Page 92 of Piece Us Together
Nolan smiles, his cheeks flushed as he hurries over to stand beside me. “Happy Thanksgiving, sir.”
I glance at Maison for a moment, wondering if he’ll point out that I’m not technically sir today.
He looks away, mouth shut.
I turn to Nolan, taking in his messy hair and flushed cheeks. He looks adorably frazzled. There’s flour on his jeans and something orange on the shoulder of his sweater.Christ, these two are unfairly beautiful.“Happy Thanksgiving, darling.”
“Is that who you are today?” Maison asks suddenly, his voice rough and quiet. “Sir?”
Something stutters inside of me. He doesn’t sound angry. Nor is he forcing an act of anger with glares and growls. He’s just looking at me with big eyes, honestly asking—am I the Hunter that can take the weight of the world off his shoulders right now or am I just an acquaintance attending dinner at his house?
“I’d like to be. I know it’s not in the rules we made, but in my own head, I belong to the two of you all the time.”
Maison sucks in a breath, shaking his head. “Just him. You’re just—you’rehis. Not mine.”
The words hurt, but I don’t let it show.
“Just because you don’t want me doesn’t mean I’m not yours, Maison. Both of yours. Whether you’ll have me or not, that’s up to you. Whether you can turn it on and off depending on location, that’s up to you too.” I give him a long look before turning it on Nolan. “I never stop thinking about the two of you. I never stop worrying and planning and reminiscing. I never stop being your sir. I meant it when I said you could call anytime. Text anytime. Hell, come over anytime.”
“We didn’t ask you for any of that,” Maison whispers.
“You didn’t have to.” I step back from them, needing space to breathe. They’re going to break my heart. This is going to hurt so fucking badly.Why can’t I get myself to stop? Where the fuck is my self-preservation?“Cards on the table, boys. I’ll take whatever scraps you give me, but I’m all in. I’vebeenall in. I’m yours.”
Maison heaves himself off the counter, shaking his head. “You can’t—you can’t just fuckingsaythings like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you—because we—” He looks at Nolan, something wild in his eyes. Nolan looks back with wide eyes and a perplexed shake of his head. Maison laughs roughly, bringing a hand up to his face before swiping it down. “Youcan’tsay things like that.”
“Okay.” I give them both a smile. The one I use when I praise them. The one that makes Nolan melt and Maison shiver every goddamn time. Nolan exhales shakily. Maison takes a step back like he can escape what I do to him. He’s starting to lose that battle, I think. I wonder how much longer until he finally stops fighting.
I think he’s going to run.
Nolan distracts him by saying, “We were about to make Maison’s mom’s pie. Apple pie. Do you want to help, sir?”
My heart aches as my gaze immediately goes to Maison. He’s looking down, but he must sense my attention on him because he looks through his lashes at me.
“I don’t want to intrude,” I say carefully, putting the ball in his court.
He releases a shaky breath.
Then, “How are you at peeling apples?”
As I step up to the counter to settle between the two of them, it feels like there’s a monumental shift, like the world reshapes itself around us. It’s one of Maison’s walls crumbling. It’s one step closer to something more. It’s a road opening up to a happy ending.
It’s terrifying and exhilarating. It’s being handed a bomb and being told as long as you don’t breathe, it won’t go off.
Hope is a dangerous, dangerous thing, and I’m suddenly flooded with it. I don’t care that it’s stupid. I don’t care that it’s almost a sure way for me to get my heart broken.
I don’t care because giving up on the idea of us together, three pieces slotting perfectly, would be worse than anything else.
The dinner is even more chaotic than my arrival. I don’t know how many of them actually live here, but the dining table easily fits all of us with room for a few more. I try not to notice the fact that there aren’t chairs at the head and foot of the table. It’s probably meaningless, anyway. It does make me wonder whose house this technically is, though. It makes me wonder, not for the first time today, which of these men live here apart from Nolan and Maison. It also makes me wonder why so many grown men are living in a house together in the first place, when none of them seem to be college students or anything.
I force myself to stop wondering. It’s not my place. Even if most of the wondering seems to be connected to Maison and Nolan. They’ve made it clear where the boundaries are and their lives outside of our dynamic are off-limits. Just because they’ve been giving me little pieces lately doesn’t mean I can get greedy.
I’m thankful I at least get to be here, to see the bright look on Nolan’s face as everyone rains praise down on him throughout the meal, to hear Maison’s deep laughter when his friends draw it out of him.
Sure, there’s some tension. Some blank spaces that leave me sitting in awkward, confused silence as they all whirl around me. There’s a man who arrived last minute, no one introducing him to me, who seems to find me fascinating, if how often Ifind him watching me is any indication. There are inside jokes I don’t understand and pointed looks that make it clear I’m missing details and—in one instance—a sharp kick to someone else’s shin before they can finish the sentence that started with, “Considering that last Thanksgiving we were—” in response to the man with the half-bun, who I now know is named Bryce – the emergency contact from their kink packets, which means he knows who I am to them, which means he's suddenly ten times more terrifying – saying, “This is the best Thanksgiving I can remember.”