Rachel’s face flushes. “I don’t—”
“Don’t lie,” Theo says gently. “We know. You’ve been with Cole. You’ve been with me. You kissed Marco.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then: “What are you saying?”
“We’re saying we want you,” I tell her. “All of us. And we’re okay with sharing.”
“Sharing.” She repeats the word, as if testing it. “You want to share me.”
“We want to be with you,” Marco corrects. “However, that looks. The three of us and you. Together.”
“That’s insane.”
“Maybe.” Theo shifts closer to her. “But it’s what we want. What we’ve always done when it matters.”
Rachel looks at him. “What do you mean, always?”
“We’ve shared before,” I explain. “Three years ago. A woman named Samantha. It worked for a while. Then it didn’t, but that was because of other reasons. Not because the sharing was the problem.”
“So, this is just what? Your default relationship structure?”
“No.” Marco’s voice is firm. “Samantha was different. With her, it was physical. Casual. Nobody caught real feelings. But you?” He moves closer. “This isn’t casual. This is real.”
“We’re not asking you to choose,” Theo adds. “We’re asking you to consider that maybe you don’t have to.”
Rachel’s hands are shaking. “People would—they’d say terrible things. About me. About you. About Tommy growing up in a house with three men and one woman.”
“We don’t care what people say,” I tell her. “We care about you. About making this work.”
“But Jake—”
“Jake’s going to lose his mind,” Theo admits. “Probably threaten to kill all three of us. Maybe actually try.”
“Which is why we need to tell him,” Marco says. “Eventually. When he gets back from Alaska. When things are more settled.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, we figure this out,” Theo says. “The four of us. We learn how to make this work. How to be together without it being weird or uncomfortable or—”
“It’s already weird,” Rachel interrupts. “It’s been weird since I moved in. Since I started having feelings for all of you, and not knowing what to do about it.”
“Then stop fighting it,” Marco says quietly. “Stop questioning whether it’s wrong or selfish or whatever else you’ve been telling yourself. Just let it be what it is.”
She looks at each of us in turn. “And what is it?”
“It’s four people who care about each other,” I say. “Four people trying to build something that works for all of them. It’s unconventional, yeah. But it’s real.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You’re already doing it,” Theo points out. “You’ve been doing it for weeks. We’re just making it official.”
“Official.” She laughs, but it sounds strained. “How do you make something like this official?”
“We commit,” I say simply. “We agree that this is what we want. We work through the complications together. We protect each other. We’re honest with each other.”
“And Jake?”
“Jake gets told when the time is right,” Marco says. “But Rachel? That conversation is going to happen whether you’re ready or not. Better to be united when it does.”
