“Oh, for fucks sake,” Zack snapped. “The more she cries and begs, the harder I get, Noah. How the fuck is that a brick for a happy and healthy relationship?” Her softness had crept in between the walls of his heart. Vining and intertwining into the darkest parts of him. She wasn’t asking him to change, but God, she was changing him.
“Not everything that hurts is bad.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Honestly, it is. Just because you haven’t had a dynamic or feeling like this with someone before doesn’t make it any less valid and real.” Noah handed Zack another drink and opened a beer for himself.
“I can’t stand myself most times.”
“To intrude,” Noah shrugged unapologetically. “The three of you flow effortlessly. Anyone can see it.”
For weeks, Zack had purposely pushed Sophie’s limits. Harder on her than any previous play partner. It was clear to see she wasn’t casual to Aiden. The more they played together, the more they flowed fluently during and after a scene—a comfortable dance where words weren’t needed.
She’d brought them all to a new level of comfort.
The thought alone was a terrifying prospect.
He’d been trying to pick apart her reaction. Her quiet submission. The tears he’d so dearly loved to provoke.
Sophie needed someone who would take care of her after he broke her apart, and Aiden did that beautifully. He was a warm, steady presence. But the thought of them finding that rhythm without him, of Aiden’s gentle hands being the only ones to put her back together, was a shard of glass under his skin.
He was the architect of her beautiful ruin; Aiden was the cleanup crew.
But even that wasn’t fair. Aiden wasn’t cleaning up a mess. He was tending to a garden that Zack had forced into bloom, coaxing the fragile petals open after a violent storm. One couldn’t exist without the other. The storm and the garden. The lightning and the earth it strikes.
It was the quiet moments that began to call to him louder than her sweet cries beneath them. Which only made things murkier for Zack and Aiden’s own relationship.
“You can have both.”
Forming a triad with his best friend and their mutual lover was never a thought that’d occurred to him. The possibility of moving things forward only added to the unknown variable of things falling apart, which was unsettling.
With more to lose, was it worth the gamble?
EIGHT
Aiden
“You slipped in early this morning.” Aiden watched Zack through the bathroom mirror. He snickered and continued shaving. “Couldn’t stay away, I see. I know we're irresistible.”
“A man can come home and crawl into his bed after spending too many hours in a metal box filled with co-workers.”
He watched him quietly, noticing the way Zack looked less guarded in the dim morning light. There was a weariness that had nothing to do with travel. “We missed you.”
Zack grunted, turning around to stare out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city stirring below. “Business was profitable. That’s all that matters.”
“Is that all that matters?”
The question hung in the air, sharp and clean as the scent of Zack’s aftershave. Aiden rinsed his razor, set it aside, and turned to face him fully, leaning back against the marble counter. He wasn’t going to let him retreat into that fortress of silence.
“When are you going to think of me as an equal?” His words held no malice.
“I do.”
“In business, but not your bed.”
Zack paused at Aiden’s words. The realization was clear and he hadn’t seen it in that way.
“I didn’t know.” He stepped closer until Aiden pressed against the wall. Zack’s eyes blazed.
