The way the floorboards creaked in the hallway outside my bedroom door. A specific pattern I learned to recognize. Three creaks, then silence, then two more. My aunt checking on me before she went to bed. Making sure I was safe. Making sure I was still there.
But I'm resolute. I've always been resolute. You don't survive what I've survived without learning how to keep moving forward. You take what life offers and you make it work. You adapt. You endure.
And right now, life is offering me this.
A comfortable bed. A beautiful room. Morning light filtering through expensive curtains. Silence and safety and the kind of comfort I haven't known in years.
It's been months since I woke up to daylight. Since before I started the grocery store job. Five a.m. shifts, six days a week, stocking shelves before the store opened. The alarm clock my most hated possession, its shrill beep a violence I endured every single morning.
I had to quit that job. The commute from here to the store would be impossible.
One less source of income. One less paycheck. One less safety net.
But I still have this job.
And when Luan's vision returns fully, when he can stand up to his family on his own, when he doesn't need me anymore, I'll move on. Find another apartment. Another job.
The thought sits heavy in my chest. Uncomfortable. Wrong somehow.
This is temporary.
The reminder is supposed to be comforting. A boundary. A clear endpoint that makes this manageable. Contained.
But it ruins the quiet contentment I woke with. Turns it sour. Makes the comfort feel borrowed. Stolen. Something I'll have to give back.
It will be hard to leave this.
But it will be harder to leave them.
The men.
I close my eyes. Press my face into the pillow. Admit what I've been avoiding since I agreed to this.
I'm attracted to all three of them.
Differently. Distinctly. But equally.
The realization should feel wrong. Shameful. Evidence of something broken in me.
But it just feels true.
Luan is control and danger wrapped together. Authority I want to press against just to see what happens, just to test the edges of that restraint. His voice does things to me. Low and controlled, even when I can tell he's anything but. The way he says my name, like it's a command and a question at the same time. Like he's testing me. Measuring me. Deciding what I can handle.
Artan is steady. Safe. The kind of man you could lean into and know he wouldn't move. Wouldn't let you fall. His presence is grounding in ways I don't know how to articulate. When he touches me, when his hand settles on my shoulder or brushes my arm, it feels deliberate. Protective. Like he's anchoring me to something solid.
When he looks at me with those brown eyes, steady and watchful, I feel seen. Not the version of myself I present to the world, the one that's always smiling and helpful and fine. But the version underneath. The one that's tired and uncertain and trying so hard to hold everything together.
Erion is spark and unpredictability. Heat I don't trust but can't ignore. When he leans close, when he says things designed to unsettle me, to make me blush and stammer, my body reactsbefore my brain catches up. Pulse racing. Skin flushing. A pull I know is dangerous but can't quite resist.
He's chaos where the others are control. Impulse where they're calculation. And something in me responds to that. To the way he looks at me like I'm something he wants and doesn't care who knows it. Like restraint is optional, not obligatory.
Three different men. Three different gravitational forces pulling me in directions I didn't know I could go.
And I'm caught in the middle, being drawn toward all of them at once.
I groan. Bury my face in the pillow, the sound muffled by expensive fabric.
The sheets are soft against my skin. The kind that feels like silk, cool and smooth and impossibly luxurious.
