Chapter 12 #3
Gray’s forehead rested on my shoulder.
“Desk is fine,” he said.
I started laughing so hard my legs nearly slipped from around him.
“I am going to kill you.”
“After April?”
I kissed his temple.
“Definitely after April.”
* * *
At nine twenty-three that night, all four of us sat on the back deck with the children asleep upstairs and Mango under his cage cover inside muttering something about pants.
Nobody had called a meeting.
Gray had simply put four drinks on the patio table after bedtime and said, “We need to talk about summer ending.”
Rafe had looked toward the kitchen clock.
“You know it’s still June, right?”
“Yes.”
“Just checking. The tone suggested September had breached the perimeter.”
Cole sat beside me.
Gray took the chair across from us.
Rafe dropped into the remaining one and looked at me.
“Did something happen?”
I nodded.
“I told Gray I want to be here after my contract.”
Rafe’s joking expression disappeared.
Cole went very still beside me.
Gray said nothing.
I looked around the table.
“I don’t know exactly what that means yet. I don’t want to pretend I do. But I also don’t want to keep acting like the six-week date is a cliff everybody has agreed not to look at.”
Rafe leaned forward, forearms on his knees.
“I don’t want you to leave because the invoice is complete.”
There was no joke on it.
That mattered.
Cole looked at me.
“Neither do I.”
I turned to Gray.
He gave me the smallest irritated look.
“We covered this.”
“Public record.”
“I want you here.”
My chest hurt.
Good hurt was still suspiciously painful.
I folded my hands around my glass.
“Then I need this not to become me fitting myself into three lives that stay exactly the same.”
Cole nodded.
Rafe said, “They won’t.”
Gray said, “They can’t.”
I looked at him.
He continued.
“If you stay, the structure changes. That’s the point.”
Rafe glanced at him. “That was almost romantic.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
Cole’s hand settled on my thigh under the table.
“What do you need now? Not April. Now.”
I thought about it.
The guest room. The cottage. Three bedrooms. Three men.
Three children with different custody schedules.
My camera cases multiplying like expensive rabbits.
The fact that I had been sleeping in the main house because I wanted to, then waking some mornings with no idea whether I was supposed to choose a door or wait to be invited through one.
“I don’t want a rotation,” I said.
Rafe nodded immediately. “Good. I would fail rotational scheduling out of spite.”
Gray ignored him.
I continued.
“I want the guest room to stay mine for now. I want the cottage to stay work space and private space. If I sleep with one of you, it’s because we want that night, not because Tuesday belongs to Gray and Thursday belongs to Cole.”
“Agreed,” Cole said.
“Absolutely,” Rafe said.
Gray nodded.
I looked at all three of them.
“And jealousy doesn’t become a bill I pay by making myself smaller.”
Rafe’s mouth tightened.
“No.”
Cole said, “No.”
Gray said, “If one of us has a problem, we say it to the people involved.”
“Like adults?” I asked.
Rafe groaned. “Please don’t use Evan language in our sacred deck summit.”
I laughed.
The tension loosened without vanishing.
Rafe reached across the table and took my hand.
“For what it’s worth, I am going to be jealous again.”
“I know.”
“Possibly stupidly.”
“Almost certainly.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
He squeezed my fingers.
“But I don’t want monogamy from you. I want you. There is a difference.”
Cole’s hand tightened once on my thigh.
Gray watched Rafe with an expression I could not quite read until he said, “Same.”
Cole looked at me.
“Same.”
There it was.
Not a fantasy where nobody got jealous.
Not three men politely taking turns.
Three separate choices pointing at the same woman, with the men also choosing not to destroy each other over it.
I swallowed.
“Okay.”
Rafe smiled. “That is an underwhelming response to three declarations.”
“I’m experiencing a lot of data.”
Gray’s mouth twitched.
Cole leaned over and kissed my temple.
Inside the house, Mango shouted, “BAD IDEA!”
Rafe looked toward the door.
“He has terrible timing.”
“He has excellent timing,” I said.
Gray stood and collected two empty glasses.
“Conversation complete?”
I looked at the three men.
At the house behind them.
At the cottage beyond the yard with my lights glowing through its windows because I’d forgotten to turn them off.
Two weeks until Evan arrived in Cape Mercy.
A little less than a month after that until Tide & Timber stopped owing me anything except the last payment on my contract.
For the first time, those were two separate facts.
I reached for Cole with one hand and Rafe with the other while Gray stopped beside my chair long enough for me to catch two fingers through his belt loop.
“Not complete,” I said.
Gray looked down at my hand.
“No?”
I looked at all three of them.
“Ongoing.”
Rafe’s smile softened.
Cole’s thumb moved over my knuckles.
Gray covered my hand with his.
Inside, Mango muttered something filthy under the cover.
Nobody moved to translate.