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I'minlove with them. With all of them.

Adam passes the butter, and my heart shivers. Deandre cracks a joke, and Sergio smirks, and Jax calls him an asshole, and Cayden strokes my knee beneath the table, and it's like a wall shattering.

This is a normal breakfast. Nothing out of the ordinary is happening at all.

But everything is changed.

Because I know that they like me. They sure as hell like fucking me. But I'm officially in too deep. My weak heart has latched on to all of these men. It's not strong enough to survive another break.

I finish my breakfast with my throat rebelling against each bite, my mouth dry and lungs tight. As soon the rest of the guys seem done, I take my plates to the sink. I don't offer to help clean up, not ready to be rebuffed again.

Instead, I go. I fly up the road and into the shadowed solace of my grandmother's awful, creaky, dusty old house.

At the threshold to my impromptu painting studio, I come to a trembling halt.

My realization this morning struck me like an anvil dropped onto my head from fifty feet up. But how? How could I have been so blind?

How could I not have seen what was staring me in the face?

The canvases I've been pouring my heart out on for the last few weeks stare back at me, and God. My lovesick, stupid heart is written on them in pigment and ink, there for absolutely anyone to read.

Anyone but me, apparently.

The paintings span the colors of the rainbow, but they're dominated by colors of passion—rich crimson and purple, black and blue and gold. Glimpses and pieces of my five lovers appear in all sorts of different combinations, and love is etched into all of them. I stand back, observing the odes to them I've written with my paint brush, and I want to shred them all to bare wood and cloth.

I want to take them back to my men and show them how I feel. To ask them if they could ever love me in the same way. If they'll keep me.

But I can't ask that. I can't.

I can't survive another rejection.

What the hell am I going to do?

The first thing I can think of is to reach for my phone.

It's been virtually silent these past few months. I have friends back home, but none of them are terribly close—especially not after what happened with Richard. I was so new to the area when we started dating, fresh out of student teaching in another city. He swept me up and carried me along.Ourfriends were reallyhisfriends, and after he turned me away, I ended up with no one.

I squeeze my phone so hard I fear the screen will crack.

Jesus. I'm letting the exact same thing happen all over again. I'm incredibly isolated out here. Sure, I have five men to keep me company, but when they eventually turn their backs on me, I'll have even fewer places to turn. I basically live with them, for all intents and purposes. What will I do when it ends? Come back here? Will that even be an option at that point? The plan is to finish cleaning this place out and sell it off.

I'll be stranded, without a job or anyone to turn to.

Just like that, I feel like a fish at the end of a line, gasping and turning, flipping and stuck, unable to breathe in the too-thin air.

I have to break free.

With trembling hands, I unlock my phone and scroll through the contacts. I seize upon the first remotely promising entry I find. I press the button to make the call, then close my eyes and drop my head into my hand.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up," I mumble.

"Hey. Haley?"

Oh, thank God.

"Connie. Hey, hi." Crap. The connection to another person sings relief into my soul, but at the same time, I'm suddenly confronted with the fact that I have absolutely no idea what to say.

Connie teaches down the hall from me. She was a life saver after Richard and I broke up. Everyone at school knew about our affair; the rookie art teacher sleeping with the hot, older vice principal was big news. Insinuation had been thick on the air. Jobs like mine were hard to come by. Did I land the position in a…differentposition?