“No,” I say, and I can’t stop the grin. “I’m asking you to move in with us. Our house, our life. No more weekend trips.”
Our garage smells like cheap coffee, and whatever preworkout Tate spilled last month and never cleaned up. He’s perched on the edge of the workbench,his hoodie sleeves shoved to his elbows, flipping a coin over and over in his hand. I stand there for a second just watching him and thinking about how the hell to say this without setting off every alarm in his head. Finally, I break the silence. “You busy?”
He doesn’t look up. “If you broke the monitor again, I’m going to duct-tape your hands behind your back.”
“Okay, relax,” I say, stepping closer. “It’s not that.”
He sighs, flipping the coin once more before catching it mid-air and letting it roll across his knuckles.“Then what?”
“I talked to Haven this morning.”
That gets his attention, barely.
“She’s moving in officially.”
Now he looks up. “To our house?”
I nod. “Yeah, to our house Tate.”
He raises an eyebrow, skeptical.
I step closer. “I want this, Tate. I know it’s a lot, and yeah, it changes everything. But it also makes sense, this just… makes it official.”
He’s quiet for a long moment before his jaw flexes once. “So that’s it? She just moves in and what, we all live happily ever after in a house with twin psychos?”
I can’t help but shake my head. “Yeah. That’s the plan, minus one psycho.”
He tosses the coin onto the bench, leaning back. His eyes narrow like he’s doing the math of this whole future. “You think it’s gonna work?”
“I think it already is,” I say. “We love her, she loves us. We’ve survived everything else, we can survive cohabitation and who forgot to take out the trash.”
He drags a hand through his hair, tension bleeding out one slow breath at a time. “You really want this?”
“With everything in me.”
He snorts softly. “God, you’re so fucking earnest.”
“I’m also right.”
He points at me. “I get the hall closet.”
“You already have it.”
“Then we’re good.”
He says it like it’s no big deal. But I see it, the way he exhales through his nose like the panic’s passing. He wants this too, he’s just scared of saying it out loud.
The knock at the garage door startles us both out of our thoughts. Three hard bangs, a pause, then one finalthudlike they’re trying to knock the paint off the frame.
Tate mutters, “If that’s a delivery and they dented my case again, I’m committing a felony.”
I head over, unlock it, and swing the door wide.
Hunter strolls in with aviators perched on his head and an energy drink in one hand. “I swear to God, if you’re calling me over here to talk about your plants dying when you were gone, I’m blocking you.”
“Not this time.”
He eyes me and then Tate. “Okay, now I’m scared, spooky bro looks mad.”
