Chapter 198: Jake
I hit the bathroom first. Warm water, wring the cloth tight until it steams, then back to the bed where she’s boneless against the pillows, cheeks flushed, eyes heavy and soft.
“Okay?” I ask.
She nods, smiling small. “Okay.”
I take my time cleaning her up. Slow passes. Careful. Vanilla still clings to her skin; but now our scent is all over her too, like a brand, a claim. When the cloth cools, Reid is already there—fresh hot one in his hand, like we choreographed it. We trade without speaking. Making sure every inch of her is warm and clean. He works where I’ve finished, patient, reverent, asking, “Still good?” every minute or so. She just nods again, that same dazed smile I think I’ll be chasing for years.
I hand her water; she drinks with both hands. “Bathroom,” I say quietly, and she slips out from under the covers, pads to the door, clicks the lock, pees, washes her hands, returns with a sleepy smile on her face again. We dress her together like it’s a ceremony—her underwear first, careful because we know we must've made her ache a little, then those soft cotton shorts, then the tight blue T-shirt that makes her look like she belongs to this room and to us. I pull my joggers back on, boxers sitting right on my hips; Reid’s already in his—gray, the ones that look like sin under lamplight.
She fights sleep and loses. The queens won’t take three of us, so we ask who she wants, and she makes a face like we’ve asked her to choose between oxygen and gravity. “I’m not picking,” she mumbles.
“Then I will,” I tell Reid, jerking my chin at the bed. “Take tonight. I’ll take tomorrow.”
He doesn’t argue. He never would.
Now she’s out, head pillowed on his lap, bundled in every comforter the bed came with—white heaps up to her chin, hair fanned across his thigh. Reid’s back is to the headboard, face turned slightly toward the lamp, eyes closed like he’s pretending to sleep. He isn’t. Neither of us is. It’s been an hour and my heart still hasn’t learned how to land.
The heater hums low. A truck ghosts past outside and the curtains lift a breath with the rush. The lighthouse print on the wall shines dumber than it did earlier. On the table, the red key fob glows like a small warning light. I’m the one who breaks the quiet.
“I’m trying to find words,” I say, keeping my voice down. “I can’t.” There's no way to explain what just happened. How... yeah, there's no words.
Reid shakes his head once, eyes still shut. “How is it possible?” he asks.
I look over. “How is what possible.”
He opens his eyes, looks down at her, and threads his fingers through her hair once, slow, like he’s smoothing the sea. “That one girl can be this perfect for us.”
I don’t answer. Not yet.
“Think about it.” He tips his head back against the headboard. “Even before all this—” a small tilt of his hand between the three of us “—she’s exactly what SWMRI needed. Best biologist we could’ve gotten because no one matches her obsession. The team lit up when she walked in.” He doesn’t say Sloane. Neither of us does because it doesn't matter. “And after that,” he continues, quieter, “she’s… everything I like. She’s funny. She’s feisty. She’s smart and well-read. She eats like she’s not apologizing for wanting things and laughs like she invented it, and then she’s serious in a way that stops a room.” He pauses, not ashamed of it. “And in the way that’s… traditional, I guess, I love how small she is next to us. I love that she needs protection sometimes—and that she lets us protect her. She lets us.” His thumb follows a line at her temple. “And as if that wasn’t enough, she said yes to both of us. She liked the idea of us sharing. She didn’t run. She embraced it.”
The silence after is long enough that the clock’s thin digital whir sounds loud. I think about what he’s said and what he hasn’t. About what it felt like to clean her with a warm cloth and have him waiting with another. About how she never even flinched when I said I’d take tomorrow. About the sound she made when we both told her she was good and meant it.
Reid’s voice comes again, barely there. “So how is it possible?”
I look at her—the lashes tangling at the corner of her eye, the way her mouth still looks a little ruined, the heat still flushed high in her cheeks—and then I close my eyes. I line up the years in my head: the fights we walked out of together, the storms we ate because no one else would, the empty apartments and the bad coffee and the big, stupid decisions that somehow kept us standing. Me and him. Always.
And her—this girl who’s been alone too long, who out-thinks rooms that tried to scare her quiet, who looks at the ocean like it finally remembered her name.
I open my eyes. Reid is still watching her. Of course he is.
“We’ve been through some things,” I say. “It’s always been the two of us. And it feels like for her it’s always been… her. Alone. Against the world.” My throat tightens. I let it. “She deserves all the love there is. If it takes two men to give it to her, then so be it.” I swallow and smile, small. “I’m glad it’s us. I’m glad we get to do that. To show her the world is safe in the ways that matter. That she can be exactly who she is and be loved for it.”
Reid nods slowly, eyes bright in the low light. He looks down at her again, touches her hair once more like a blessing he can’t stop giving. “I love her so fucking much, man.”
“Me too, Reid.” I say, because there’s no point dressing it up. “I think she's it for us.”
We listen to the heater, to the motel settling, to her even breathing. My bed is a few feet away, a cool sheet and a thin comforter waiting. I don’t move yet. Neither does he other than to turn off the lamp once more. We just sit there in the dim—him with her weight warm on his lap, me on the edge of the mattress across, both of us wrecked open and somehow steadier than we’ve ever been—until the neon outside the curtains clicks off and the room learns how to be fully dark.