Page 75 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

He wins the first hand inside of four minutes.

He wins it cleanly, watching the three of us through his screen with the easy attention of a man who is doing the most natural thing in the world, and when the hand is over he leans back and takes a sip of his wine and says, “Socks count,” with the specific satisfaction of someone who planned for this possibility.

“This is rigged,” I say.

“Every game is rigged in favor of the person who’s best at it,” Maddox says. “That’s not rigging, that’s skill.”

“That’s a very convenient philosophy.”

“I have a lot of those.”

Killian loses the second hand and says nothing, which is somehow more unsettling than if he’d said something. He sets his scotch down and removes his watch with the careful, unhurried motion of a man who is treating this like a perfectly normal Tuesday evening, and the watch goes on the side table and he picks his scotch back up.

Maddox looks extremely satisfied with himself.

Asher wins the third hand, which he receives with a composure that suggests he is not as far from twenty-one as he claims.

I lose the fourth.

Maddox doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me on the screen and waits, and there is something in the quality of his attention that makes the room feel warmer than it was a moment ago. Killian and Asher are also watching and trying to look like they aren’t, which they are both very bad at.

I reach up and pull the hair tie from my wrist.

“That counts,” I say, putting it on the floor beside me.

There is a moment.

“Hair tie,” Maddox says. “Good. Very creative.”

“Thank you.”

“You have approximately two hands before creative options run out.”

“That’s very presumptuous.”

“Isn’t it,” he says, and deals the next hand.

It happens somewhere around hand seven, which is when Maddox has won four of the previous six and the room has become considerably warmer and I’ve moved from the floor to the couch and Killian’s arm is around me and Asher has abandoned his book to be closer and the whole thing has shifted from a card game into something more honest.

It doesn’t happen loudly.

It doesn’t announce itself with any fanfare at all. I’m looking at my cards and I’m aware of Killian’s arm around me and the warmth of Asher’s shoulder against mine and Maddox on the screen saying something that makes Killian almost smile, and the thing that happens is simply this: I know.

I’m in love with all three of them.

Not the warm, complicated, this-is-more-than-I-expected feeling I’ve been carrying since the opening event. Not the attachment that’s been building in the quiet spaces of the last few weeks. This is the other thing, the clear, settled, completely terrifying thing that you know when you know it and cannot un-know once you do.

I’m in love with Killian, who carried me through a hall like it was obvious and is currently radiating body heat through my shoulder and said you don’t have to do it alone anymore like it cost him nothing when it cost him everything.

I’m in love with Asher, who has been making sure I eat since the moment he met me and cried about it not at all and who calls me mon coeur like it’s just a word and we both know it isn’t.

I’m in love with Maddox, who is six time zones away in a hotel suite having talked his way into a strip poker game over video call and is currently winning it with the focused efficiency of someone who never does anything halfway.

I look at my cards.

I don’t say any of this out loud.

I file it somewhere quiet and deep and let it settle there and turn back to the game.