Page 82 of Evolve

“I don’t get it though. I understand your logic, that you want her to be happy. I get it. But what about you guys? You’re giving up a full relationship with her and only getting what? Leftovers?” I ask incredulously. That’s fucking ridiculous.

“Brother, she’s not a fucking consolation prize. She’s the whole goddamn world,” Maddox snaps, his face full of certainty and if I’m correct, a fair amount of anger.

I’m taken aback by this whole fucking thing. How are they so sure after such a short amount of time? I stare at them both, feeling like my best friends are strangers for the first fucking time in my life. “How is this shit so easy for you guys?”

“No one said it was, Nyx,” Gage deadpans. “It’s new for the both of us. Neither of us has ever been in a serious relationship, besides his ex cunt, who we don't count, which is another reason why it works. We’re both as fucked up as they come. How can either of us give anyone everything they need from a partner when we’re so full of fucking holes, we can’t even keep our own lives together?”

“And where does Stone fit into all this?”

“Where do I fit into what?” The man himself asks quietly, stepping out of his room, alone. “She’s passed out,” he answers when we all look at the now-closed door.

“Are you with her?” I question, not wasting any more fucking time talking in weird-ass metaphors and hypotheticals. Why their relationship dynamic and drama matter to me, I have no fucking clue.

“What are you talking about?” His brows pull in tightly and he looks genuinely confused. Makes sense. He kind of walked in at the tail end of all this shit.

“We were just talking about how close you guys seem is all,” Gage says nonchalantly. It’s annoying because my head wants me to demand answers, yet he’s unbothered.

Stone smiles, his face taking on a nostalgic quality. He’s no doubt thinking about his childhood relationship with her. “Would that be a problem?” he finally asks, eyes flitting between the Luna brothers. Gage grins and shakes his head and Maddox stiffens briefly before sighing and shaking his also.

“Just fucking like that?” I growl, feeling incensed all of the sudden. I’d like to say it’s on her behalf since we’re all making decisions out here without her but it’s fucking not.

I’m incensed formyself.

“No, we’re not together but I don’t know,” he sighs and shrugs, running a hand up the back of his neck. “Maybe eventually. It’s actually something I wanted to talk to you guys about. I don’t want to cross any lines or fuck shit up with us if things do progress between me and her.” Maddox goes to say something but Stone juts his hand out, silencing him. “But with that being said, I’m also not backing down. If she wants me, she gets me and we,” he gestures to the four of us, “will just have to figure it out.”

I have to hand it to Stone, he has balls coming out and saying it like that. He may struggle with his emotions generally but for whatever reason, when it comes to her, shit just makes sense in his head and he seems fearless.

Gage and Maddox look at each other momentarily, a silent conversation passing between them. Gage nods and Madd smirks, turning his gaze back to Stone. “Let’s just get this out of the way right now for everyone in the room. Whatever she wants, whatever makes her happy, is our priority. If either of you finds yourselves wanting to be with her, and that’s what makesherhappy, then we’re fine with it. But understand, that doesn’t mean either of us is giving her up, so we’ll just have to figure this shit out as we go.”

“Also, this should go without saying, but it only extends to the men inside of this room. No one else, and I meanno one,touches her other than us four,” Gage tacks on in an angry growl.

Stone cracks a lopsided grin but stays silent. We all stay silent, letting the words of this weird as fuck conversation sink in.

My brain swirls with everything that they’ve said, admitted. I know they have feelings for her and obviously, when Stone came out and told us who she is to him, I knew it was only a matter of time. But what I can’t wrap my head around is the conflicting emotions inside of me about the whole fucking situation.

A big part of me is angry, fucking furious, that she’s here in the first place. I don’t want her in our world and considering me and my brothers are rooted in this world, this life, with no means for escaping anytime soon, by proxy means I don’t want her aroundus. Yet here she is. Little by little taking over every piece of my existence. My home my business, my friends, my family, my head, my fucking heart. She’s wreaking havoc on all of it and there is nothing I can do about it.

She’s like a plague, a fungus, infectingeverythingaround me when all I want is for her to run so fucking far away that she forgets about us, about me. Maybe then, she might survive this, because I already know without a shadow of a doubt, that there is no way we all come out on top of what’s to come, even if we’re successful in taking out Augustus. There will be ramifications and unforeseeable ripple effects and I don’t want her to get caught in the crosshairs, in the carnage.

It’s too late for that though, isn’t it? She’s already here. She’s already fucking in this shit. Just by being with us, she’s probably already on our enemies’ radar and I don’t understand how these motherfuckers don’t see that.

The rest of me though, feels like the very idea of pushing her away, losing her, will tear the remnants of my soul to shreds, and I’m not sure I’ll survive it.

Do I even want to? Do I even deserve to?

I don’t know anymore, especially after my drunken heart-to-heart with Stone the other night. Soberly, the guilt I feel for how I treated her, for bringing that woman to our house, it's enough to swallow me whole.

The more time I spend with her, even if she is scowling at me and probably wishing I would just fuck off, the more pieces of myself are starting to come back to me. Fractured remnants that I thought were long fucking gone are beginning to resurface. I feel more like the version of myself that believed in a future other than what’s been in front of me for so damn long. A future that isn’t gray and bleak. A future where I can breathe again.

That’s what she’s injecting into my life. And like a druggy, I want more.

Maybe that’s why my brothers are so enamored with her? So obsessed that they’ve lost all reasonable thoughts and rationality. If she does for them even a fraction of what she does to me, bringing them back to life, then maybe I do understand why they’d take the risk.

Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

“Did she say anything to you?” Madd asks, breaking the contemplative silence we’ve all fallen into. Stone shakes his head as he takes a seat next to Gage. Maddox peaks a brow in question. “You were in there a while though.”

Our blonde brother just smiles, looking exhausted but happy. “She passed out on my table so I moved her to the couch and put a blanket over her. Then, I just sort of watched her for a while," he says awkwardly with a shrug. "There was a rope on the ground so I assume she either tried and failed to wrap herself or did it and removed it before falling asleep. Either way, she’s fine right now.”

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