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That gets both boys laughing sleepily, and it’s with laughter, soft kisses, and the warmth of our bodies combining as gently as our magics, that they drift off to sleep.
Leaving me staring at the ceiling.
I’m exhausted. I can feel fatigue settling, deep and aching, down into my bones. It makes the skin under my eyes both heavy and tight. But I can’t seem to close my eyes.
That piece of us that’s missing scratches and tears around inside me, yanking my eyelids open every time they drift closed, turning Gabe and Charlie’s heat suffocating instead of comforting. I can’t settle into it. I need our fourth. I need us to be whole.
I need Darwin.
Chapter20
The Color of Contrition
Iwriggle out of bed. Grabbing my phone off our charging pad, I slip out of the bedroom so I don’t disturb my boys as I make a call.
Darwin answers on the first ring. “Is Gabe still with you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Will you come over?”
He doesn’t protest the hour. He simply says, “On my way.”
I wait by our suite door, turning my engagement ring around and around on my finger. I hate this. I hate feeling like I’ve done something wrong. That I’minthe wrong. Heat stains my cheeks and prickles the back of my neck.
Charlie’s not right-right about me. I’m not insufferable.
Okay, maybe he’s alittleright. I like the moral high ground. I try so hard to do the right thing. It really burns me when I get it wrong.
I’ve gotten it all kinds of wrong with Darwin.
But he’s not exactly blameless in this shambles, either. All he had to do was tell me the truth. Maybe I wouldn’t have listened immediately, but I wouldn’t have ignored him. Would it really have been so hard to say that Gabe hadn’t made a choice? That they weren’t together-together? Why does Princely have to make everything so fucking difficult?
A knock on the door makes me jump.
I pull the door open and before he’s even across the threshold, I blurt, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He lifts an eyebrow. He would be one of the five percent or whatever it is of people who can lift one eyebrow.
“Which particular thing did I fail to tell you during the week you were ignoring my fifteen texts a day?”
I grit my teeth. “I wasn’tignoringthem. I read them all. I just didn’t respond—”
The eyebrow goes higher.
“I asked you for space! How is sending me fifteen texts a day giving me space?”
Darwin’s eyes flick down to my chest, which makes me realize I’ve crossed my arms over my chest. And that black streaks are running up my fingers.
I shake out my hands.
“Should I prepare to be punched again?” he asks.
He deserves one for that eyebrow.
“I-I’m sorry about the punch.”
If his eyebrow goes any higher, it’s going to get swallowed by his hairline.
“I’m sorry for all of it, okay? But you could have said something. Why didn’t you tell me you and Gabe weren’t together? You made it seem like you were to blame for him abandoning Charlie. I’ve been raging at you for no bloody reason. How much of a fool d’you think that makes me feel?”
