Page 44 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys (Forbidden Fantasies #18)

I shake my head. “They want us to wait. But Sage texted me. She wants to talk, off the books.”

That stops Finn in his tracks. “When?”

“Tonight,” I say. “She asked me to come alone, but?—”

Grey stands, cuts me off with a look. “We go together.”

Finn’s nod is instant. “Yeah. If this is going to blow up, we might as well be in the room when it happens.”

There’s a new energy in the room, a charge that’s half hope, half dread. I check my phone again, thumb hovering over the last text from Sage:

Need to talk. Please.

Rage blooms in my chest again, but I’m not really angry at her, just the circumstances she’s put us in by not giving us the full picture. I just wish she’d have told us. I look at Finn and Grey, the three of us standing in a triangle of old sweat and unasked questions.

Grey cracks his neck, once each way. “You think she’s okay?”

“No,” I say, “but I think she wants us to be.”

Finn grabs a jacket off the hook, zips it up. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

We head for the back exit, shoes squeaking on the linoleum, the sound following us all the way down. Nobody says a word, but for the first time today, I don’t feel alone.

The rest of the day passes agonizingly slowly, and when it’s finally ten p.m., I meet Finn outside a small diner.

We pick Grey up along the way and get to Sage’s.

It takes three knocks for the lock to slide open.

The door cracks, chain on, and for a second, all I see is Sage’s eye, red and sharp in the low light.

She unlatches it, steps back, and lets the door swing wide enough for the three of us to squeeze in, even though the hallway is barely wide enough for two.

Her apartment is smaller than I imagined, but it feels like someone actually lives here—not just passes through.

The walls are painted a soft oat color, the kind you’d find in an old farmhouse kitchen, and the furniture looks mismatched in the best kind of way.

There’s a futon covered in a knitted throw, a coffee table fashioned from a weathered apple crate, and a teacup resting on top with a sliver of lemon still floating inside.

A low bookcase overflows with well-thumbed anatomy texts and dog-eared nutrition guides, their spines leaning like old friends in conversation.

Above the futon, three framed prints: two vintage medical illustrations and a gentle watercolor of a hockey rink, the lines blurred like they were painted from memory on a rainy day.

The whole space smells faintly of ginger steeped in hot water and something citrusy, like she wiped the counters clean just before we walked in.

Sage stands by the door in a gray hoodie and black leggings, both stretched at the seams. I can’t take my eyes off her stomach, now that I know. Her face is gaunt, eyes rimmed in violet, but there’s a set to her jaw I haven’t seen before.

She doesn’t say anything for a while. Just leans against the frame, arms folded in front of her, as if she’s bracing for impact.

Finn is the first to break the silence, dropping onto the futon and bouncing twice before settling.

Grey hovers by the bookshelf, pretending to scan the spines, but I can see his reflection in the glass, watching Sage’s every move.

I stand in the middle of the carpet, hands in my pockets, unsure if I should sit or just start yelling.

Sage finally moves, crossing to the counter and picking up a mug of tea, still half full. She wraps both hands around it, knuckles pale, and takes a small sip. She stares at the mug as she speaks. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

Nobody answers. The room soaks in the silence.

She sets the mug down carefully, as if it might explode. “I didn’t mean for it to go like this. I just…I didn’t know what else to do.”

Finn sniffs loud but doesn’t speak.

Grey turns from the shelf, arms crossed over his chest. “Why didn’t you just tell us?”

She laughs, bitter. “Because I’d be out of a job.

And so would you, probably. Because Talia would use it to nuke the whole program.

Because HR treats every problem like a pandemic.

” She pauses, breath shaky. “Because I thought I could fix it, or at least keep it contained until it didn’t matter anymore. ”

I finally sit, perching on the edge of a chair that looks like it came from the curb. My leg bounces, heel thudding against the carpet. “That’s not really how it works,” I say.

She meets my eyes, and for the first time I see something other than exhaustion. “No,” she says. “But it’s what I had.”

We all go quiet again. The tea steams, the fridge ticks once, and outside a car alarm yelps into life before someone kills it.

I watch Finn, who is picking at a loose thread on the futon, jaw working.

Grey’s face is unreadable, but his hands are clenched into fists so tight the veins stand out on the backs.

Sage sits across from me, hands folded in her lap, body twisted to keep the bump as hidden as possible.

She glances at the clock, then at the window, then back to us.

“Look, I’m not asking for forgiveness. I just want you to know I tried to protect all of you.

I didn’t want—” She stops, shakes her head.

“I didn’t want this to become a thing. I didn’t want it to be about the team. ”

She moves to stand but thinks better of it, the effort making her wince. “I’m not going to ask you to lie for me. But if anyone asks, you can say you didn’t know. Because you didn’t. Because I made sure you didn’t.”

Finn finally finds his voice. “That’s not really the point, Sage.”

She sags, shoulders folding in. “I know.”

Grey’s voice is low. “Whose is it?”

She closes her eyes, lets out a long breath. “I don’t know,” she says.

I feel my jaw tighten. My fingers dig into my thigh. “What did you think, Sage. That we’d be collateral damage? Is that it?”

Sage shakes her head, but the motion is slow. “No. You’re not. I just…I didn’t want to drag all of you down with me.”

Finn snorts. “We were already down.”

Grey moves to the window, stares out at the street below. “So what now?” he asks, not looking back.

She shrugs, palms turned up. “Now I wait for the league to decide if I’m radioactive. Then I figure out how to finish the pregnancy without losing my medical insurance. Then I hope the babies come out healthy and that whoever’s name is on the file doesn’t get destroyed in the process.”

I stare at her. “Babies?”

“Oh.” Her face drains of what color had remained. “Triplets.”

For one wild second, I want to laugh at the sheer absurdity of this.

My body feels suspended, like I’m looking at a stranger’s life passing in front of my eyes, because in what version is this my reality?

And yet, if I’m feeling this shitty, I can’t imagine how she feels, and how she must have felt keeping this from us for so long.

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, hard. “I didn’t want to be a problem. I really didn’t.”

I stand, my chair scraping the floor, loud in the hush. If I stay a moment longer, I’ll break or burst, and I…I can’t. “You think we wouldn’t have chosen you?” I say, voice shaking. “You didn’t even give us the chance.”

She flinches, hands pressed to her belly. “I’m sorry.”

I want to say more. I want to tell her what it felt like to watch her collapse, to see her loaded onto a stretcher, to know that every second of it was already playing on the Front before I could even process the blood on the floor.

I want to tell her that it hurts more than the worst loss, that I’d rather take a puck to the teeth than sit here and listen to her apologize.

Instead, I just walk to the door. Finn stands, steps after me, but I wave him off.

I open the door, the cold air slapping my face, and turn back just long enough to look at her, still hunched and shaking, face hidden behind her hands. “We’re a team,” I say, and the words taste like iron. “You don’t get to call that off just because it’s inconvenient.”

Then I slam the door behind me, the sound echoing down the hall.