Page 641 of End Game

Griffin shakes his head, but he's smiling when he crosses the room.

He bends and kisses me.

Nothing dramatic.

Just warm lips, one hand settling against my cheek, familiar enough now that my body leans toward him before my brain bothers participating.

When he pulls back, I smile up at him. “Look how badly that simple plan went.”

His thumb moves across my cheek. “Yeah.”

Behind him, Dex says, “To be fair, I think it went great.”

Ronan doesn't look away from the shelf. “The outcome and the original plan are objectively unrelated.”

Micah points his knife toward him from the kitchen. “That may be the most Ronan sentence you've ever said.”

I laugh.

Griffin kisses my forehead and goes back to his shelf.

My laptop is still waiting.

Dex's music is still playing.

Dinner is becoming something in the kitchen.

There are five schedules on the shared calendar, three different kinds of work happening in one room, a D&D session Thursday, two date nights next week, Griffin's shifts, Micah's appointments, one Dex-related entry simply labeled AUSTIN CALL???, and an alert reminding everyone when my next endocrinology appointment is because apparently privacy has limits when four men have access to Google Calendar.

Nine months ago, Griffin and I got married because I needed insurance.

Today, we’re all existing very domestically in the same open floor plan.

And that feels like progress.

Chapter forty-seven

End The Encounter

Ronan

Ben texts me on a Tuesday.

That is notable mostly because Ben has not texted me directly in almost five months.

There have been group threads he technically occupies and family logistics routed through my mother, although she stopped trying to convince me to reconsider anything sometime after Christmas.

Ben

Can we talk sometime?

I read it once.

Then again, because apparently four words require confirmation.

A second message appears before I decide whether I intend to answer.

Ben