“You want me to choose,” I say.
“I want you to be honest.”
“Fine.” Costa spine. Full height. I look at Nick. Then Jude. Then Rafe. “I want all three of you. And I am not going to apologize for it.”
The quiet that follows presses against the walls.
The lullaby plays. Tyra breathes. My heart slams against my ribs and my hands are steady and the contradiction of those two things is my entire life.
Nick’s jaw locks. His hands fist at his sides. The Commander fighting the man. The code fighting the truth. The instinct to claim and own fighting the reality that the woman he wants is standing in front of him telling him she belongs to two other men at the same time.
“That is not how this works, Lucia.”
“Then tell me how it works, Nick.” My voice does not rise. I am not yelling. I am stating. “Because I have been told how things work my entire life. By my brother. By the family. By men who decided they had the right to draw the lines I live inside.”
I take a breath. For aim, not calm.
“Dominic told me how things work when he put bodyguards on me. The aunts told me how things work when they looked at my pregnant belly and stopped inviting me to dinner. My brother told me how things work when he sidelined me from every decision for five years because I got pregnant by a man I did not know.”
My eyes burn. I do not blink.
“I am done having my life organized by other people’s rules.”
“This is not about rules?—”
“It is about exactly that. Your rules say first claim holds. Jude is Tyra’s father. Rafe was the first one to touch me.” I let that land. Nick’s jaw works. Jude does not move. Rafe does not leave the wall. “So whose rules are we using? Because every set puts a different man first. And I am not ranking you. I am not cuttingpieces of myself off to fit inside a box that only holds one of you. I did that for five years in the Costa compound and I watched myself disappear. I am not doing it again.”
Quiet.
Jude speaks. Directed at Nick.
“I told her I made my peace with the math. With you. With Rafe. I meant it.”
“You had time to think about it,” Nick says, tight. “I am getting this information right now.”
“Then take the time. But do not make her choose while you process. That is not fair to her.”
Nick’s eyes close. One second. Two. The war is visible in the cords of his neck.
He opens his eyes.
“I am not built for this.”
“None of us are,” Jude says.
Rafe pushes off the wall.
He does not look at Nick. Does not look at Jude. He looks at me. The same golden eyes that watched me across the cabin the first night I arrived. The eyes that told me everything his mouth did not. The eyes that held mine while he was inside me, silent, communicating in the only language he trusts.
“You said something in this room,” he says. Low and slow. “When you named us.”
My pulse spikes.
“Rafe is certain. Nick is relentless. Jude is—” His eyes don’t leave mine. “You did not finish.”
“No.”
“Finish it now.”