Page 44 of The Triple Play

There wasn’t a chance in hell she didn’t know what he was talking about. The way she’d flushed when I said it, the way she’d kissed me when I told her I’d been thinking about it — it had been in her head. And now it was in all of ours.

Cole shot me a warning glare, one that clearly said —If you’ve lied about this, I will fucking kill you myself.

“Sharing,” he said, the word slipping from him with an ease that made my skin go cold. He was absolutely compartmentalizing this. “We’re willing to try that. The three of us.”

She jerked a little in my arms, her breathing even faster. “You—what?”

Xavi looked away, his hold on his beer hard enough that I was worried we’d need to clean up even more glass. Cole just held her gaze, unwavering, unshaken. And I… I felt like a rock was sinking into my stomach and pulling my entire body down with it. Maybe I’d misjudged, maybe I’d misread the way she’d reacted yesterday.

“Is that something you would be open to?” Cole asked her, crossing his arms over his chest. “Or something you wouldwantat all?”

She squirmed in my arms, and I released her, praying to whatever god was listening that she didn’t hop off the stool and run out of the house. But she didn’t. She spun slightly, enough to see all three of us, and looked between us like we’d all grown a second head. “You can’t be serious.”

“Dead serious, sweetheart,” I rasped, taking a step back to give her space.

“I’ll be entirely honest and say I didn’t like the idea at first,” Cole said. He pushed a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, his chest expanding and filling the space of his shirt. “Neither did Xavi.”

“Yeah, no shit,” she breathed.

“But none of us want to make you choose,” I cut in. “Because if one of us ‘wins’, the others lose. And none of us want that. And I’m pretty sure you don’t want that either.”

She looked directly at me, her mouth parted, her eyes wide as hell. “What if someone gets hurt?”

I tried to control the twitch of my lips — she wasn’t saying no, and I wanted to smile about that, but I needed to stay serious. “The possibility of someone getting hurt is a better option, in our opinion, than two of us definitely being hurt.”

She took a deep breath, her head tipping back a little as she thought it over.

“We cantryit, if you’re open to it,” Cole said softly.

Her lips rolled between her teeth as she slowly lowered her head, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “I won’t… I won’tlie. Of course I’ve thought about it. But I just…” She sighed, glancing around at all of us. “How the hell would this even work?”

Cole shrugged. “Depends on what you want, An. The basics would be pretty easy. We’d all need to be open with each other, and communicate if we’re having a problem with it. We’d need to go over what you’d be okay with, what lines you’d not want crossed, but… we can figure it out. What are you worried about in particular?”

“I don’t even know. This is insane. You guys are insane.” She shook her head, her auburn waves shifting around her shoulders. “But I mean, yeah, I’d be… open. You’re all okay with this?”

I’d be… open.

I moved immediately.

I didn’t care that Cole and Xavi were right there, didn’t care that the tension was high. She was open to it. She wasopen to it.

My legs ate up the single step I’d left between us, and I crowded her, one hand grasping her by the back of her neck, my mouth descending and crashing against hers.

She jolted in my grasp, but she didn’t pull away. Her hands were hesitant, but within a second they were on the front of my hoodie, curling tight like she needed something to anchor herself with. She kissed me back, timid at first and then full, hungry, like she’d tossed restraint out the window despite both of them being within feet of us. Her breath caught in that little stuttering gasp I’d already memorized from the night before, and I let myself sink into her, intothis, for a second, maybe two, maybe more. Time felt so strange with her.

When I finally pulled back, I kept my hand on her neck, my forehead resting against hers. “I already told you I’m open to it,” I grinned. “I meant it. I’m all in if you are.”

Her lashes fluttered, her forehead shifting against mine as she nodded. I pulled back a little more, drinking in the way she looked — her eyelids half lowered, her lips parted, cheeks flushed. I couldn’t notice anything else, not until I felt a hand on my shoulder gently tugging backward, and I went with it, letting go of her entirely as Cole stepped into the space he’d created.

He leaned down to her, studying her, his fingers brushing across her jaw like he was afraid she might run. But she didn’t. And neither did I.

“I’ll ask you this time instead of assuming,” he said softly, cupping her chin and lifting it, making her look up at him with that overwhelmed expression, like she was in some sort of fever dream she wasn’t trying to get out of, like she was high off this. Off us. “Can I kiss you, Annie?”

She nodded. I braced myself.

He leaned in slower than I had, gentle, as if she were made of glass — and kissed her. And for whatever reason had driven me to suggest any of this in the first place, I wasn’t hit with an ounce of jealousy. She melted into him almost as easily as she had with me, her hand sliding up his chest and wrapping around his neck, and his shoulders sank with the kind of relief that hadweight.

He pulled back, letting her go, his Adam’s apple moving on a swallow. “I’m okay with it,” he murmured. “With you, with us.”

---