Page 199 of Break the Ice
I exhale slowly, finding her eyes. “It means we stop thinking about what it’s supposed to be. What anyone else would call it.” My thumb brushes along the back of her hand, careful, grounding. “It means it’s ours.”
Jayden leans back against the cushions, watching both of us like he’s memorizing this. “So, we’re agreeing, then.” His mouth tilts, softer than his words. “The three of us. Not something casual. Not something temporary.”
Finley nods. “Something real.”
And it hits me then—how much I want this to last. How much I need it to.
The three of us fall quiet. Not awkward, just… full. Heavy with everything we’re not saying yet.
Her period keeps things slow, but it doesn’t stop the heat threading through every touch. The way Jayden’s fingers trace circles over the back of her hand where it rests on my thigh. The way she leans into both of us like she’s not choosing—because she doesn’t have to.
Finley stands, brushing her palms over her thighs like she’s making an announcement.
“We’re making a nest,” she says softly, already dragging the throwblanket off the back of the couch. “Proper one. Pillows, everything. Floor space only.”
Jayden grins like he’s in on the plan already. Me? I just watch her for a second.
Because that one word—nest—punches straight through my chest.
We used to do this. Back before everything got complicated and tainted… too loud, we’d drag the ratty old quilt from her grandma’s linen closet out to the barn on her grandparents’ farm. Stack up hay bales like walls, pile them with every pillow we could sneak out of the house, and hide from the world until it was safe to come back out. Sometimes we’d exist in silence. Sometimes we’d talk until we fell asleep with the fireflies buzzing behind the slats in the wood.
It was our nest.
A safe place no one ever found us.
Finley doesn’t say anything, but I know she remembers too. The softness in her face tells me before anything else does.
“Jayden, cushions,” she orders now, tossing him the first pillow from the couch. “Eli, more blankets from the hall closet.”
I go, because of course I do.
Bossy mode suits her. It lights up all the dingy nooks and crannies I’ve lived with for too long.
By the time I come back, they’re both on the floor—Finley spreading the big blanket out, Jayden dropping pillows along the edges like he’s done this before.
“Corners up,” she tells him, nudging his knee with hers. “It has to feel like a nest.”
“You’re very demanding for someone who’s not even building it,” Jayden says, smirking as he rolls a second blanket and tucks it along the edges.
“I’m supervising,” she quips. “Big difference.”
I drop the last blanket on the growing pile, stepping back as she fusses with the corners until she’s satisfied.
“Not as tall as the hay bales, but it’s good enough,” she sighs.
The living room doesn’t look like the barn but watching her kneel in the middle of all the cushions and piled blankets while the city glows through the windows—yeah, it feels the same.
Safe.
Like maybe I could breathe here.
She sits back on her heels, surveying our work. “Okay. Perfect.”
Jayden sprawls first, all long limbs and easy confidence, tugging herdown beside him before reaching to snag the edge of the blanket for me, too.
I sink onto the pillows on her other side. Close enough that her shoulder brushes mine when she settles back, that Jayden’s hand skims mine as he reaches across her for the remote. It’s nothing. Barely there. But my pulse stutters anyway.
And then there’s Finley—warm against my side, hair spilling over my arm where it rests along the back of the cushions, her fingers absently tracing the seam of my jeans like she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.
