Page 83 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
Grey breathes in, holds, lets it out. “That long?”
I nod. I don’t elaborate, but I owe them something.
Finn shakes his head, a single slow swing. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
I try to answer honestly. “I thought I could handle it.” It sounds feeble, even to me.
Grey barks a quiet, bitter laugh. “Handle it? You almost fucking died in the trailer.”
My hand finds my lower back, an involuntary muscle memory. “I know.”
He’s shaking his head now too, but it’s the kind of movement that never finds an end point. “We could have helped,” he says, not even angry, just resigned. “Or at least not made it worse.”
I don’t want to say that help isn’t always a two-way contract, but the words are trying to wedge themselves out of my mouth. Instead, I pivot to triage. “I’ve been careful. Vitamins, hydration, all the stuff they put on the handouts.”
Finn looks at me now, really looks, and I see something I’ve only ever caught in the locker room after a bad loss: devastation with no outlet. “What about appointments? Did you go alone?”
I nod. “Usually, the waiting rooms are empty. I use a fake name when I sign in.”
Grey’s jaw works side to side, a dull grinder. “And the blood tests? The scans?”
“It’s triplets,” I say, because the medical language is a shield. “All viable, no genetic flags, but my blood pressure’s been in the tank since week five. They say I’ll be lucky to make it to term. And that’s even if—” I clamp my jaw, finish the sentence in my head.
Nobody talks. Finn starts pacing again, two steps forward, a pivot, two steps back, his hands behind his head. I watch the cords in his forearms flex with every turn.
Grey keeps his arms crossed, but the tension leaks out. He’s got the posture of a guy trying not to tackle the problem head-on, because to do that would be to admit it’s real. “So what, Sage? You were just going to keep showing up until you fell apart? That was your plan?”
“Yes,” I admit. “It was the only plan I had.”
Grey is up now, standing, one hand braced on the window frame. “You realize what this does to us? To the team?”
Finn is already there. “She knows, Grey. That’s the fucking point. She’s not stupid.”
“I don’t need you to defend me,” I say to Finn, too sharp, but I can’t help it.
He stops pacing. “I’m not. I just—” He lets it die. My heart breaks harder in that moment. For some reason, I can’t seem to stop hurting these boys, when all I do is love them. God, I love them, and I hate what that could mean for all of us.
The three of us stare each other down like a standoff that’s been playing since we met.
After a while, Grey moves to the kitchen, opens the fridge, stares into it without seeing. “Can I at least get you something to eat?” he asks, and it’s so domestic and broken that I almost laugh.
“Protein bar. Top shelf. The blue ones.”
He gets it, tosses it over, and I catch it one-handed. The wrapper is cold. I crack it open, chew, let the fake chocolate and soy paste glue my teeth together.
Finn softens a little. He sits on the arm of the futon, legs spread, elbows on knees. “Do you even know—” He stops, starts again. “Do you care whose it is?”
The answer is easy. “No.” Then, softer: “I mean, I know who’s statistically most likely, but it doesn’t matter.”
Grey nods at Finn. “We’re not mad,” he says. “Not really. We’re just?—”
“Hurt,” I finish.
He nods. “Yeah.”
Nobody has anything else to say. Grey looks at his hand. Finn looks at the wall. I look at the mug, the blue protein bar, the patch of carpet under the table where a stain never fully came out. We could sit here for hours, and probably would, if not forthe soft, insistent pulse in my abdomen reminding me that the clock is running out.
Grey breaks the silence first. “We’ll get out of your hair,” he says, and the phrase lands like a shovel.
