And apparently we're not the only ones. Lucinda, with her warm eyes and her easy mention of Gabriel and Beau, her other husbands. I liked the way she looked at me, the brief, clear recognition of a woman who lives a version of this and is fine and whose world did not collapse because she loved more than one person at a time.
I think I could be her friend.
The thought arrives simply, without the usual cost-benefit analysis, and it brings others with it. I could have a friend here. I could have a life here. I could belong to this valley and these men and this town that seems willing to absorb the unconventional and move on. I could settle. I could make the cabin a home and the office a studio and the kitchen the place where I feed the people I love, and maybe, eventually, years from now or sooner, I could...
The thought is there before I can catch it.
A family.
The word sends a shiver through me, scalp to spine, the full-body tremor of a future I hadn't dared to imagine opening up like a door I didn't know was unlocked.
Reid's arm tightens slightly around me. He felt it. Of course he felt it.
"This okay?" Low. Against my hair.
"This is okay." I press closer. "This is really okay."
We sway a little longer. The song changes, something faster, and the couples around us shift and reconfigure and Reid holds me through the transition, unhurried, as though the tempo of the room is a suggestion he's choosing to decline.
When he finally loosens his hold I'm flushed. Warm from the dancing and the press of bodies and the wine and the thoughts I've been having, dangerous, hopeful, future-tense thoughts that I need a moment alone with before they consume me.
"I'm going to the bathroom," I say.
Reid nods. His hand trails from my waist to my lower back and then releases, and the specific reluctance in the gesture makes me smile as I turn away.
The bathroom is harsh. Fluorescent light buzzing overhead, the kind that flattens every color and turns skin the same blue-grey. I wash my hands. Bring cold water to my face and press my wet palms against my cheeks and the shock of cold after the warmth of the bar is clarifying. Necessary.
I look in the mirror.
The woman looking back is someone I half recognize. Not the contracted one, the careful one who dresses in layers and keeps her eyes down and measures every interaction for threat. This woman has color in her cheeks. Her eyes are bright. Her lips are slightly swollen from Reid's beard brushing against them during the dance, and she didn't notice until just now.
I am happy.
The word sits in my chest like a live coal. I am happy in a way I haven't been since before Daniel, maybe longer. And more than happy I am hopeful. Looking forward. Leaning into the future instead of bracing against it. The woman in the mirror has a future she wants to walk toward and people she wants to walk toward it with.
I dry my hands. Take one more breath and walk out.
The main room hits me in a wave of sound and heat. The karaoke has started, someone butchering a country song with more enthusiasm than accuracy, and the crowd has thickened around the stage area. I scan the room and find them.
Our table. The three of them. Jace is leaning back in his chair, laughing at something, his whole body committed to the laugh. Owen is beside him, beer in hand, the ghost of a smile on his face, which for Owen is the equivalent of a standing ovation. Reid is across from them, arms crossed, watching the karaoke singer with an expression of patient endurance that makes me bite my lip to keep from grinning.
I stop. Just for a moment. Just long enough to look at them the way you look at a painting you've been working on when you step back and see it whole for the first time. The composition. The balance. The way the light falls across the three of them, bar-warm and amber, and the way they fill the frame of the table like they were built to occupy that exact space.
Mine,I think. The word surfaces without permission, possessive and terrifying and true.They're mine and I'm theirs and I am one lucky...
A hand closes around my upper arm.
Tight. Sudden. Fingers digging in hard enough to stop me mid-stride, wrenching me sideways.
"Hey." A voice too close to my ear. Male. "Iknowyou."
Everything stops.
Not the bar. The bar keeps going, the karaoke and the laughter and the glasses clinking. What stops is me. Every system, every function, every forward-moving thought about the future and the men and the family I was daring to imagine.
I turn my head.
He's tall. Broad. Standing too close, close enough that I can smell beer and something sour underneath it. His face is shadowed by a ball cap pulled low, but his eyes are visible and they're fixed on me with a recognition that makes my skin contract, every hair on my body lifting at once. There's a knowing smile on his mouth.
