Page 92 of Knot the Plan
“And we didn't know about each other until Monday. I dragged Finn out to Logan's build site and made us all say it out loud — three grown men, gone for you, not one of us doing a thing about it.” A rough laugh. “We told ourselves we were giving you space. Truth is we were exactly as scared as you just were. Terrified you'd look at us and feel nothing back. You beat all three of us to it tonight. Bravest thing I've ever seen.”
“Craft closet,” Finn says, which for him is a monologue. “You found me hiding from my mother under a shelf of googly eyes, and you didn't laugh. You just said scooch, sat down, and handed me a can of buttons to sort.” His eyes don't leave mine. “Two months I've been carrying that around. It was never the reunion for me, Josie. It was the buttons.”
And I break.
Not gently. All at once. Five years of deciding in advance that nobody stays, that if I make the joke first and keep everyone at arm's length then it won't gut me when they go — and it turns out I built that whole wall against a thing that was never going to happen.
The tears come and I let them, because I don't have anything left to hold them back with.
“This is a terrible time to tell me all this,” I get out, half a laugh, half a sob, my whole body still humming with heat. “I'm barely a person right now. I can't even— I have wanted to hear this for weeks and I'm too far gone to do anything but leak about it.”
Logan huffs something that's almost a laugh, brushing a tear off my cheek. “Leak all you want.”
“You were all justhere.” It comes out wrecked, honest in a way I never let myself be. “This whole time. And I was so busy getting the joke in first, so nobody could leave before I'd decided I didn't care, that I never once looked up to check if you were staying.” Another wave rolls through me and I shudder through it, gripping the nearest arm, which turns out to be Finn's. “I had myself completely convinced the best thing in my life was a story I made up.”
“You didn't make it up.” Logan brushes another tear away, gentle. “It was real the whole time. You just couldn't see us seeing you.”
“We don't want the arrangement.” Hudson's close now too, and Finn, all three folding in around me until I'm surrounded on every side. “We want the whole embarrassing thing. You, a pack, courting you in broad daylight, flowers on your desk, the works. For as long as you'll put up with us.”
“You're going to regret offering,” I manage, still crying, still somehow smiling through it. “I've never once been chosen. I'm going to be unbearable about it.”
“Good,” Finn says.
And there it is. Everything I braced to hand back, put right into my hands instead.
So I stop bracing.
“Then here's what I want.” I look at each of them, and I have never been more sure of anything in my life. “I want you to stop keeping your distance. I want your hands on me. All three ofyou. I want you to claim me — now, while I've still got my head clear enough to mean it, so no one can ever tell me it was only the heat.” My voice cracks and I let it crack. “I want your bites. I want to wake up on the other side of this bonded to the three men who came when I told them not to. Please.”
The silence lasts exactly one second.
And then all three of them move at once.
Chapter 32
Finn
I've spent two months with a door shut in my chest, and Josie Porter just told me to open it.
I want you to claim me. Now, while I've still got my head clear enough to mean it. I want your bites. Please.
I don't do things fast. Ask anyone. I'm the man who re-sets a post that's fine, who sands a rail nobody's going to run their hand along, who waited two months in a craft closet because saying a thing out loud makes it real and real things can be taken away. I have never in my life moved on the first offer.
I move now.
“Me first.” It comes out rough. I'm already crossing the nest, already easing her back into the pile of our shirts, and I look at Hudson and Logan and neither of them argues, because we settled this at the build site on Monday, in about four words.Finn couldn't fake a feeling if his life depended on it. He goes first. She'll believe him.
“You sure?” I ask her. Because I have to. Because it's the only word that matters. “Say it once more. Clear.”
“I'm sure.” Her eyes are bright and steady and locked on mine. “Finn. I've been sure since the buttons too.”
And the door in my chest doesn't just open. It comes off the hinges.
I kiss her like I've been thinking about it for two months, because I have. She opens under me on a broken sound, brown sugar and oat flooding the air, and her hands are already fisting in my hair, dragging me down, past shy, past careful, nothing left in her but the heat and the need.
“Finn—” It's half my name, half a whimper. “Please. Empty. I need?—”
“I've got you.” I mean it in every way there is. “I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere.”
