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“As our bodies moved together, an intricate dance of love and desire, we surrendered ourselves to the intoxicating embrace of the night. Each caress, each whispered word, held within it the weight of a thousand unspoken promises, a language only we understood.
“In that moment, we were more than just four souls intertwined. We were a tapestry of passion, woven with threads of vulnerability and unyielding devotion.
“I loved them. The truth couldn’t be clearer than it was to me then, when I was lying between them, cocooned in their arms, nursing the chaos within.” She takes a deep breath, shuddering, as she ends her read.
As she finishes, she looks up, and her gaze meet mine. Her eyes go wide. I can tell she recognizes me right away.
I don’t know what I feel right now—a little betrayed that Susan didn’t tell us the truth about the baby, and also pure happiness.
I slowly stand up and begin to clap. Eventually, the rest of the audience catches up, and everyone starts to applaud her. “I’m proud of you,” I mouth at her.
To my surprise, tears fill her eyes, and she starts rubbing them away.
As the event comes to an end, the room buzzes with conversations, and the sound of applause gradually fades away.
Eventually, we’re able to cut through the crowd to talk to her. I’m grateful to whoever ordered the seven-pound cake for the event because everyone busies themselves eating it, leaving Susan mostly alone.
As Susan approaches, I feel a mix of anticipation and nervousness surging through me.
“We were just leaving.” I don’t know why I say that, what exactly I was expecting, but the baby is a big shock.
To my surprise, Susan latches on to my arm and shakes her head.
“Ed, Ollie, Artie…I…I didn’t expect to see you here,” she says. From the corner of my eyes, I see a few curious glances our way.
Her voice carries a blend of emotions, a delicate balance between apprehension and yearning. A storm is brewing inside her, as it is in me.
“And we didn’t expect you to be pregnant,” Ollie jokes. He says what I’m thinking.
Susan’s face falls, and she looks like she’s on the verge of tears.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you upset,” Ollie says. “But you have to know that we’re shocked.”
“What are you doing here?” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. “You guys hate the city.”
It’s true, and we’ve always talked about hating the city, or really any place outside the mountains or Wishing.
Artie reaches out and touches her arm. “Because we came to get you.”
“We’ve been looking for you for months,” Ollie says. “The book launch was our only lead.”
“And you came,” Susan says softly. She gazes at me when I don’t say anything. Even my brothers are looking at me, possibly because I’m ruining everything when everything is so close to perfect.
She narrows her eyes and instinctively reaches out to run her hands over my head. “Wait, did you cut your hair?”
“Only for you,” Ollie says softly. “You have no idea how much we’ve missed you and the baby.”
“That we didn’t even know still existed until a few minutes ago,” I say.
My brothers look at me. Ollie sighs. “Ed, not right now.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t walk past this so quickly. Not when I’ve spent months trying to figure out where I went so wrong that you didn’t even say goodbye.”
Susan looks away. “I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was just a coward who ran away when her feelings got overwhelming.” She shudders. “I thought you didn’t feel the same way about me as I do for you.”
Artie looks around. A few of Susan’s readers are looking at us curiously. “You don’t have to do this.”
“But I have to. I know you have every right to be upset,” Susan says, dabbing at her tears. “You have no idea how many times I wanted to pick up the phone and call you or just drive back into your arms.” She looks at each of us. “But I didn’t want to be a burden.”
