24. Sage
TWENTY-FOUR
SAGE
“You’re back!”
Jamie looks up from the menu he’s reading and gives me an easy smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes.
“Couldn’t stay away.”
“Have you found the spot with the best coffee yet?” I top off his mug, watching the dark stream fill the white ceramic.
“Honestly? The coffee is pretty mid everywhere. But the pie here is what everyone’s talking about.”
I grin at that. “Told you.”
I’m half a step away when a shadow passes across the glass. Knox.
Seems the afternoon shift has arrived.
I had Milo for breakfast service. Now the chaos gremlin has left, replaced by a mountain.
The hottest mountain I’ve ever seen . . .
Knox pushes through the door and takes the stool next to Jamie.
Besides Holden and Eli, the guys have graduated from skulking outside to planting themselves at my counter like paying customers.
It’s cute, the hovering. I appreciate it, even if I still don’t know what to do with five men orbiting my life for ten days and counting.
Jamie glances at Knox, then does a fast double-take, like he’s seeing a bear stroll into a Starbucks.
“Afternoon, Knox,” I sing-song, sliding a menu in front of him.
Knox slides the menu back to me then gives Jamie a nod. He props his elbows on the counter and absently rolls a silver quarter over the knuckles of one hand.
“Coffee,” he says, eyes meeting mine. “Please.”
“Coming right up.”
I collect the menu from both him and Jamie while Jamie just stares at me wide-eyed and mouths, “That voice,” and mimes chills by wiggling his fingers over his forearm.
As I pour Knox’s coffee, I bite back a grin and mouth back, “I know, right?” then say out loud, “Jamie, let me get you a slice of pie. Cherry again?”
“Perfect. And maybe a scoop of ice cream,” he calls after me. “I need to cool down.”
I snort and head to the kitchen window, trying to focus on the ticket in my hand instead of the mess inside my head.
It’s been a week since Micah’s mouth was on mine, his hand between my thighs. A week since I came apart against his fingers with Eli at the foot of the bed in that low, frayed voice—slower, let her suck your fingers, make her come—his hand hovering close without ever touching me.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. Seven days later and I still press my thighs together every time it surfaces.
I should not be this turned on at work.
Micah’s come by most days since. We talk, we kiss, we fool around a little—but it hasn’t gone further than his hands and his mouth and me wanting more than either of us has reached for yet. He’s in no rush. We’ve got time, baby girl, he says, like that’s a thing a person can promise.
He fixed my lock, too, after he kicked the door in. Sort of. It catches now if you lift the handle and swear at it, which is more than it did before, so I’m calling it a win.
Eli, though. Eli’s been a black hole. No coffee at the counter, no amber eyes on me across the room or sandwiches in the park, nothing—just an Eli-shaped absence where the most intense man I’ve ever met used to stand.
I feel like I broke something I didn’t know I was holding, and I hate how much I want it back.
For the first few days I wore his jacket whenever I was alone.
Pathetic, I know. I’d bury my face in the collar, chasing the cedar-and-soap smell of him like an addict working a dwindling supply.
I even slept in it. Which is exactly how I ruined it—wore it so much it stopped smelling like Eli and started smelling like me.
The last piece of him I had, and I loved it right out of existence.
Now it just lives draped over the back of the chair in my room, and I try not to look at it too long.
The bell over the door tings, and for one split second I hold my breath and hope it’s him, but it’s just some kid coming to meet his friends.
I wipe my hands on my apron and send the ticket to the window, watching Knox and Jamie through the pass.
Jamie’s attempting small talk—I can see his mouth moving, his hands gesturing—while Knox sits like a monolith, offering nothing but the occasional nod.
I dip my head, grinning.
I wonder if it was supposed to be Eli sitting there today watching me. The thought needles at me all the way through cutting Jamie’s pie.
Because it’s been an entire week without seeing him—even from a distance. So where the hell is he?
And why can’t I stop dreaming about him touching me? It’s like every time I close my eyes I have a vision of what his gorgeous eyes would look like all dark and turned on as he looks up at me from between my legs. It’s at that point in my fantasy that Micah leans in and kisses me . . .
I shake my head, clearing the image before my knees get too soft.
What am I even thinking?
Not long ago, I was fighting against putting myself out there and now I’m suddenly fantasizing about the idea of having two men?
My eyes drift back to Knox, those big hands, that deep timbre.
Not just two.
So much has changed since the party. It’s like the Sage I was before died on that beach, and in her place is the woman I am now, the woman whose life has blended with a group of masked men. And somehow my brain has fallen down into my clit.
I’m constantly horny, and I don’t even recognize myself.
I gave up fighting it days ago. The truth just kept surfacing no matter how hard I pushed it down.
I want them. All of them.
Not just Micah, with his gentle hands and his baby girl. Not just Eli, with his sad eyes and everything he won’t let himself take.
All of them.
Knox, who barely speaks and watches me like I’m the most interesting thing he’s ever seen—a week of charged silences stacked between us like kindling nobody’ll light.
Milo, who hasn’t stopped complimenting me since he introduced himself over several pieces of pie.
Even Holden—who I haven’t laid eyes on outside the front seat of his car since that first morning, parked across the street like a stakeout, and I genuinely cannot decide if a cop watching me from an unmarked sedan is the hottest or most unhinged thing that’s ever happened to me.
It’s hot. It’s really fucking hot.
Five men. Five killers. Five strangers who watched me commit murder and decided to protect me instead of run.
Last night I lay in the dark and let myself imagine it.
All of them. Milo’s mouth between my legs, Holden’s hands bruising my hips, Knox’s weight, Eli’s name in my throat, Micah’s fingers.
I stopped being ashamed of the picture somewhere around two a.m. and masturbated until my hand cramped and my thighs shook and I still woke up aching.
Which is probably why I nearly drop Jamie’s pie when I turn back around and catch Knox watching me.
Not watching my hands. My face.
Like he can somehow see every filthy thought I just had.
I grab the ramekin of ice cream Danny set on the pass and take it to Jamie. “Cherry pie à la mode.” I set it in front of him with a flourish.
He looks delighted and takes a forkful, making an exaggerated “damn that’s good” face, closing his eyes and letting a totally inappropriate moan escape.
“It’s even better than I remember.” He scoops in another mouthful. “I will never eat pie anywhere else again.”
“Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, then,” I say with a smile.
Knox watches the exchange without expression, but I catch the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. Almost a smile. When his eyes swing back to me, the smile drops and his pupils blow out.
Maybe I should start packing my vibrator for work.
I’m not going to make it without spontaneously coming if these men keep showing up looking at me like that.
I turn away, check on other customers, bus a few tables. And wonder if I’m broken now. If something in my wiring got crossed the night Brock died, fusing violence and desire into some new, monstrous thing.
Or if maybe—and this is the thought I keep circling back to, the one that scares me most—I’ve always been like this, and it just took the right circumstances to bring it out.
When I return to the counter, Jamie and I fall into easy conversation. He talks about his thesis on environmental policy. I talk about my regulars and their quirks. And we both discuss the mysterious stain on the tiles no one can explain.
He’s easy to talk to. Easy to be around. Someone I’m open to becoming friends with.
It feels good. Normal. And with Amy spending more time at Tyler’s than she spends at home lately, it’s exactly what I need.
Knox stays for hours. He doesn’t order food, just nurses his coffee and watches. When Jamie finally pays his bill and waves goodbye with a promise to come back for more pie, Knox is still there.
“You don’t have to sit at the counter all day,” I tell him during a lull. “You could at least eat something.”
“Maybe a piece of that pie?”
“Cherry?” I ask, already plating a slice.
He nods. “Fine. Sure.”
I set it down and slide him a fork. We’re both quiet as he digs in, but I sense he’s working his way up to something.
The way he eats—efficient, methodical, never quite relaxing, never taking his eyes off me for more than a second.
I should feel like prey. The rabbit under the hawk’s shadow.
Instead I wonder what it would take to make the hawk finally drop.
“I think Jamie likes you,” he says, voice low.
I snort, surprised he thinks that. “I don’t think Jamie is into girls.”
Knox shrugs, the corded muscle of his forearm flexing as he spears the pie. “Doesn’t matter. You light up when you talk to him.”
The statement detonates in my chest. Not because I disagree, but because I feel seen in a way I didn’t agree to.
Ever since the jetty, I’ve been longing for normalcy.
I’ve wished every day for Amy to walk back through our front door and suggest we watch a reality show together and order takeout.
I don’t think she’s avoiding me. Not on purpose, anyway.
But I do miss her. And talking to Jamie makes that ache a little less.
I just didn’t realize I was wearing the joy of friendship on my face.