Banks enters the room fully dressed. “I have a post-game meeting with the staff this morning.” He pulls out a chair, his gaze heating as it roams over me. “Will you please stay here while I’m gone? I won’t be able to concentrate otherwise.”
“I was going to say the same.” Gabe adds more plates to the counter, then briefly turns from the stove. “I have to clock in this morning and delegate projects for the day, but I can be back by this afternoon.”
“No worries, men. I’m free to play bodyguard all day.” Tobias drags his open mouth back and forth across my shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m going to guard the shit out of her.”
“Something tells me your focus isn’t going to be on protecting her,” Banks says dryly.
“You’re right. I need to make a condom run.”
At the stove, Gabe’s shoulders shake with laughter.
I can’t help but sit and marvel over how much the dynamic between us four has changed in a week. For one, I’m no longer running. I spent the night and didn’t bail at the crack of dawn. And two, Gabe, Banks and Tobias seem to be forming a friendship. They’re no longer jealous over each other and I can’t help but hope my equal attention toward them has spurred the positive change. Because my feelings for these men are genuinely balanced. We’re a circle. A weird one, but a circle nonetheless.
“I can take care of myself. I don’t need a bodyguard.” Banks and Gabe open their mouths to protest. Tobias bites my neck like an actual vampire. “But.” I bop Tobias on the head and he un-sinks his teeth, licking the marks gently. “I’ll stay here for the day so you guys don’t have to worry.”
“You don’t like us being worried,” Banks remarks, nodding a thank you to Gabe when he sets down a glass of orange juice in front of him. “That’s new.”
There’s a lit sparkler in my chest, but I give a casual shrug. “I guess I don’t.”
Tobias drops his chin to my shoulder. “Say more.”
They’ve all suspended their movements to stare at me. “I mean…I just…” More casual shrugging that isn’t really casual at all. “If the shoe was on the other foot and one of you was in possible danger, I would want you to take precautions.”
“Because you care about us,” Gabe says gruffly.
“Yes,” I murmur, forcing myself to look each of them in the eye, even if saying these words out loud feels risky and scary to some deeply ingrained part of me. “I care about the three of you. A lot.”
I might even be in love with this. With you. With us.
Banks drops a fist softly to the table. “How am I supposed to leave now?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Gabe sighs.
Tobias plants noisy kisses all over my hair and face. “I’ve never been happier to be rich and unemployed.”
We eat breakfast like a family, asking more specific questions about Banks’s team meeting. How they’ll watch game film and make adjustments for the next match. Gabe tells us the condos he’s building will sell for eight million dollars apiece and our jaws drop into our scrambled eggs. Tobias tells us he had a therapy breakthrough recently and we all raise our glasses of orange juice to celebrate. And there’s bickering, of course, because it’s us. About which one of them will take me on the best dates and sleeping arrangements. Balled up napkins are thrown at heads. It’s so comfortable and yet breathtakingly new. Unique.
I move to Banks’s lap mid-conversation and he tucks my head under his chin, his magic fingers stroking down my back without missing a beat, still arguing with Gabe about rugby being superior to football. Gabe plucks me up a few minutes later and I rest back against his chest while they all pepper me with questions about work. I tell them about each staff writer at the Times and how they all have weird food quirks. Soup girl makes them laugh the hardest.
Talking to them is so easy that I’m telling them my secret before I can stop myself.
“I tried to become one of them. I thought I could take a shortcut. Impress Karina and make it into the club without putting in the work, but…” I don’t realize I’m fidgeting until Gabe lays a hand on mine and brings it to his mouth. “I think I’m going to enroll in the journalism program at Baruch. I’m going to try and walk before I run. For once.”
Everyone sets down their utensils, like this is the news of the century.
“That’s brilliant, love,” Tobias says, beaming at me.