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This is the weirdest, most emotionally and sexually charged standoff to happen in a school lobby, probably ever.Hopefullyever. I should end it, say something, dosomething, but I'm frozen on the spot.

They came for me. In all my fretting and mapping out of ways that this could go, it's the only scenario I never imagined. It seemed too impossible. I'm uninteresting. Expendable. Easy to cast aside. My walking out should have hardly registered on their radars, and yet here they are.

My vision blurs. My hearing goes to static. Even I can detect the giant pile of bullshit clogging up my internal narrative. If any friend of mine described herself with the heartlessness I just used to describemyself, I would shake her, desperate to knock some sense into her. And yet the cruelty flows so easily through my mind.

My mother and my grandmother left me. Death took them away. But before that, my father whisked me from my grandmother's care, and I rarely heard from her again. My father abandoned me emotionally from an early age. He abandonedme literally, while the dirt was still fresh on my grandmother's grave.

My only long term relationship went up in flames, leaving me alone in a town a didn't know, open to the judgment and ridicule of people who knew nothing about me. Richard cast me aside, and I let him.

And these men. These gorgeous, huge, hardened, loving, kind men took me in. They insisted I come with them. They courted me and seduced me and told me time and time again that they wanted me, wanted to take care of me. But I couldn't believe it. I refused to.

My throat cracks. It splits open and bleeds as I croak out, "You're here."

My disbelief poisons the air. Jax's nostrils flare, and Deandre curls his huge hands into fists at his sides. Cayden's gaze goes soft, broken, and Adam's empathy flows out to me in waves.

But it's Sergio, my silent sniper. The one who always hits his mark. He steps forward. "Of course we are."

"But. But." I'm sputtering, words forming and rising in my chest, only to pop and sink away. I search their gazes wildly. "But you never leave the mountain."

I mean, sure, they do supply runs into the closest town, and occasionally one of them grabs a pizza. But that's it. They stay put.

They sure as hell never leave the state. Not like this.

Cayden's throat bobs. His voice is soft. "We wouldn't. Not unless it was a matter of life and death."

I shake my head. I still can't believe that. I can't allow myself to hope.

Jax's gaze burns. "How did you think we could live without you, Haley?"

I want to laugh. I want to cry. "It was pretty easy, actually."

"Yeah." Adam nods. "It always is, when you've never been loved before."

Loved?Loved?No. They can't mean that.

"We love you, baby girl." Deandre holds his hands out toward me. "We love you with all our hearts."

"All of you?"

"Every fucking one," Jax insists.

Something inside me cracks open. Some hurt, wounded place inside me that I've never been willing to examine too closely before, but I can't push it aside any more.

They love me. They actually, honestly want me.

Hope floods my entire being, but I still have to ask. I have to be sure. "You want to keep me?"

"Forever," Sergio insists.

I open my mouth, my own declaration of love sitting hot and naked on my tongue.

But then a door slams shut behind me. And a voice I never, ever wanted to hear again calls out.

"What the hell is going on here?" Richard asks. I twist to look over my shoulder. Our gazes lock.

And his narrowed eyes burn holes of doubt into my wide, cracked-open heart.