Chapter Forty-Two—Riley
The suite feels smaller with all four of us in it.
Nobody sits down. Ethan’s words—I need until morning—are still in the room with us. Liam has gone very still, which means the energy has nowhere to go. Andrew is watching Ethan. Ethan is watching the middle distance with his jaw set.
I step forward and take Ethan’s hand. Not fixing anything. Just because his fingers are cold and I’ve noticed that.
“Okay,” I say. “Morning.”
He looks at me. Something behind his eyes loosens one notch.
Liam makes it about four seconds before he moves. “If we’re waiting until morning, someone give me something to do.” He looks at me. “Are you hungry? Tell me you’re hungry. I need a purpose.”
“I’m always hungry.”
“Perfect.” He’s already at the phone. “Room service. Order everything. Don’t think about it.”
Andrew drops onto the couch and opens one arm without looking at me. I take it. I fit against his side and he settles his arm around me and that’s it—no speech, no check-in. Just him being there.
Ethan stands at the window for a while. Then he sits on the ottoman and pulls out his laptop, because that’s how he processes things—by doing something with his hands that looks like work. The set of his shoulders is still tight.
Liam orders enough food for nine people. When the cart arrives, Andrew stares at it.
“Liam.”
“You can’t solve a deal problem on an empty stomach. Basic science.”
“That’s not—”
“Andrew. Buddy.” Liam pushes a plate toward Ethan. “You look like a model about to crash. Eat something.”
Ethan looks at the plate. Back at his laptop. He closes the laptop. “Thank you.”
“Welcome. Let’s eat.”
We end up on the floor. I’m not entirely sure how—the coffee table got moved, someone grabbed the pillows, and now we’re all on the carpet with room service spread in front of us and Liam is constructing what he’s calling the greatest appetizer plate in recorded hotel history.
“You’re putting shrimp on the bruschetta,” Andrew says.
“It’s called layering.”
“It’s called wrong.”
“Andrew. Flavor profiles.”
I watch Ethan take a bite of something and close his eyes for one second like he didn’t realize he was that hungry.
I watch Andrew steal a piece of bread and eat it standing up, because he’s been trying to sit down for days and still hasn’t figured out how to fully do it.
I watch Liam demolish his construction and immediately start a new one.
We talk about other things: a documentary Liam keeps meaning to watch, a project Andrew has been circling, something Ethan read that he can’t quite explain but keeps coming back to. It’s ordinary in a way nothing about this week has been.
Around eleven, Liam stretches out on the carpet using a folded cocktail napkin as a pillow. “I’m not moving,” he announces. “This is an excellent carpet. I’m staying here forever.”
“You’re on a napkin,” Andrew says.
“It’s a very good napkin.”
I lie down beside him and stare at the ceiling. The room is messy—plates, glasses, someone’s shoes, Ethan’s phone on the ottoman. He’s watching me from the couch now, not working.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says back.
“It’s going to be okay.”
He doesn’t answer right away. “I know.”
“You don’t. A little.”
That gets him—a near-smile, the barely-there kind he doesn’t give to most people. “Maybe a little.”
Liam rolls onto his side and props his head on one hand. He looks at Ethan. “For the record? When this all shakes out? I want full credit. I’ve been very emotionally available tonight.”
“You ordered seventeen appetizers,” Ethan says.
“That’s how I show love. Ask anyone.” He looks at Andrew.
“He’s not wrong,” Andrew says.
“Thank you. Andrew believes in me.”
“I agreed that food is how you show love. I didn’t say it’s a good strategy.”
“It’s a great strategy.” Liam looks at me. “Riley. Back me up.”
I reach over and squeeze his hand. He turns it into something else—lifts it and presses his mouth to the inside of my wrist. Not a performance. His eyes find mine over the top of it and something in the room changes temperature.
“Come here,” he says.
I do.
Clothes come off slower than I expect. No urgency. No rush to get past any of it. Liam pulls me onto his lap and holds me there, both hands on my face, his forehead against mine. He’s grinning but his eyes aren’t joking. “You know I’m completely done for, right? There’s no going back for me.”
“I know,” I say.
“Good.” He kisses me once, light. “Just wanted that documented.” Then again, less light.
Liam kisses down my neck, playful even now, teeth catching lightly at my skin just long enough to make me shiver.
“There it is,” he murmurs against my throat, sounding pleased with himself. “Missed that.”
“You miss literally everything dramatic about me.”
“Correct.” Another kiss, lower this time. “But this specifically? Been thinking about it for days.”
I laugh once, breathless, and his grin flashes against my skin like he won something.
Andrew comes up behind me. His hands settle at my hips and he presses a kiss to the back of my shoulder, then my neck, then the space below my ear. He doesn’t say anything because Andrew almost never does, and it doesn’t matter—his hands say everything. He’s here. He’s staying.
Andrew’s hand slides over my stomach before he leans down and presses a kiss there too—brief, almost reverent, like he’s not in a hurry to move.
“Hey,” I whisper, because something about it catches me off guard.
He just looks at me. “Couldn’t help it.”
Ethan’s expression changes at that. Not softer exactly. Worse. Like watching him hold himself together gets harder every second he keeps trying.
He comes off the couch slowly. He sits beside me, cups my face, and looks at me a beat longer. “I love you,” he says. No qualifier, no buildup. Just that.
It catches me off guard the way it always does when he goes simple. I press my palm to his chest. “I love you too. All of you.”
Ethan kisses me like the words cracked something open in him. Controlled for maybe two seconds before it stops being controlled at all.
His hand slides up my thigh, deliberate enough that I feel every inch of it.
“Tell us if anything feels wrong,” he says against my mouth.
Liam makes a quiet sound beside me. “Jesus Christ, that does something to me every time.”
Ethan ignores him completely, eyes still on mine. “I mean it.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
He exhales.
They don’t rush anything.
Liam settles between my thighs first, talking the entire time in that low amused voice that makes it impossible to stay in my head.
“There she is,” he says when I gasp. “Missed that too.”
“Liam—”
“I know, baby. I know.”
His mouth drags thorough licks, devastating between my legs until my hands are tangled in his hair and I can’t keep my hips still anymore.
Andrew kisses me while Liam works me apart piece by piece, one hand steady at the back of my neck, the other spread wide over my stomach like he can ground me through touch alone.
Ethan watches for a minute too long before he finally loses patience with himself and kisses me again, rougher now, one crack in the control finally leading to another.
“Fuck,” he mutters quietly when I make a sound against his mouth.
That one almost undoes me by itself.
Hands everywhere. Mouths everywhere. I stop tracking whose touch belongs to who after a while because they keep shifting around each other so naturally as I’m being surrounded completely.
Wanted from every direction.
Safe from every direction.
At one point it hits me all at once—everything about this, everything we almost lost—and I have to pull back long enough to breathe.
Andrew’s hand is immediately at my jaw. “Hey.”
“I’m okay.” Barely. I look at all three of them and my throat tightens anyway. “I was so scared I’d have to choose.”
Silence for half a second.
Then Ethan, quiet and absolute:
“You don’t.”
Liam presses a kiss against the inside of my knee. “Not happening.”
Andrew just shakes his head once like the idea itself is impossible.
Later, when we’re tangled together and nobody is talking, I notice Liam’s hand at my hip, the deliberate rise and fall of Andrew’s breathing, Ethan’s eyes closed for once. Actually still.
Liam presses a kiss to my temple. “You know what the deal doesn’t touch?” he says, half asleep.
“What.”
“This. Right here.” He pulls me closer. “This is already done.”
I close my eyes.
He’s right. Whatever happens tomorrow—it is.