Maybe it just needed us.
I turned on my side and slid up against Frankie’s back, bending my legs behind hers, and she wiggled back into me in her sleep.
Trav took a deep breath, and the air in the room suddenly didn’t feel so heavy.
The kitchen was already buzzingwhen I walked in, hair still messy and one of Travis’s massive flannels wrapped around me like a cozy blanket over my jammies. My bare feet soaked up the warmth radiating through the floor, another bonus point in Trav’s corner of ingenious things he added to his home that just make life so fucking beautiful.
I was a little disappointed to find both of the guys gone this morning when I woke up to the smell of coffee, normally we rotated in shifts so two of us could sleep in—or do anything but sleep in the lazy early morning light behind a closed door.
Then again, with each step I took as I brushed my teeth and made my way to the kitchen, I felt every single inch of my body that they had commanded last night when they took me together for the first time. Maybe it was a good thing one of them didn’t stay in bed with me for round two.
Giggles met me before I made it down the long hall from our bedroom to the open kitchen, and I grinned as I saw the chaos waiting for me.
Emmie sat at the counter, a plastic tiara on her head and one of Eli’s favorite hockey jerseys hanging to her toes, with a spoon dangling dangerously close to the edge of her cereal bowl. Toby was mid-lecture about the proper way to pour milk—complete with hand gestures—when he promptly sloshed half the carton across the counter.
“Mom!” He yelped, spotting me, wide-eyed, holding the dripping carton like it had betrayed him. “It has a mind of its own!”
I hung my head to hide my grin as Emmie dissolved into giggles, sliding her tiara onto Toby’s head. “Now you’re the Milk King!”
“Am not,” he muttered, though he wore the pink tiara proudly as Eli swooped in with a towel, laughing as he cleaned up the mess.
Travis, ever the steady one, flipped another pancake onto the growing stack next to a platter of bacon and hash browns, like nothing phased him as he winked at me over his shoulder. “Milk King, huh? Guess that makes me the Pancake Prince.”
“Wrong,” Emmie declared, spooning a massive bite of cereal into her mouth, “You’re the PancakeGrandpabecause you’re old and have hair growing in your ears.”
That sent Eli into a fit of laughter so loud I was sure it shook the walls. “He has hair everywhere!” He added dramatically, and Emmie dissolved into giggles again.
Travis only lifted one brow, but I caught the twitch of a smile as he passed behind Eli with the syrup bottle, adding it to the counter. And that’s when it happened–subtle, so subtle, but enough to make me pause.
Travis’s hand brushed the small of Eli’s back as he passed, a light touch, grounding even. Eli glanced at him, smirking and winking as if it were a private joke.
Heat bloomed in my belly.
They’d never done that before.
The kids bickered happily over who got the biggest pancake, and I sat there holding my coffee, trying to act normal while my stomach fluttered with butterflies. Something was different between them.
Last night—God, last night—was it because of that?
The ease with which they moved around each other, the softness in Eli’s grin, the quiet certainty in Travis’s touch.
It wasn’t just me they were sharing anymore.
And damn it all, it made my thighs clench even thinking about it.
Hours later,I felt like my chest was going to explode if I didn’t speak the words out into the void.
The cabin was empty and quiet; the kids having left to go to my mom’s for the night before my shift at the rink.
The air was finally still around us.
But I was anything but.
I’d been restless all morning, the image burned into my head; Travis’s hand brushing Eli’s back, Eli’s grin when he winked at him. It had been so quick, so casual, but I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t stop replaying it.
I couldn’t stophopingfor it.
Finally, I gave up trying to process it silently in my own head. I marched out of the laundry room and found them in the living room, both of them sprawled out on the couch with a hockey game on above the fireplace.
