Page 118 of Piece You Saved

“The smug bastard,” I snarl.

“He waved,” Aden says mildly. “He’s being friendly.”

“He did it on purpose. To provoke me,” I growl, fighting the urge to throw myself down the stairs and gut him.

Dariel snorts in amusement. “After all the years you spent provoking me, there’s something poetic about seeing someone get under your skin so easily. It almost feels like the universe was paying attention.”

“Fuck you,” I snarl at Dariel. “And fuck Harley.”

“I think he’d rather fuck Saige,” Aden says, smiling.

“Which neither of you seems to fucking care about. She’s ours,” I bite out.

“We care. It wasn’t too many years ago we all needed more to be happy.” Aden loses his smile. “What if she needs more than us to be happy?”

I want him to be wrong, but about this—about what we needed—he isn’t. We all had our women, our one-night stands,separately, and it wasn’t enough. Foranyof us. It was only when we started sharing a woman that we found satisfaction we’d never had before.

Am I stopping Saige from having the same?

I swing back to the window. “She doesn’t.”

“But if she did?” Aden prompts. “Would you accept Harley then?”

“She won’t. We’ll kill Rylan, and Harley will fuck off back to the hospital. The end.”

“The end,” Dariel echoes. “Sounds easy. Pity life never works out that way.”

CHAPTER 31

SAIGE

Halfway through a long night of trying to sleep pressed up against Aden, I admit to myself it isn’t happening and get up. After the phone call with Rylan, making love with Aden, and the thing with Harley, if sleep hasn’t found me at what must be 2 or 3 a.m., I doubt it will find me at all.

I was crazy to think I would spend a couple of hours practicing to shoot in the garden, eat the pasta and meat sauce Aden cooked for us, and crawl into bed and sleep like a baby.

Crazy.

Aden wakes straight away, blinking owlishly at me as he sits up, the sheets sliding down his chest as he rises. “Saige?”

The sight of his bare, muscled chest briefly distracts me. Smiling, I lean in close and kiss him lightly on the lips, then pull away again before our kiss can turn into something more. “I can’t sleep. I’m going back to my room.”

His eyes are liquid gold in the dark, made more luminous by a downstairs light peeking into his room from the open doorway. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Smiling again, I shake my head as I pull my bare leg out from the sticky heat of the comforter and Aden’s overly warm side. “No. Sleep. I don’t want to interrupt your night.”

I’m too restless to be with anyone but myself. Even that feels like too much. I have too many thoughts rattling in my head about Sam, what’s going to happen on the bridge exchange tomorrow night, and then there’s Harley.

“Are you sure?” Aden whispers. “Maybe Kade—”

I shake my head and pull my other leg free. “No, I just want to be alone.”

His fingers circle my wrist. It’s a light hold, easily breakable.

That isn’t why I turn to face him. It’s like Kade to pull me back toward him, but not Aden. Not unless something was wrong.

“Aden?”

His gold eyes search my face. “Things will work out.”

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