Page 92 of Shared By the Mountain Men Triplets

I turn to Boone, and he’s watching me like I’m the only reason he wants to survive what’s coming.

“Don’t,” I whisper.

His brow creases. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t look at me like goodbye is ever an option.”

He strokes a hand over my thigh. “It isn’t.”

“Promise me.”

For once, he doesn’t have a joke ready. He doesn’t use his charm to deflect. “I promise,” he says. “I’m coming back to you.”

Cade runs fingers through my hair, then tugs gently. “We all are.”

When I look at Rhett, he sits up and reaches for me. He takes my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing beneath my eyes, catching tears that were hanging on behind my lashes.

“Listen to me,” he says. “We’re coming back. Novak has the operation. We know the land, and we know how to work together. And we have something now we didn’t have before.”

“What’s that?” I whisper.

“A reason to be careful.”

Cade and Boone slide their arms around me and hold me tight. All three men touching me, all of us connected. Cadepresses his forehead against the side of my head, and Boone rests his chin near my shoulder.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to us,” Boone says.

All I can do is whisper his name in response.

“Before you showed up, we were just working, keeping each other alive. Surviving, because that’s what we knew how to do.”

Cade’s hand tightens on me, and Rhett’s gaze drops for a second.

“But we weren’t living,” Boone says. “The house feels like a home now.”

A sound escapes me, something raw that I can’t contain.

“You made us want the future.” Cade whispers it against my cheek, and something inside me breaks wide open.

I pull Cade’s mouth to mine, then Boone’s, then Rhett’s, and I try to answer them with my kisses, because my heart is too big right now for me to form words.

Everything that follows is more than just bodies coming together. It’s a vow made with hands and mouths and breath.Mine,we tell each other silently, over and over again.

Mine, always.

We lie tangled together afterward, Rhett on his back with one arm beneath my head, and my hand on his chest, directly over his heart. Cade is behind me, his body curved along mine, and his breath warm againstmy neck. Boone lies on Rhett’s other side, reaching carefully across his brother to rest a hand on my hip, stubborn even in his tenderness.

Outside, somewhere beyond the blackened windows, men wait with rifles and radios, but we have a few more hours here in this bed.

I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of them and memorize the feeling of their hands on my body. The weight and the warmth of them, the roughness and the tenderness.

Rhett covers my hand with his, Cade’s lips brush my cheek, and Boone’s fingers flex at my hip.

All of us, together, always.

CHAPTER 41

RHETT