Page 158 of While I’m Still Here

Colin is on one side of me, Danny on the other, and Marcus sits at the foot of the bed with his back against the wall. Nobody says much. The weight of the afternoon is still settling around us like dust.

Then Danny's hand finds my shoulder. Just rests there, warm and solid. Colin shifts closer, his arm sliding carefully around my waist. Marcus watches us from the foot of the bed with an expression I can't quite read, but his fingers are laced loosely around my ankle, thumb moving in slow circles against my skin.

The touch is light. Comforting. But there's something else underneath it too.

A tenderness that feels different from before.

They're not just keeping me company. They're seeing me. Scars where my breasts used to be. Bare scalp where my hair used to be. All the soft, secret places I've been learning to hate about myself, and they're touching me as though I'm still something precious.

I swallow hard. “I feel strange.”

Danny's lips brush the side of my head. “Strange how?”

“Like I'm not sure who I am anymore.”

Colin sits up slowly, his hand still resting on my hip. “Then let us show you.”

My breath catches. “Show me what?”

Marcus moves then, shifting from the foot of the bed until he's kneeling beside me. His fingers trail from my ankle up to my knee, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “That you're still you,” he says quietly. “And that you're still beautiful.”

I open my mouth to argue, but Danny's hand is already cupping my face, turning me towards him. His kiss is gentle at first, then deeper, his tongue sliding against mine while Colin's lips find the curve of my neck. I shiver, caught between them, and Marcus's hand continues its slow path upward along my thigh.

“You don't have to do anything,” Colin murmurs against my skin. “Just let us love you.”

I close my eyes and nod, because for the first time in months, I don't want to fight the way they see me. I want to believe it. Just for a little while. And as their hands begin to move over my body—carefully, reverently, mapping every scar and every new bare place as though memorising me all over again—I let myself fall into the warmth of them.

Colin’s fingers move slowly, carefully, like he’s learning a language he used to speak fluently and has forgotten the rhythm of.

My hips lift off the mattress.

Danny’s mouth is on my neck, hot and open, and Marcus is still pressed against my side with his palm flat against my stomach, holding me steady. Three points of contact. Three men who have decided—without ever saying it out loud—that tonight I am not allowed to disappear into my own head.

Colin finds me slick and ready and lets out a breath against my shoulder. “Christ, Bea.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

His fingers circle once, twice, and my whole body jerks. Danny laughs against my throat, the sound vibrating through me, and Marcus’s hand presses harder against my belly.

“Look at her,” Danny murmurs. “She’s still in there.”

Colin’s thumb rolls over me and I make a sound I’d be embarrassed about if I had any blood left in my brain. “I’m right here,” I manage.

“Yes, you are.”

He slides one finger inside me and my back arches clean off the bed.

Marcus catches me. His arm loops under my shoulders and his mouth finds the curve of my jaw, kissing along it while Colin works me open with a patience that feels almost cruel. Danny’s hand has found my shaved head, cupping it, tilting my face toward his.

“Open your eyes.”

I hadn’t realised they were closed. I open them and he’s right there, close enough that I can see the flecks of green in his irises and the way his mouth is parted like he’s the one being touched.

“There she is,” he says again.

Colin adds a second finger and I lose the thread of whatever I was about to say.