Page 81 of Cross Check Daddies
“Can we talk?” he asks.
I nod slowly. “About what this means?”
He leans back, arm draped along the edge of the seat, the casual posture not matching the tightness in his jaw. “We used to share women, Cam. Back in college. Even before that. Remember that weekend in Tampa? That girl with the purple hair?”
A memory flashes—sticky heat, music too loud, Tanner laughing his ass off in the hallway while I tried not to trip over my jeans.
“Yeah,” I say. “But that was different.”
He nods. “It was. That wasn’t love. That was beer and boredom.”
I stare straight ahead. “This is Brooke.”
“I know,” he says. “But maybe that’s the only thing that’s changed. I mean, look at Leo. He made it work. Maddie’s in love with all three of them. Ford and Asher figured out how to stop competing. They built something.”
“That took them months.”
“So what? Maybe this takes a while, too. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.”
I glance at him then, the way his hand curls into a loose fist on the console. The way he’s not even trying to hide that this is messing with his head. “You love her.”
“Yeah,” he says. No hesitation. “I do.”
I exhale. “So do I.”
He nods once. “Then maybe we stop thinking in terms of winning and losing.”
I run my hand over my jaw. “And what? Just share?”
“If she wants all of us... yeah. We show up. We talk. We figure it out like grown-ass men.”
It hangs between us. The silence. The gravity. But under all of it, there’s a sense ofmaybe. Ofwe’ve seen this work before. Ofwhat if we can do it too.
He nods again. “What if we stopped making her choose? What if we stopped pretending we’re not all in love with the same woman?”
My throat closes up at that. Because it’s true. We’ve all been circling her like magnets—pushing and pulling and never quite detaching.
“She makes you happy,” he says. “She makes me better. I’ve never wanted anyone like this. And I know you haven’t either.”
I laugh under my breath. “You sure about that?”
“I’m not trying to compete with you.”
“That’s good,” I mutter. “You’d lose.”
He grins. “Probably.”
The air shifts between us again. Lighter this time. We sit there, both of us in our own memories, our own hopes, our own fears. But the one thing we share is her.
“I don’t want to give her up,” I say finally.
“Me neither.”
Silence again.
“What about Coach?” Tanner asks after a minute.
I sigh, tilt my head back against the headrest. “That’s a whole other mess.”
