"Gabriel?" My voice comes out soft, uncertain.
He turns back, his eyes dark with something that makes my stomach flip. "What is it?"
I swallow hard, fighting the words, but they fall anyway. "I don't know what I'm doing. With you. With any of this."
Silence stretches between us for a heartbeat before he closes the space again. His hand lifts, steady and sure, cradling my jaw as his thumb brushes along my cheek, anchoring me to this moment.
"You don't have to know," he says, his voice softer now but sure as steel. "Not tonight."
He waits until I meet his eyes again, holding my gaze like he's memorizing this moment.
"Just remember..." his voice dips lower, rougher, "I don't regret it. And neither should you."
I lean into his hand despite myself, my eyes slipping shut. "Gabriel..."
His reply is almost a growl, quiet but fierce. "I know. Believe me, I feel it too."
Another beat of charged silence where the air between us seems to crackle.
"Go to sleep,Lucy."
His hand lingers just a second longer before he finally lets go and walks away, leaving me standing in my doorway like I've been struck by lightning.
After he leaves, I change into my pajamas and climb into bed with Tyson settling his bulk beside me like a furry guardian.
I had a plan this morning. Keep my distance, stay safe, don't get tangled up in complications that could destroy us all.
I scratch Tyson's ears in the darkness, remembering something the boxer he was named after once said.
"You know what, big guy?" I whisper into the darkness. "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
And my plan has definitely taken a beating.
By feelings I can't control, by two men who make me want things I never thought I could have, by the terrifying possibility that maybe I don't have to choose between safety and happiness after all.
Maybe I don't have to choose at all.
20
Lucy
Male voices drag me from sleep. Low and serious, drifting through Gabriel's house in the pre-dawn darkness.
My heart immediately kicks into that familiar overdrive, adrenaline flooding my system, the same fight-or-flight response that's kept me alive for two years on the run.
Something's wrong.
I slip from bed quiet as a ghost, years of practice making my movements silent. Tyson lifts his massive head, blinking at me in sleepy confusion. The hardwood floor sends cold shock waves up through my bare feet as I pad toward the kitchen, my soft cotton pajamas suddenly feeling too thin, too revealing for whatever crisis waits ahead.
The voices become clearer as I approach. Gabriel's measured tone, Colt's rougher cadence, and underneath it all, Beau's deeper register. All three of them. Here. At dawn.
My stomach drops like a stone. They're talking about me. They have to be. After last night, after the kisses, after the impossible tangle I've made of everything, they've probably decided to stage an intervention.
Make me choose.
Or worse, they've decided for me.
I pause at the kitchen doorway, suddenly hyperaware of my rumpled hair and bare face, of how small I feel next to these three mountain-sized men.
