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“Relax,” Aldo says quietly. “We were talking on the way over and I asked if she wanted to grab dinner tonight. She said yes.”

“Great.” Some of the tension I’ve been holding all practice seeps from my shoulders, and I glance over at Doug, then back to Aldo. “I invited Doug.”

Aldo’s brown eyes widen. “What did he say?”

“He said he’d think about it.”

Aldo shakes his head with a laugh, then heads back over to the team. Suppressing the urge to touch him is painful. How easy it would be to reach out and squeeze his hand. Press a kiss to his neck. Pull him in for a hug. Although the last one would result in wet clothes for me.

Tonight. I console myself with that single word. Hopefully we’ll end up back at my place, with or without Doug, and I can get my fill.Tonight. It can’t come soon enough.

JOY

The email from my mom sits unopened at the top of my inbox. It’s like a bomb, just waiting for me to click on it so that my entire world can implode. I can’t go. I can’t turn up to the training facilities and meet with the head coach like I’m actually going to try and join the team.

The hotel is booked for the Monday and Tuesday following the San Francisco meet, which is stressful in itself. But what’s worse is knowing that telling my parents the truth now has a glaring deadline.

Over the last few years, my entire focus has shifted. Swimming was everything to me, but then it’s like someone grabbed the wheel of my life and pulled at it, pointing me in a completely new direction. Music feels like home, but now it’s starting to solidify into a life that I can see clearly. What’s surprising is that I can see others in that life with me.

As much as I’m insisting that we don’t talk about after graduation, the reality is that it’s creeping up quicker than I’d like. It’s only three months away. Three months until I’m faced with more hard truths. Okay, there’s nothing hard about it. I don’t want to lose Lane and Aldo. I still don’t know how what we have works, but it does, and I’m not done with it yet. If anything, the idea of being free of Franklin West and able to be with Lane properly, like I can be with Aldo, fills me with nothing but excitement.

The question is, do they feel that way, too?

I’m pretty sure Lane thinks he would move mountains for me, but when it comes down to it, would he? I might have forgiven what he did to me, but it’s far from forgotten. The scar he carved into my heart will never truly go away. If he had to choose between me and the security of his job, would he pick me? Would he leave Oregon and move to California with me? Uproot his life? As much as his actions say yes, I can’t trust them. Because that same man held me in his arms and told me we’d make things work. That we were going to be together. And then vanished.

My heart clenches at the ghost of heartbreak. It had been stifling. I don’t put myself—or my heart—on the line lightly, and Lane’s actions serve as a constant reminder why I shouldn’t.

Breathing deeply, I step away from my desk and head to my closet. Other than my parents and my grandparents, no one has mentioned my birthday to me. Just the way I like it. Too many expectations. Too many awkward smiles. I mean they just feel a bit pointless. ‘Well done for surviving another year’. Nope.

Dinner will be nice, though. Spending time with Lane and Aldo, away from campus. It feels sneaky going for dinner with them for my birthday without either of them knowing that it’s anything other than a normal Tuesday. I’d wondered if Lane would remember. After all, I still know his birthday. But when I’d spoken to him at practice, he’d said nothing.

Okay. I might have been a teeny bit disappointed. But it’s been years. A long, long time since he would sneak snacks to me and force me to celebrate at least a little.

I choose a cute black skater dress covered with large, deep red roses, and pair it with an oversized cardigan and black, chunky ankle boots. This feels like a date, which is something we haven’t managed to have yet—not in public—and butterflies are multiplying in my stomach by the second. Aldo’s even picking me up.

Glancing at my phone, I’m ready with just five minutes to go. It’s a little presumptuous, but I shove some clean underwear and a change of clothes into an overnight bag along with some toiletries and my toothbrush. I’ll leave it in Aldo’s Jeep, so it’ll either come back here with me or to Lane’s apartment. The butterflies multiply again.

We haven’t been together as a three since that weekend, and the thought still sends shudders through my body, setting me alight and causing me to clench my thighs together. If I can get one secret birthday wish, it would be for a replay of that night, but this time, I want to see it. The thought alone of Lane fucking Aldo almost has me whimpering, my teeth digging into my lip as I gather my things.

Our positioning gave them a little privacy, which I respected for his first time, but just the soft grunts and moans he made against my ear were enough to have my heart racing and my core pulsing.Fuck.I shake my head trying to clear it of those thoughts, or I’ll need to change my underwear before I even leave the Hive.

My phone buzzes in my purse and I don’t need to check it to know that it’s Aldo telling me he’s outside. Not bothering with a jacket, knowing we’ll only be going from the parking lot to the restaurant, I bound down the stairs.

“Hey,” he says as I open the passenger door and hop in, dumping my overnight bag on the backseat.

He has his heated seats on, and the car is perfectly toasty. When he leans across the console and kisses me, I feel like I’m floating.

“Hey,” I reply as he pulls away and takes the Jeep out of park.

He flashes me one of his smiles and my butterflies start doing some sort of line dance in my gut. “You look beautiful.”

My skin heats. “Thanks. You too.”

His laughter fills the car, and my face starts to ache with my smile. He does look particularly gorgeous. He’s wearing dark gray slacks and a black button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled. His thick, dark hair is a little longer than it’s been since I’ve known him and I love the waves it falls into, curling around his ears.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him the truth—that it’s my birthday—but I bite it back. It’s too late now and I don’t want to put any additional pressure on tonight. We sit in comfortable silence, listening to the radio as the mountain road stretches out before us with no cars in sight, until Aldo clears his throat.

“You know the big San Francisco meet coming up?”

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