Hot 4 (Multiple Love)

"Open your eyes, Connie,” Karter says softly, taking a seat next to me and stroking my cheek. A tear leaks over my skin, and he wipes it away, pulling me into his warm and comforting embrace. "Did we hurt you?" The worry in his voice prompts me to shake my head. I don't want them to think that. It couldn't be further from the truth, but I can't tell him what I'm feeling without this becoming impossible. So I swallow down the ache in my chest and take a deep breath. "You have four more questions."

Karter smooths my hair away from my forehead, kissing my lips as his brothers gather around us. "No more questions," he says. "I think we should leave those until tomorrow and sleep off the tequila."

I open my eyes, finding his soft silver ones smiling back at me. He blinks, his long lashes almost too pretty for such a handsome face, and I know he knows what I'm feeling. He wants to make this easier for me, and I'm so thankful that I wrap my arms around him and press my face into his warm chest.

Safe.

It's how I feel between these men who know my body and my heart in equal measure and care for them both just the same. Karter scoops me into his arms and carries me into the villa, making his way up the stairs. He lays me on the bed and climbs in beside me. His brothers follow and lean in to kiss me one by one before drifting away. I don't understand why only Karter stays, but I do know that they believe it's for my benefit.

I snuggle into his embrace, inhaling his woodsy scent that has now become so familiar to me. He strokes my hair, my arms, my back, breathing softly and evenly, and I begin a war in my mind that cannot be won. Words rest tentatively on the tip of my tongue. Words that I know shouldn't be spoken. Words about how much I'm going to miss them. How much I've come to care about them. How deep those feeling are. How alive they feel around my heart.

Words about what could be if things were different. If I didn't have to stay in my job and face up to the fact that I need to push harder to succeed. If I didn't need to do more to make my father happy. If Blake, the boys' father, wasn't intent on fighting to prevent his sons from having anything to do with me.

So many words balance precariously, but I say nothing until I'm drifting into sleep.

The one thing that can be said without consequence is the one thing that feels right.

"Thank you."

17

Bangkok is a city like no other I've ever experienced. All around, tuk-tuks whizz between traffic and pedestrians, taking their precariously seated passengers from one destination to another. Large, overcrowded buses move way too fast, belching out diesel into the already heavily polluted air. I draw my sarong around my face as I pull my small suitcase toward the market, my lungs are struggling, but my eyes take in everything hungrily. Beside me, a family of five mounts a single moped, father at the front, mother at the back holding a newborn, and between them, two small boys with inky black hair and neatly pressed clothes. My heart skips as they pull into traffic without a single helmet between them, narrowly missing a man carrying a basket in either hand.

The scent of garlic permeates the air as street vendors fry noodles and vegetables, sprinkling them with crushed peanuts and lime juice. I stop to watch a man slicing bananas into a frying pan. "You like pancake?" he says, tipping glossy batter from a large ladle over the bananas. Bubbles begin to rise to the surface as a thick dinner-plate-sized fluffy pancake begins to take shape. How could I resist?

"How much?" I ask, foraging in my purse for the still unfamiliar currency. The price he gives is so cheap that for a moment I think I've made a mistake, then I notice the amount is handwritten on a sign above his head.

He serves me the banana pancake on a paper plate with a plastic knife and fork wrapped neatly in a cheap white napkin. He offers me syrup, which I take gratefully, and I tug my suitcase, balancing my precariously held food over to a low wall. The first bite is like food heaven, and I roll my eyes, catching the vendor's gaze and offering an enthusiastic thumbs up. He grins a yellow, crooked smile. Wow.

Pretty girls of around eleven years old, in perfectly turned-out school uniform, pass me, giggling. An old lady with no teeth approaches me with a bag of pretty cotton scarves that she's selling for less than the price of a cup of coffee back home. I buy two because she looks about eighty and should be sitting at home with her feet up rather than hawking on the street. I slip her double her asking price and put my finger to my lips, not wanting any of the other vendors to know. The last thing I need is for people to swamp me, wanting me to buy their wares, particularly as I'm by myself.