“You thought we’d fight over you,” Cal observes, amber eyes gentle but pointed.
“I believed sharing me would turn toxic,” I admit, voice barely a breath. “I couldn’t watch you resent each other—or me. So, I went home.”
“To California,” Jace says, the words light as dust motes.
“To California.” I meet his gaze, memory sharp. “Where I found out a few weeks later I was pregnant.”
The air in the garage grows charged, thick with truths we’ve all avoided.
“And you didn’t sleep with anyone else after us?” Cal asks slowly.
“Nope.”
“Which means?—”
My voice wavers. “That night I was with all three of you. Somehow I conceived twins—two babies, two fathers.”
Silas’s knuckles whiten on the bike’s handlebars. Jace inhales carefully, and Cal’s gaze sears me.
“Different fathers?” Jace asks, voice cautious. “How?—”
“The hospital ran routine tests. The doctor called it heteropaternal superfecundation.” I see Cal’s mind clicking into gears, already calculating. “It’s rare. When a woman releases multiple eggs and two sperm fertilize them in close succession.”
The garage is so silent I can hear the hum of the lights overhead.
“Which one is mine?” Silas asks, voice flat.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, pain slicing through me. “I never did paternity tests. I was alone, terrified—” Tears spill free now. “I didn’t want to face what we’d done. To admit I’d been with you three and created this impossible situation.”
“Parker—” Jace starts, stepping off his bike to close the distance.
“I thought about reaching out,” I continue, voice tumbling out. “Especially after they were born. But I feared Dominic would find them, use them—turn them into pawns in his world.” My shoulders tremble. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
Cal’s hand hovers near mine before he picks up my fingers. “So you kept them hidden.”
“Yes.” I lift my gaze, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I know that was wrong. I know I stole five years from you—from them. Ithought I was protecting everyone: you from complication, them from Dominic, myself from?—”
“From us?” Silas’s voice is a whisper.
“From losing myself to you.” The admission hangs between us. “From letting you control every part of my life until there was nothing left of me but what you wanted.”
I can feel my body trembling, a storm of longing and fear.
“You were suffocating me before I left for college,” I say, voice quivering. “Making decisions, removing people from my life—controlling every variable. And I loved you—God, I loved you—but I needed to breathe.”
Silas presses forward. “We would’ve protected you.”
“You would’ve taken over,” I counter. “Kept me so locked down I forgot who I was. And eventually, I would’ve resented you—and myself.”
“So you gave up on us,” Silas says, close enough now I can see every flicker in his eyes.
“I compromised.” I let the word fall. “To keep them safe. To keep me whole. To keep you three from destroying each other over a secret you didn’t even know existed.”
Cal slides from the workbench, Jace moves in from the right, Silas from the left. In an instant, I’m surrounded by a circle of heat and presence—years of absence dissolving in the charged air.
“Angel,” Cal murmurs, lifting a hand to catch a tear as it falls. The calloused pad of his thumb brushes my cheek, warm and steady. “We’ve spent years believing we lost you.”
“You were everything,” I whisper, voice fragile. “That was the problem. You were so much there was no room for me.”
