Page 122 of My Brother’s Best Friends Entanglement

He picks me up, one arm under my knees, and I catch Marcus's grin and Zachary's head shake over Rhys's shoulder as he carries me down the hall and kicks the bedroom door shut behind us.

“Hey, I want to be with you,” I tell him, once he's set me down on the edge of the bed.

“I want to be with you as well.” He crouches in front of me, framing my face in his hands.

“But I have to be honest. I can't choose. Not yet. Maybe not for a while,” I admit.

“I know.” His thumb strokes along my cheekbone. “That's why I'm giving you time. To work out that you don't actually need those two asshol⁠—”

“WE HEARD THAT.” Two voices, in perfect unison, from directly outside the door. “YOU'RE NOT GETTING RID OF US YET, DICKWEED!”

I bury my burning face in Rhys's chest, laughing so hard I can barely breathe, and I feel him laugh too. The rare, gorgeous sound makes my chest ache all over again for a completely different reason.

“See?” He presses a kiss to my hair. “They're proving it already.”

He tugs me up off the bed and steers me gently towards the bathroom instead. “Come on. Let me get you clean.” His mouth finds the shell of my ear again. “So I can get you dirty again.”

If you'd asked me a month ago what it would look like, living with, and sleeping with, three grown men, I would not have pictured this. I would not have pictured a Google Calendar with colour-coded outings and dates that none of them admit to screwing up but somehow get screwed up all the time anyway. I would not have pictured Marcus texting me a photo of his, Zachary's, and Rhys's bed every morning, asking WHICH ONE TONIGHT? I would not have pictured playing mediator to my brother's best friends over who got to walk next to me in the grocery store, or whether calling shotgun works for a human as well as a carseat. I would not have imagined switching to decaf because every morning I was presented with three coffees, and if I didn't take all three, someone would be sulky until dinner time.

But it's okay.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

But don't tell them that.

About six weeks into my three-month contract, Rhys walks me to the department staff meeting, the two of us fresh out of an hour-long picnic-planning session that was more fifty-two minutes of making out than eight minutes arguing over who was going to do the work we should've been doing while making out.

“You want to go in together or...?” he asks when we get there.

“No,” I say with a grateful smile. “I think it might be better if we go in separately today.”

The reason becomes clear when I walk in and go straight up to Craig, who's pouring himself a coffee.

“Hey,” I say, holding out a cup as if to ask him to pour. It's the first interaction we've had in weeks that isn't purely about tute planning.

“Hi.” He's wary, but tops up my cup.

I wait until he's done before I nod a thanks and then say, “So, how's your research going? You done with the analysis, right?”

He nods once, cautious.

“That sounds great. You worked so hard on it.”

Something in his shoulders loosens, just slightly. “Actually. Pretty much just finalising the write-up at this point.” A pause. “Your ideas really helped a lot.”

“That's great,” I say, trying not to sound too eager. But he's just given me the in I needed. Feeling Rhys's eyes on me gives me the encouragement I need. “That's actually kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Somehow, despite the chaos of work, study and the guys, we do manage to find some sort of rhythm and routine. One of those things being, on Friday nights, to escape the ear-splitting decibels of man noise coming from Marcus having some of his guys over to watch “the game” (no, I have no idea what game it is, I'm assuming Aussie footy considering the small tight shorts the guys are wearing on the screen) and get some time with Zachary, I go with him to the bar and set myself at an empty spot at the end of the bar with my laptop and an impressive array of pens and highlighters.

It's not too crowded tonight, and there's a steady hum of music and chatter, but not too much that it interferes with me concentrating. Zachary's playing second-string bartender, spending most of his time doing the rounds when they don't need him to pull beers, me highlighting increasingly incomprehensible sentences about multilateral sanctions regimes, both of us trading commentary across the bar whenever there's a lull.

It's during one of these lulls, while Zachary has walked a regular out to his car, when a guy in a leather jacket plants himself on the stool beside me and starts up a line about how a woman that pretty shouldn't be sitting alone at the bar on a Friday night.

I give him a polite smile and tell him I wasn't actually alone. But even if I were, there'd be nothing wrong with that.

He can tell his opening line didn't have the effect he was hoping for, so he pivots, asking me questions related to my study. Fortunately for him, he's not being pushy or rude, so I answer some of his questions without giving him any extra encouragement.

“Anyway, I get it now, why my opening line didn't land.” He shrugs, seemingly entirely unbothered by his own failure of five minutes ago. “You've spent years being trained to spot bad diplomacy from a mile off. I basically invaded your airspace with no warning and zero legitimate justification.”