Page 83 of The Triple Play

I tried to speak again, tried to tell them why I was here as Xavi slowly but reluctantly set me back down on the ground. I wanted to, desperately needed to explain why I’d made that choice, what had been tearing me up forweeks, but my throat closed and the tears wouldn’t stop.

Colton stepped up behind me, his hand on the small of my back. “Annie…?”

I shook my head. “I need to—” My voice broke. “I need to tell you?—”

I tried, tried over and over, but it wasn’t coming, not through the sobs, not through the paralyzing fear that they wouldn’t react the same way as Cole.

“Hey, hey, you’re all right,” Cole soothed, his hand coming up to move the hair from my face, his fingers swiping through the tears and wiping them away. “Do you want me to tell them?”

I swallowed. Cole was calm, I wasn’t. Easy choice. I nodded.

He pressed a kiss to the side of my head and looked between them. “She’s pregnant.”

The room went silent. Dead silent.

Xavi blinked at him like he hadn’t quite heard him right. Colton’s head tilted a little, his gaze locked on me, his brows furrowing and the cogs clearing pausing in his head.

“She’s… what?” Colton breathed.

“Pregnant,” Cole repeated. “Seven weeks. It’s one of ours. No way to tell whose yet.”

For a long, stuttering second, it felt like time moved at a snail's pace. Xavi breathed heavily, his gaze locked on Cole’s, but Colton let out a breathless laugh, partly in disbelief and partly something I couldn’t quite place. He ran a hand through his hair, grasping it like he needed something to hold onto. “Holy shit. Holyshit, you’re serious?”

A little grin broke across Cole’s lips. “Yeah.”

Colton grabbed me with one arm around my shoulders and tucked me right back into his chest, those chuckles still occasionally hitting him like he had no other idea how to react. “Oh my god,” he said, pressing kisses to the top of my head, the side, anywhere he could reach. “Oh mygod.”

Xavi reached out for me, his eyes glassy, his chest rising and falling a little roughly, and Colton let me go to him instead while muttering something excitedly to Cole. Did he… was he?—

Xavi’s hands cupped my cheeks as he dragged me to him, his lower lip wobbling, his touch far more gentle now. But he kissed me, soft and strong and tasting faintly of salty tears and beer, and as much as I wanted to melt into him, I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t until I knew this was fine.

He pulled back slowly, his eyes searching mine, his tears welling in the corners.

“We’re going to bedads!” Colton practically shouted from behind me, and Cole laughed, the sound of him clapping him somewhere on his body hitting me. “Do we need a nursery? We need a nursery. Three nurseries. No, wait, one baby, one nursery. And—oh my god, what if they want to play hockey? What if theydon’t?”

“Hey. Look at me,” Xavi murmured, drawing my attention back to him from Colton’s frantic questioning of Cole. His lips turned up just slightly, pulling at that wound on his chin, a single tear dripping from his left eye. “I’m not afraid of this. Not in the slightest. I want this. Baby, I’mhappy.”

“What if they’re into, like, I don’t know, bugs or clouds or taxidermy?” Colton went on, taking two steps to the kitchen counter to grab his phone. “I know nothing about those. I need to learn everything.”

“Colton, chill, you’ve got over seven months to learn taxidermy,” Cole laughed.

Xavi’s grin cracked wider, and it was infectious, the corner of my mouth twitching. “This is going to be a mess,” he chuckled. “But I don’t care. And I don’t care if we never find out whose DNA it’s got. It’s ours. It’s yours. That’s enough to make it mine.”

My chest cracked open, the weight falling off my shoulders. “How are you guys all okay with this?—”

“Oh my god, did you know newborns can’t hold their heads up? That’s, like, a serious design flaw.”

I laughed, then,finally, for what felt like the first time in months. “Colton, that’s baby one-oh-one. Everyone knows that.”

He moved to me, pulling me gently from Xavi, and lifted me up by my waist to deposit me on the edge of the counter, my legs falling to either side of the corner. He settled between them like it was the most natural thing in the world, his hands sliding down to my hips, his grin lopsided and too big for his face, that dimple assaulting my senses. “Well, excuse me for not being up to date on the structural integrity of infants,” he said, eyes locked on mine, and for a second, everything else faded away.

He leaned in, slower than usual, like I might vanish if he rushed it. I didn’t breathe. His lips brushed against mine, gentle for once in his life, like he was asking if he was allowed.

“You know you’re allowed to kiss a pregnant woman, right?” I wiped my eyes with the back of my thumb. “You’re the only one who hasn’t yet.”

“Honestly, sweetheart, I’m gonna have to Googleallof this, but thanks for telling me,” he murmured, pressing his lips to mine fully, drinking me in.

Every bit of anxiety that had built in me faded as he kissed me, the last piece of the puzzle slotting into place.

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