Page 79 of No Save Point

Tate doesn’t say anything for a long time, and I let the silence stretch, let the weight of everything press down on him, let him sit with it, let him figure out if he’s actually ready to say it out loud. Then he exhales sharply, drags a hand through his already messy hair, and mutters, “Yeah. I fucking like her too.”

I stare at him, waiting for the deflection, for the usual Tate bullshit, the joke, the sarcastic remark, the way he always twists things to make them not feel real. But it doesn’t come, instead, he looks at me, there’s something raw there that isn’t just about sex or control or winning some fucked-up game.

“I don’t want to fuck this up,” he says, voice lower now, “But I will. If we don’t figure all this shit out, I will.”

I exhale slowly, letting that sink in. He’s right. If we don’t figure this out, it’ll all fall apart before it even has a chance to be something real. I sit down on the edge of his bed, elbows resting on my knees as I force myself to say the next part. “Then we have to decide what to do, how to figure this all out and make it work.”

Tate lets out another breath, rubbing his face before nodding once. “Yeah.” He leans back in his chair again, rubbing a hand over his jaw, exhaling slow, heavy, like he already knows this isn’t going to be easy, like he already knows we’re both in way too deep to turn back now.

I run a hand through my hair, trying to shake off the lingering tension, trying to figure out how the hell we do this without completely ruining everything. “So?” I finally say, glancing at him. “How do we make this work without fucking her up in the process?”

Tate snorts, shaking his head. “No idea, it’s all kinda fucked regardless” he says, but then his expression sobers, his fingers tapping against his knee, his gaze aiming toward the door like he’s already thinking about Haven, already calculating. “But I know she doesn’t want to choose between me or you.”

I nod. That part’s clear. I get it, I really fucking do. I don’t want her to have to choose, despite the situation being what it is.

“Then we don’t make her,” I say, the words landing firmer than I expected, like they’ve been waiting at the edge of my throat this whole time. We don’t make her choose between us, not if we can help it. Not if we care about her the way I think we both do. We figure it out. We set rules. We don’t—” I swallow, forcing myself to keep going. “We don’t put her in the middle of our shit Tate.”

Tate arches a brow, a slow smirk tugging at his lips. “You mean you don’t want me reminding her which one of us can actually make her scream?”

I roll my eyes. That’s exactly the kind of shit that’s going to make this impossible if we’re not careful. “That’s what I mean,” I mutter, rubbing my temples. “This isn’t some fucking competition.”

Tate leans forward, his smirk fading slightly. “Maybe not for you,” he says, voice quiet. “But for me? It’s survival.”

I pause, my stomach twisting at the weight of his words, at the honesty in them, at the way they feel heavier than just Haven, maybe we’ve been circling something like this our whole damn lives without realizing it. But I don’t have time to unpack that now.

Tate shakes his head, pushing himself up from his chair, his hands bracing on the desk as he exhales. “Fine. We figure it out. But for the record—” he tilts his head, his eyes finding mine, a sharp glint behind them. “I never want your cock that close to my face again. Ever.”

I scoff, standing up and pushing him as I pass. “Trust me, I don’t want that either.”

Tate grins, following me out of the room, and there’s something lighter about it this time. Like, for once, we’re not on completely opposite sides of the universe, like maybe we can actually do this without burning everything around us down.

I head toward the kitchen pulling out pans, thinking about what the hell we’re going to make before Haven wakes up, because she deserves at least that, at least one morning that isn’t just chaos.

Tate leans against the counter, watching me. “You think this is really gonna work?” he finally asks..

I pause, my grip tightening on the pan, my jaw clenching. “I don’t know,” I admit. “But I’m not willing to let her go just to find out.”

Tate doesn’t respond right away, but when he finally does, it’s quieter. More honest. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Me either.”

39

Haven

The first thing I register when I wake up is the warmth, the lingering heat of Carter’s body still clinging to the sheets, the faint scent of him wrapped around me like a second skin. The second thing is the sound of something happening downstairs, the clatter of pans and the unmistakable low noise of Carter and Tate talking.

I blink, my mind still foggy, my body still aching, sore in a way that makes these last few days feel all the more real, all the more impossible, like I somehow stepped into a reality I never could’ve imagined, and I’m still trying to convince myself that it actually happened. Who am I kidding, holy fuck, it happened.

I pull myself up, my muscles protesting, a dull ache settling deep in my bones as I rub the sleep from my eyes.

I glance toward the corner of the room, my eyes landing on my bag—still half-packed. Still exactly where I dropped it after the first night, before I got swallowed whole by everything that is Carter and Tate.

I never even went back to that stupid Airbnb. Didn’t touch half the clothes I brought, didn’t need anything except… them.

That scares me a little. I didn’t think I’d end up here, this deep, this tangled up in two people who shouldn’t make sense, who shouldn’t be so good at pulling me apart in completely different ways. But they did.

Now, the version of myself that existed before I walked into Carter’s arms, before I heard Tate’s voice in the dark, before they touched me like I was the only thing keeping them breathing? She doesn’t exist anymore, and I don’t want to go back to pretending she does.

But I have to leave today. I have to go back to my life, my town, my apartment. Back to Cassie, she’d never forgive me. I don’t want to. God, I don’t fucking want to.

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