Page 80 of Rising Heat

“This wasn’t a one-time thing.”

I watch the corner of Mack’s mouth curve. Mine answers before I can stop it. We’ve spent all day watching Darcy put pieces together. Turns out she’s just been missing the box.

“No,” Mack confirms.

Darcy lets out a short breath and takes another sip of bourbon, looking between us like she’s half in shock and half entertained.

“So this is, what, exactly?”

Her hand makes a vague gesture between us.

“A recurring…hobby?”

I scrub a hand over my jaw while Mack drops his head and huffs out a laugh.

“That’s not exactly how I’d describe it,” he says.

“So then how does it⁠—”

She cuts herself off.

“Work?” Mack smirks.

She takes a drink instead of answering. The problem is she’s been curious about everything since breakfast, and neither of us is buying the sudden act.

I lean back against the couch, my knee brushing hers where she’s sitting on the floor.

“It’s not a system, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It kind of sounds like a system.”

“It’s trust,” Mack says. “If we’re both with someone, it’s because she wants both of us. We’re both in it. Nobody gets left out.”

“And the woman you date⁠—”

“We don’t date the women we share.” I shrug. “It’s just casual. Fun.”

“A one-time thing. Usually.”

“Huh.”

I watch Darcy go quiet at that, her grip shifting slightly on the glass as her eyes find Mack’s. Whatever joke she’d been lining up never arrives, and I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted her to hear that until she did.

“It’s not weird for us,” I say with a shrug. “We’ve shared everything our whole lives. Space, grief, food, fights. This just happened one night years ago and made more sense than it should’ve.”

The fire pops softly between us while the storm keeps rattling the windows, and for a minute nobody seems in a hurry to fill the silence. Darcy sits cross-legged on the floor in my sweatshirt, bourbon cradled between both hands, turning everything over in her head while Mack and I watch her do it.

She wets her lip again, Mack shifting in his chair at almost the same second, and I have to look away before the corner of my mouth gives me away. We’ve always noticed the same things. Lately, most of those things seem to be Darcy.

She still hasn’t said whatever she’s thinking, but I can see it working through her anyway. Every time her eyes drift to one of us, they inevitably find the other a second later, and each pass seems to leave her a little more distracted than the last.

The funny thing is, I think she’s looking for a reason this should bother her or feel strange. Instead, Darcy just sits there in my sweatshirt with her bourbon forgotten in her hands, looking between me and Mack like the answer to something is sitting somewhere in the middle.

I don’t know what that means, but I like the fact that she’s still looking.

Still, watching her like this, patience is starting to feel a lot less effortless than it used to.

CHAPTER TWELVE