“Ace, you know?—”
He leans in half an inch, forehead nearly touching mine, stealing my words, saying, “Tell me you didn’t want that.”
I can’t, which is answer enough.
The back door to the main house opens.
I jump away from him so fast I nearly tangle my own feet. North steps out of the house and stands on the veranda as if he’s been carved into the frame. His gaze moves from Ace to me, taking in everything in one quiet sweep—my swollen mouth, Ace too close, the charged air between us.
His face gives away almost nothing.
“Adelaide,” he says evenly. “Koa dropped some of your things off. Luca got to the box first.”
I blink at him. “Wait… what does that mean?”
North’s mouth shifts, just slightly. “It means you should come inside.”
I snatch my towel off the railing and wrap it around my waist like that somehow restores dignity to the situation.
“Right. Great. Very normal. Thank you.”
I walk up the path, trying not to look like I’ve just been kissed senseless in broad daylight. I rinse the sand off my feet at the little tap between the buildings, and I’m past North and almost at the door when I hear him say something low behind me.
I don’t catch the words, but I glance back anyway.
North is grinning now, properly. Ace is rubbing the back of his neck with the expression of a man who has been caughtand is not remotely sorry about it. They look entirely too pleased with themselves, and the worst part is the sudden, wild awareness that these men share everything.
Absolutely everything. My face grows hotter, and I push open the door and disappear inside before I can make it worse.
Luca is on the couch, wearing nothing but shorts, and for one completely unhelpful second, all I can do is stare. Bare chest. Muscles, a thin line of hair rushing down and under the front of his shorts. Abs cut hard in the morning light coming through the glass. He looks so sinful and happy about it, with zero shame.
And to make the situation somehow worse, he’s holding my purple lace bra over his chest with both hands, adjusting it with the kind of concentration usually reserved for bomb disposal.
He glances up. “It doesn’t fit me.”
I just stare at him harder, because my body is still halfway stuck on the fact that he’s shirtless and built like that, and now I’m apparently expected to process the bra too.
“I tried,” he says, and somehow he sounds genuinely disappointed by this outcome.
“Why,” I ask slowly, dragging my eyes up from his chest with actual effort, “did you try?”
“It was on top of the box.” He holds it out to me, and I take it, only to realize the underwire has snapped clean through the middle. The cups are barely hanging on. And he has fixed this with a staple gun. Four staples, neat little silver teeth across the center. I hold it up. The staples catch the light. “If I wore this,” I say, “I would be stabbed.”
“You’d be supported.”
“By office supplies.”
Luca leans back into the couch, completely unrepentant. “Engineering is about compromise.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is.”
I set the bra down very carefully, because I don’t need to lose an eye on top of everything else, and start going through the box. Most of my stuff from the van is here. Folded roughly, but here. Clothes. Books. My good dry shampoo. A random sock that I honestly thought had died. My chest loosens a little at the sight of it all.
“Why is this here?” I ask.
“Koa figured it made more sense to get your things out of the van while it’s being worked on,” Luca says. “North sorted it.”
