***Theo***
Myskinitchedknowing that Reagan was with her ex, but I knew she was ours. Whatever that meant, it was true. Seeing her chase Jenny down to stand up for me had not only been the sexiest thing I’d ever seen, it was downright adorable. Reagan got wild with us; she acted out and slipped out of her normal politeness. She didn’t do it in public. Seeing her snap because she couldn’t let someone insult me was enough to make me feel ten feet tall.
I was sitting outside the shop with Charlie and August, drinking a beer and counting down the minutes until Reagan called one of us. It was a nightly occurrence. She finished work, spent some time with her family, and then called us. There hadn’t been a night that she hadn’t been with one of us, if not all of us.
“You should’ve seen her. It was fucking stunning. Jenny dropped some low blow that didn’t even phase me and then Rea was yanking away from me to chase after her. Her eyes shot fire, I’m pretty sure.”
August scratched at his beard and grinned. “She’s pretty fond of you, I guess.”
Charlie slapped my chest with the back of his hand. “Don’t let it go to your head. You’re not the favorite.”
“Of course, he thinks his dimples make him the favorite.” Groaning, August finished his beer and tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin. “Fucking pretty boy.”
I laughed and tossed him a fresh one from the cooler. “He thinks we haven’t noticed the way he uses them on Rea. No one grins that much.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Charlie chuckled and stretched his legs out in front of him. “How long does it take to tell someone to leave town and never call again?”
Shifting in my seat, I shrugged. “We were just talking about how sweet she is. There’s no telling how long it’ll take her to tell him to fuck off.”
“Think she needs help? I’m great at telling people to fuck off.” Charlie clenched his jaw and stared out at the potato chip. “I feel like a teen girl sitting by the phone, waiting on a call.”
“I’ve been thinking.” August bounced his leg and then put his beer on his knee to force himself to stop. “Maybe we talk to Russ. It doesn’t seem like this thing is getting lighter. Every fucking time I touch her, I find something else I can’t get enough of.”
Silence stretched on for a few minutes as we each thought about the repercussions. Charlie was the one to break it. “It’s serious. With all of us. Am I crazy for not being horrified?”
I rested my elbows on my knees and set my beer down between my feet. “I think we’re all crazy. Somehow, it just is, though. If anyone else touched her, I’d want to kill them. You both are like my brothers. You’ve been there with me through everything. We started this thing together a decade ago and I think that might be the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Let’s just acknowledge that it’s weird as hell and move on from it. Because you’re right. It feels like this is how it’s supposed to be. The idea that one of us would have her to ourselves feels like the end of something special.”
“It’s what Rea wants. She wouldn’t pick one of us.” Charlie smiled and then chuckled. “Just imagine asking her to choose. I’m pretty sure it’s all of us or none of us for her. She couldn’t pick.”
I smiled too because something about knowing that we were in something so deep together felt right. “Pretty sure she’d beat the shit out of us for even suggesting that she pick one of us as better than the other two.”
“So, we’re verbally acknowledging that this is what we’re doing?” August grimaced. “We’re doing the quad-couple bullshit?”
I laughed until my sides hurt, a sense of relief loosening the tightness that had plagued my chest for weeks. “So. The bet.”
Charlie groaned. “The bet. What a stupid thing.”
“We are the stupid things.” August shrugged. “But we can learn. Clearly. And we’ve learned that making a bet on who would win Rea was fucking dumb.”
“Especially since there was no way that would’ve ended well. Did we really think one of us would win her over and the other two would be happy-go-lucky about it? Enough so that they’d just go clean and stock the lake house? Talk about a fight in the making.” I folded my arms behind my head and snorted. “There is the matter of who is going to be stuck doing that shit, though.”
“You say that like we’re even going to have a lake house to go to after Russ finds out. He’ll probably burn everything we’ve ever touched to the ground.” Charlie frowned. “I won’t lie. I don’t have a clue how to do it, how to tell our best friend that we’ve been lying to him and breaking the only rule he’s ever given us.”
I stood up and then sat back down, unsure what to do with myself as guilt weighed heavily on me. “He’s going to fucking hate us. He won’t even be wrong for it.”
“I know that we’re wrong. I know that we should’ve kept our shit in our pants and ignored the pull to Rea, but I’m not sorry. I…” August took a deep breath and blew it out loudly. “I care about her. There’s never been anyone else.”
“Do you think it’ll make Russ take a little better if he knows that we…care…about her? That feels like too small of a word for what it is.”
I studied Charlie. “There’s probably a word that fits it better. It’s scary as hell, though. I thought I felt it before for Jenny, but I was a fucking idiot. Now I know that what I felt for Jenny was just…a longing to feel what I felt for Rea.”
“We could’ve told you that.” Charlie nodded for a second and then chuckled. “Yeah, that other word fits better, but it’s too soon. Right?”
Something fell over in the shop, but when I looked in the open bay doors, I didn’t see anything out of place. Before I could get up to look around, my phone buzzed and I looked down to see a message from Rea.
“I’m starting to think she only wants us for Hunter. She’s at your house, again.” I nodded to August and laughed. “She says Hunter is keeping the bed warm until we get there.”
Cursing, August stood up. “Damn dog.”
Charlie pulled his keys from his pocket. “Close this place up. Our girl’s waiting for us.”
We all hesitated, looking back and forth at each other for a minute before August punched us both in the arm and growled. “I’ll strangle you both if either of you ever repeats that I said quad-couple.”
Charlie did the same, punching both me and August. “And I’ll bury you both if you tell anyone I said any of this shit.”
I joined in and punched them, too. “I don’t know what embarrassing thing I said because everything I say is awful lately, but just keep it to yourselves. Assholes.”
Manly friendships realigned, we closed up the shop faster than ever before and climbed into Charlie’s truck so he could drive us to Rea.