Abel (Sabine Valley 1)

As if there’s any question of it. “Yes.”

“So will I.” Harlow lifts her voice. “And you, Abel? I know you’re awake.”

He gives a dry chuckle. “I was giving you privacy for your chat.”

“Well, you’re involved in this, too.” She keeps her hand on my chest and shifts over a little until she’s on her back. Abel moves to accommodate her and props his head on his hand. Harlow reaches up with her free hand and presses it to his chest, too. “Will you try?”

“You already know what I’m offering.”

She tenses. “I’m not talking about you and me, and you know it. Will you try with Eli?”

I find myself holding my breath. With everything between us, I have no right to expect this. Fuck, as recently as this morning, I was planning to do whatever it took to take Abel down. Just because I’ve decided to cling to hope doesn’t mean he feels the same.

I can’t blame him if he doesn’t feel the same.

“Yes.” The simple word lands like a bomb in this bed. “I’ll give him the same deal I gave you, Harlow. Full partnership, open discussion over any changes I have planned for the faction. And at the end of the year, if you want to stay, Eli…”

I barely register that he’s saying when he reaches over Harlow and hooks the back of my neck, jerking me to him so he can claim my mouth. “If you tell me want to stay, you better be damn sure that’s what you want, because I’m playing for keeps.”

Holy fuck, this is happening.

It’s really happening.

29

Harlow

It’s not in my nature to trust. If something seems too good to be true, it undoubtedly is. The three of us in a real relationship… That feels the very essence of fantasy. We’re too messy, too fractured as individuals. One of us will fuck it up.

But not tonight.

And maybe not tomorrow.

Maybe we’ll have just enough time to sink into the possibility of us before it’s ripped away.

As I lay between Abel and Eli, their breathing low and even in the darkness, I don’t know how to battle the thought of what the future brings. I want this. I want this so bad, I have to fight not cling to these men until they have bruises of my fingerprints in their skin. At the same time, I know that giving myself over to this is simply a faster route to heartbreak.

We will fuck it up. How can we not when we’re all still so new to the idea of happiness?

My breathing is coming too fast, too harsh. I think I might be panicking. The hysterical thought rolls through my head that I won’t have to wait for my heart to break because I’m having a heart attack right now. Surely that’s what’s causing this horrible pain in my chest, the tightness that I can’t inhale around. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

I start to sit up, the need to move overpowering thought and reason, but both men tighten their arms around me. Abel shifts closer and props his chin on the top of my head, a strange sort of anchor, while Eli moves until his face is pressed to my neck, his breath a warm and steady exhale against my skin.

They anchor me, but it’s not enough.

Here, in the dark, it’s horrifyingly easy to spill my fears onto them. “We’ll fuck this up.”

“We’ll stumble.” I feel Abel’s words against my back as much as I hear them.

I can’t twist to look at him, not with them effectively pinning me between them, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. I can’t see him. “That’s what I said.”

“Stumbling is not failing.”

Eli presses a kiss to my throat. “We won’t fail, Harlow. Not now that we’ve decided on this path.”

If I could draw a full breath, I might scream at them for being so calm, so collected right now. “One day ago, you were ready to literally kill each other. That kind of hate doesn’t just go away.”

“Neither does the friendship we had for twenty-eight years.” Eli shifts down and presses another kiss to my upper chest. “Like Abel said, there will be stumbles. We’re human, and we’re bound to fuck up. The stumbles matter less than how we deal with them.”

Abel strokes his hand down my side to squeeze my hip. “Don’t shoot us in the knee before we’re even out of the gate, sweetheart. Give us a chance to prove that this is possible.”

Their calm, the weight of them against me, the feel of their skin sliding against mine… It starts to slow the frantically spinning thoughts in my head. The tightness in my chest doesn’t entirely abate, but the urge to scream fades a little. “I’m afraid.”

Afraid that I already care too much. It doesn’t matter if this falls apart in a week, a month, a year. Or if it falls apart in ten minutes. I’ve loved Eli for years, and there’s no denying that I’ve gone and fallen for Abel. There is no way I leave this situation intact.