I open my eyes. Dante's face is close. The red rims. The tight jaw. The man who runs every room standing in a kitchen with his hand on my face and no room to run.
"I love you," I say.
Dante's thumb goes still on my cheekbone. His eyes hold mine. His lips part, then close without sound.
"And I love him. And—" My hand grips the counter behind me. The four-count won't hold. My ribs lock before I can find the next count. "I don't know what the three of us look like after this."
"The old shape has to stay broken. It was built on things none of us could see." His thumb moves once across my cheekbone. "Whatever comes next has to be different. I don't know what it looks like yet."
"That does nothing to reassure me."
"I'm trying to be honest."
"Since when?"
"Since this morning, when a man I've been sleeping with for six years told me I've never actually been in charge of anything."
My mouth twitches, close enough to laughter that it almost remembers the shape.
His hand stays on my face. I keep mine over it.
The front door opens at 11:47 AM.
Keys first. Then boots on the hardwood. Then footsteps that have slowed. Heavy. A man walking back into a house without knowing how to stand inside it.
Dante's hand drops from my face. He steps back two feet, enough to make room, and his weight settles against the counter behind him. His eyes go to the hallway.
Cole appears in the kitchen doorway.
His face is red from the cold. Rain clings to his jacket, darkening the shoulders. His hair is wet. His hands are at his sides. Empty.
He looks at Dante, then at me, then at the space between us. The empty center. The spot where he stood this morning and pulled out everything.
"Hi," he says.
His voice comes out small, scraped thin by the cold and whatever happened while he was gone.
"Hi," I say.
He doesn't move from the doorway. His hands stay at his sides. His shoulders are still. His weight stays caught on the threshold. Dante holds still with the precision of a predator. This is different. Cole is standing in the doorway without a script.
I cross the kitchen. One step. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
I stop in front of him, close enough to smell rain on his jacket and cold on his skin. His eyes stay on my face. Blue. Wet. Waiting.
I've never done this. In nine years, I have never been the one to reach first. I have never crossed a room to him. I have never put my arms around Cole Maddox first, because Cole Maddox was always already there, already reaching, already holding, and the sequence was so established that I never had to learn the other direction.
My hands shake. I lift them anyway.
My arms go around his neck, and I pull him in. His body is rigid, every muscle locked before my arms settle around him. My face presses into the side of his neck. His skin is cold from the rain.
"I'm sorry," I say into his neck, into the cold skin and the damp collar. "I'm sorry I never asked. I'm sorry I let you carry it. I'm sorry I was comfortable."
His body stays rigid. Five seconds.
His shoulders release first. Then his arms lift, his hands finding my back. His chest presses against mine next, the full weight of him leaning into me. Finally, his face turns down into my hair, his breath against my scalp.
His arms tighten. I hold on.
