66. Micah
SIXTY-SIX
MICAH
The kettle clicks off and I call out from the kitchen. “I’m making tea. Anyone want anything?”
“Coffee if there’s any left in the pot,” Eli says from the living room.
“I’d kill for a coffee,” Milo says, then catches himself. “Wait. I can’t have stimulants right now. So . . . sad person tea?”
“Chamomile?”
“Yeah. Chamomile. The drink of the defeated.”
I pour coffee and make tea, carrying all three through to the living room on the tray Holden bought specifically because he got tired of making multiple trips.
“Thanks,” Eli says without looking up. He’s on one end of the couch, kindergarten worksheets spread beside him, red pen moving in precise, encouraging loops.
Great job, Lily! with a star. Almost there, Jake!
The fact that this man spends his days praising five-year-olds for their penmanship and his nights doing what he does—when we aren’t benched—is a contradiction I stopped trying to reconcile a long time ago.
I set the coffee on the side table and let my hand brush his shoulder as I pass.
He doesn’t react. He never reacts to the small touches.
Just absorbs them, accepts them, keeps grading.
“Cheers,” Milo says, taking his mug from the tray.
He’s on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, laptop open to three competing designs for a platform wide enough to hold both mattresses for the fuck pit.
He put the final stitch into his ‘Full tummies before we talk murder’ cross-stitch and has already hung it in the kitchen.
Eli is horrified. But I think it’s kind of cute.
He stitched a little black-and-white kitten holding a knife in its mouth too.
But even though he’s moving from task to task to keep himself busy without any Hangmen work to do, he’s been quiet today—not the scary quiet from last week, but the productive hum of a brain chewing on something.
He blows on his tea and wrinkles his nose.
“This tastes like a field. Like someone mowed it, put all the clippings into little bags, and then convinced us all it’d make a good drink. ”
“It’s chamomile.”
“It’s punishment.”
“Drink it.”
“I’m drinking it. Under protest.”
I settle into the armchair. The house is still in a way it almost never is—Sage and Holden still haven’t made it back from the apartment, and Knox is at the club doing inventory.
Just the three of us. A home-renovation show plays on the TV that nobody’s really watching, though Milo occasionally glances up to critique the tiling choices.
Nobody has said Stephen’s name in eight days. I’ve started counting, which is its own kind of answer.
“That grout is criminal,” he mutters. “Whoever signed off on putting green glitter in grout should be tried at The Hague.”
Eli makes a noncommittal sound. His pen keeps moving. I pick up my book. I’ve been on the same page for days, reading the same paragraph over and over because my brain won’t cooperate.
Today it’s doing what it always does when Eli is in the room. Tracking the way his hand moves across the page. The way his jaw works when he’s concentrating. The way he’s pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and the muscles in his forearms ripple with the movement.
I’ve been cataloging these details for years. Long before Sage. Long before the Hangmen became whatever we are now.
The show cuts to commercial. Milo takes another sip of his chamomile and grimaces. Then he pulls a bag of gummy bears out of his pocket and starts eating one with every sip. Eli finishes a worksheet, adds it to the pile, picks up the next one. I turn a page I haven’t read.
“Can I ask you something, Eli?” Milo says, still looking at his laptop screen. The typing has stopped and there’s a quality to his stillness that tells me this isn’t a casual question. I slide a finger into my book to mark the page.
“Depends,” Eli says, focus still on his grading.
“Okay. Well, I’ll jump straight to it—would you be jealous if Micah sucked my dick?”
Eli’s pen stops. Coffee cup freezes halfway to his mouth. He turns his head very slowly toward Milo, his face caught between alarm and disbelief, as if he’s waiting for the punchline to a joke that might actually be a threat.
“Excuse me?”
“What the fuck, Milo,” I say.
“Hear me out.” Milo closes his laptop and turns to face us, cross-legged.
I know that face—the one he gets when he’s been chewing on a thought for days, decided that ripping off the Band-Aid is less painful than slow-peeling it, and is now about to drop something nuclear into polite conversation.
“The morning after my . . . episode. When we were all in bed. Micah made a comment about sucking my dick.”
“That was a joke,” I say, even though my face is suddenly very warm, because in that moment I was so relieved he was okay that I think I would have done anything to show it. “A half-joke, anyway.”
“Half. Whole—my dick didn’t think it was a joke.
My dick had opinions, Micah. And I’ve been sitting with those opinions for a week and they’re getting stronger.
Which means I can’t stop thinking about what it would actually be like.
” He bites the head off a gummy bear with zero self-consciousness.
“But I know you two have your own thing going on that you keep separate from the rest of us. And the last thing I want is my curiosity fucking up whatever that is. So I’m asking. Like an adult. With words.”
The room is very quiet. Eli is staring at Milo. I’m staring at Milo with an expression that probably reads as I cannot believe this is happening right now because I cannot believe this is actually happening right now.
“You’ve been thinking about Micah sucking your dick,” Eli repeats, as if he’s unsure what he heard.
“For a week. Yes. In vivid detail. Some really intense dreams too. I’m not proud of it. Actually, no—I am proud of it. It was very creative. There was a scenario involving the treadmill in the garage that I think you’d both appreciate more if I got a whiteboard and drew some diagrams.”
“Milo.”
“I’m just being honest. You all told me to stop keeping secrets. This is me not keeping secrets. My secret is that I want Micah’s mouth on my dick. There. Transparency achieved.”
I drop my head into my hands.
This is awkward.
“Eli,” Milo says, and his voice shifts. Softer. More careful. “I’m asking you because I respect what you two have. I’m not trying to step on that. If you say no, I’ll drop it and we never speak of this again and I’ll just quietly deal with my Micah-sexual awakening in private.”
Eli puts his pen down. He sets his coffee on the side table, leans back into the couch, and locks eyes with me. My breath catches. His eyes are dark and steady and I’m kind of struggling to breathe while I wait for his reaction.
“You offered to suck his dick?”
My cheeks flood with heat. “Context is important here. But in a nutshell, yes. I did say those words.”
“I wouldn’t be jealous,” he says slowly.
The words land and my chest goes cold and tight. My throat narrows around the truth I’ve been swallowing for months.
I thought the way things had changed between us meant I was more than the warm body he returns to when the flames with Sage burn too hot. Apparently not. I’m still the safe harbor. The well-worn path.
I’m the fuck boy he’s comfortable sharing.
“Great,” I say tightly. “Good to know.”
Eli’s eyes narrow. “What?”
“Nothing. You said you wouldn’t be jealous. Message received.”
“Micah—”
“It’s fine, Eli. Milo asked a question, you answered. Can we move on?”
Milo’s eyes dart between us like he’s watching a tennis match where the ball just exploded and set the net on fire. “Okay,” he says slowly. “That’s not the reaction I was expecting from either of you.”
“What were you expecting?” I ask.
“I don’t know. A laugh? A conversation? Maybe some light negotiation about a possible threesome? Not—” He gestures at the space between Eli and me. “Whatever this is.”
Eli’s gaze hasn’t left my face. Even with my eyes back in my book, it presses against the side of my face—that laser-focused attention that once felt like being wrapped in warmth but now feels like standing naked in harsh fluorescent light.
“You’re upset,” he says.
“I’m not upset.”
“You’re upset that I said I wouldn’t be jealous.”
“Why would I be upset about that? It’s fine. You’re not the jealous type.” I shrug.
“I live in a house where five men share one woman,” Eli says, picking up his coffee. “Jealousy isn’t a luxury any of us can afford. It would be pointless.”
It’s rational. It’s measured. It’s the most Eli answer possible.
Somewhere in the middle of it I notice I’ve stopped hearing the TV, and that the same sentence has been sitting under my eyes for a full minute—because he’s right and I hate that he’s right and I hate it even more that I wanted him to be wrong.
“Totally makes sense,” I say, and go back to my book.
Milo looks at Eli. Looks at me. Looks back at Eli. “So that’s a green light? I can explore my Micah-sexual awakening without causing a diplomatic incident?”
“That’s the theory.” Eli takes a slow sip of coffee. He’s watching me over the rim, and there’s something working behind his eyes that I can’t read. “But maybe we should test it out. Just to be sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
Eli sets the mug down. Looks at Milo. Then at me. Then back at Milo. There’s a moment where I catch the familiar tightening at the corner of his mouth that happens right before he crosses a line.
“Kiss him,” Eli says.
Milo blinks. “What?”
“You want to know what it’s like. He apparently offered. So kiss him.” Eli leans back into the couch, arms spread along the back, posture deliberately casual in a way that tells me he’s anything but. “Right here. Right now. We’ll test the theory.”
“The theory being whether or not you’re jealous?” I ask.
“That and whether Milo genuinely wants you to suck his dick.”
Milo looks at me. A gummy bear is frozen halfway to his mouth. “Micah? Your call.”
I look at Eli, searching for the irony, the sarcasm, the knowing wink that says this is a setup, a tease, a joke meant to be thrown back and forth until someone breaks and the game spills over into living room wrestling and Milo yelling “Uncle!” from underneath the couch cushions.
There’s none of that. There’s just Eli’s steady gaze, and Milo’s open, expectant face, and the pounding in my chest that’s building its own momentum, making my hands tremble in my lap.
“Now?” I ask.
“Now,” Eli confirms. He hasn’t blinked once. “Unless you want to wait for Sage to get home and make it weird? Or hotter. Depending.”
I look at Milo. “Yeah. I want to.”
Milo swallows. His cheeks are pink. He pushes the gummy bears aside and moves toward me. Not abruptly, but not slow, either—just a straightforward shift from sitting cross-legged to his knees, closing the gap between us with none of his usual feints or banter.
I put the book down and wait. Milo looks at my mouth, then my eyes, then back down.
He’s so much less certain than he is with Sage—more careful, more reverent, like he’s worried a strong wind will blow the whole scenario back into not happening.
He’s close enough that I can smell the gummy bears on his breath and see the tiny constellation of freckles over his nose that I hadn’t registered until right now.
I reach up and touch his jaw, gentle, no pressure, just an anchor point in case he wants to abort.
He doesn’t. He closes his eyes and meets me softly, his mouth barely there at first, then firmer when I don’t recoil or laugh. He doesn’t ruin the moment with a joke.
His lips are softer than I expected, and he kisses the way he does everything—enthusiastically, a little chaotically, fully committed.
His hand comes up to the side of my neck and I feel his pulse through his palm, jackrabbit fast. The man is nervous, and that might be the most disarming thing that’s ever happened to me.
It’s a good kiss. It’s a really good kiss. He tilts his head and opens his mouth and the chaos settles into a rhythm. The kiss is exploratory and warm, and I’m just starting to sink into it when—
A hand fists in my hair and yanks me back.
Before I can register what’s happening, Eli’s lips are on mine. This isn’t the tender, measured kiss Eli usually gives me. This is the other Eli—the one with teeth and hunger and a raw, possessive fury that I’ve only ever seen aimed at Sage.
Or when we’re fighting.
He kisses me like he’s trying to leave a mark. Like he’s rewriting every careful, restrained kiss he’s ever given me with this one, brutal, unequivocal answer.
When he pulls back, we’re both breathing hard. His hand is still in my hair, grip tight, his eyes black and blazing.
“Turns out it’s not pointless,” he pants.
“No?”
“I’m jealous.” His voice is low. Rough. “I’m so fucking jealous I can’t see straight.”
Something cracks open in my chest—not pain, not relief. Something bigger. Something that’s been locked in a box for years, waiting for exactly this.
He stands. Pulls me up by the front of my shirt. Starts walking me backward toward the stairs.
“Well, okay then,” Milo calls from the living room floor. “That was a good kiss. But I’m sorry you don’t get to suck my dick anymore, Micah.”
I release a startled laugh. “I’ll live,” I call back, just as Eli shoves me up the stairs and strips off his shirt. “Sorry you’re not getting that blow job anymore.”
“It’s okay,” he calls up the stairs. “I’ll jack off down here by myself.”
Eli’s mouth ticks up on one side as he shoves me onto the mattress and kicks the door closed.