Page 69 of The Unexpected

“It’s not. It’s what you deserve.” I pull back, stand, stretch, and feel the knots in my shoulders begin to unspool. “I’m serious. Whatever you want, I’ll make it happen.”

She wipes her eyes, and there’s a glint in them now. “Are you going to keep working at Roberts Construction?” she teases, a sudden mischief in her voice. “Or are you going to quit and join my hypothetical bakery full-time?”

I throw my head back and bark out a laugh, a real one. “Hell no. I built that company myself. No one else is taking the wheel, especially not now. If my private life’s the worst scandal they can dig up, let ‘em. I pay their salaries.” I fix her with a look. “And if you’re ever bored at the boutique, you can come sit in my office and make the secretaries jealous. They all already think you’re a goddess.”

O’Toole shakes his head, smiling. “You’re both nuts, you know that?”

Stella leans back on the couch, arms wide, and lets her head fall to the cushion. “Yeah,” she says, almost purring. “But it’s nice to finally know it’s a team effort. So the three of us are moving in together at Hunter’s place? It’s decided?”

Lachlan shrugs. “I guess so. This shithole is pretty bad, so I, for one, would appreciate a change of scenery.”

Stella smiles. “Your apartment has grown on me, but yeah, Hunter’s place is lavish. Better even than my dad’s.”

We sit there contemplating the change, the three of us, as the hour slides past midnight and into something else. The city outside hums with the faint pulse of sirens, and the radiator’s tick has become a metronome for a new kind of time.

The air is different now: electric, brittle, and full of something that isn’t quite hope, but isn’t resignation, either.

It’s more like the start of a fever. A rising heat that doesn’t burn, not yet.

But I can feel it, and I know they do, too.

In the hush, I watch Stella run her hand up her own thigh, fingertips tracing the bruises I put there. O’Toole’s eyes follow, hungry but not quite ready to pounce.

Not yet.

But soon.

And that’s when I know we’re all in it for real.

Not just the sex, not just the taboo, but the future—whatever the hell that’s going to look like.

I can’t wait to find out.

And, if we burn the city down in the process, that’s just a bonus.

It’s always the quiet after a storm when the real mess starts.

Stella lies sprawled between us on the battered couch, one bare foot in my lap, one slung across O’Toole’s thigh. Her face is still wet from crying but the color’s back in her cheeks, the blue of her eyes crackling like static. She’s calmed, but I can see the pulse at her neck flicking like a strobe.

I run my hand up her calf, slow, the skin cool and dimpled, and let my thumb drift to the inside of her knee. O’Toole’s got one arm behind her, fingers splayed possessively across her shoulder, his thumb tracing lazy circles at the base of her neck. The lamp throws a low orange circle over us, dust motes skating in the light, every shadow thrown big and strange on the naked wall.

Stella shivers, but she doesn’t pull away.

“You’re both looking at me,” she says, her voice a half-whisper. “Like you’re going to eat me alive.”

O’Toole’s mouth twitches. “We are.”

I laugh, a single pulse. “You got a problem with that, sweetheart?”

She thinks for a second. “No. Not at all.”

There’s a click in the radiator, and O’Toole shifts, lifting her legs so she slides down, her ass pressed to the thin cushions. “You want to run the show tonight?” he asks, voice turned almost gentle. “It’s your call.”

Stella tilts her head, hair spilling over her shoulder, gold in the lamplight. “No,” she says, but there’s mischief in it. “Not really. I want you to ruin me.”

I lean forward, teeth bared. “You want it, you ask for it. That’s the deal.”

She stretches out, arms over her head, spine arching just enough to make her chest tight against the dress. “Ruin me, Hunter,” she says. “And you, Lachlan. I want you both.”