But now that it’s happened…
Ronan told me we’d talk about it, and after spending two days and nights occasionally imagining what it might actually look like, the idea feels significantly less hypothetical than every other conversation we’ve had about it.
Ronan sets his mug on the counter and looks at me as though he sees entirely too much. “Not now.”
I lower my brows. “I wasn’t asking for anything right now.”
“You were thinking loudly,” he rebuts.
Cami snorts. “You know you do that.”
“Fantastic. You have me surrounded.”
She kisses my jaw before tugging on my hand. “Come sleep.”
I start to follow her, but—
“Griffin.” Something in Ronan’s tone makes me turn back. “When you’ve slept, you and I can talk.”
Cami’s fingers tighten slightly around mine.
For one second, the weight of what we’re actually discussion lands differently.
The three of us.
Not Cami being with Ronan behind a closed door while I’m somewhere else. Not me casually admitting that the thought of the three of us together is hot.
Me in the room with them.
Ronan touching my wife.
Me touching her while he watches.