Page 45 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys (Forbidden Fantasies #18)

SAGE

A fter Beau leaves, the apartment is a clock wound too tight.

Every tick is a muscle fiber threatening to tear.

Finn moves to the window, perches on the radiator, knuckles drumming out an arrhythmic code against the painted metal.

Grey settles on the edge of the futon, arms folded, thighs tense enough to warp the cushion. He looks straight ahead.

Nobody speaks for a long minute. I want to ask if they want water, but the performance of host feels obscene after what just happened. I sit opposite, kitchen counter to my back, both hands clamped around a ceramic mug.

It’s Finn who breaks the siege. “When did you find out?” His voice is strange—flattened, all accent scraped away.

I don’t try to soften the answer. “About fourteen weeks ago.”

Grey breathes in, holds, lets it out. “That long?”

I nod. I don’t elaborate, but I owe them something.

Finn shakes his head, a single slow swing. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

I try to answer honestly. “I thought I could handle it.” It sounds feeble, even to me.

Grey barks a quiet, bitter laugh. “Handle it? You almost fucking died in the trailer.”

My hand finds my lower back, an involuntary muscle memory. “I know.”

He’s shaking his head now too, but it’s the kind of movement that never finds an end point. “We could have helped,” he says, not even angry, just resigned. “Or at least not made it worse.”

I don’t want to say that help isn’t always a two-way contract, but the words are trying to wedge themselves out of my mouth. Instead, I pivot to triage. “I’ve been careful. Vitamins, hydration, all the stuff they put on the handouts.”

Finn looks at me now, really looks, and I see something I’ve only ever caught in the locker room after a bad loss: devastation with no outlet. “What about appointments? Did you go alone?”

I nod. “Usually, the waiting rooms are empty. I use a fake name when I sign in.”

Grey’s jaw works side to side, a dull grinder. “And the blood tests? The scans?”

“It’s triplets,” I say, because the medical language is a shield. “All viable, no genetic flags, but my blood pressure’s been in the tank since week five. They say I’ll be lucky to make it to term. And that’s even if—” I clamp my jaw, finish the sentence in my head.

Nobody talks. Finn starts pacing again, two steps forward, a pivot, two steps back, his hands behind his head. I watch the cords in his forearms flex with every turn.

Grey keeps his arms crossed, but the tension leaks out. He’s got the posture of a guy trying not to tackle the problem head-on, because to do that would be to admit it’s real. “So what, Sage? You were just going to keep showing up until you fell apart? That was your plan?”

“Yes,” I admit. “It was the only plan I had.”

Grey is up now, standing, one hand braced on the window frame. “You realize what this does to us? To the team?”

Finn is already there. “She knows, Grey. That’s the fucking point. She’s not stupid.”

“I don’t need you to defend me,” I say to Finn, too sharp, but I can’t help it.

He stops pacing. “I’m not. I just—” He lets it die. My heart breaks harder in that moment. For some reason, I can’t seem to stop hurting these boys, when all I do is love them. God, I love them, and I hate what that could mean for all of us.

The three of us stare each other down like a standoff that’s been playing since we met.

After a while, Grey moves to the kitchen, opens the fridge, stares into it without seeing. “Can I at least get you something to eat?” he asks, and it’s so domestic and broken that I almost laugh.

“Protein bar. Top shelf. The blue ones.”

He gets it, tosses it over, and I catch it one-handed. The wrapper is cold. I crack it open, chew, let the fake chocolate and soy paste glue my teeth together.

Finn softens a little. He sits on the arm of the futon, legs spread, elbows on knees. “Do you even know—” He stops, starts again. “Do you care whose it is?”

The answer is easy. “No.” Then, softer: “I mean, I know who’s statistically most likely, but it doesn’t matter.”

Grey nods at Finn. “We’re not mad,” he says. “Not really. We’re just?—”

“Hurt,” I finish.

He nods. “Yeah.”

Nobody has anything else to say. Grey looks at his hand.

Finn looks at the wall. I look at the mug, the blue protein bar, the patch of carpet under the table where a stain never fully came out.

We could sit here for hours, and probably would, if not for the soft, insistent pulse in my abdomen reminding me that the clock is running out.

Grey breaks the silence first. “We’ll get out of your hair,” he says, and the phrase lands like a shovel.

Finn hesitates at the door, hand flat against the surface. “If you need anything,” he says, “just ask.”

“I won’t,” I say, but I mean thank you.

They leave without slamming, without fanfare, just a soft click, and then the world returns to its original size. I wait until their footsteps fade down the hall, then slide to the floor, back against the futon, legs curled up like a comma.

My hand finds my belly, still flat enough that I could hide it with a sweatshirt, but now it feels like a foreign country, one that could go to war with the rest of me at any second.

The apartment is silent except for the throb of blood in my ears and the faint, neighborly sound of someone else’s TV through the wall.

I stay like that for a long time, counting the beats until I lose track of the number. Only then do the tears come, because I had what most dream of, and I tossed it away like I do everything else in my life.

A phone call later, I pack like a ritual.

Like taping an ankle or lacing a skate—there’s only one right sequence, and if you break it, the whole thing collapses.

I move room to room, collecting only what I can’t live without: the black duffel from under the bed, a tangle of chargers, three days’ worth of socks and the most forgiving bras I own.

I try to keep my breathing even, but it comes in sawtooth bursts.

Every five minutes, my phone goes off. At first it’s work. Then it’s my own assistant, pinging Let me know if you’re okay , her concern so bright I have to put the phone face down.

In the closet, I pull down the maternity clothes I bought three weeks ago.

I haven’t worn them yet. The tags are still on, the fabric crisp and unyielding.

I fold each one, slower than I need to, smoothing out creases that nobody but me will see.

At the bottom of the stack, I find the first Storm tee I was ever issued and pack that too.

The kitchen counter is a crime scene. A mug, two spoons, a single salt packet torn open and abandoned.

At the far end, a photo in a cheap black frame.

The last team party before everything combusted: Beau and Finn in matching button-downs, Grey with a beer bottle mid-toast, all three of them with arms slung around each other’s necks.

I am in the background, out of focus, mouth open in a laugh I don’t remember.

I pick up the frame. My fingers drift across the glass, tracing the three faces, then the blur of my own outline. I want to shatter the frame or take it with me, but instead I set it down and turn it face down on the laminate.

I zip the duffel, check that the charger is inside, and sweep the room with my eyes. At the door, I pause. The apartment is so quiet it feels like the world after an evacuation, each surface humming with the memory of what used to be here. I run my hand over my stomach, then pull on my coat.

The lights are off as I step into the hallway, but I know the way by muscle memory. The door closes behind me, softer than a secret. I get to Cassidy’s apartment late at night and after she hugs me, she lets me sleep it off.

When I wake up, it’s with one thought: Cassidy’s apartment is nothing like mine. The walls are painted the color of cake frosting, sunlight slams through big clean windows, and every horizontal surface is crammed with plants that somehow thrive despite neglect.

Cass works nights at the hospital but always leaves some kind of soup on the stove, covered and labeled with a sticky note that says nukable .

She doesn’t force company, but she always checks in before heading out, her scrubs half buttoned and eyes still sticky with sleep.

Sometimes she finds me at the table, hunched over my laptop with a web of windows open—one for nutrition science, one for prenatal care, one for any job that doesn’t require a physical body or a background check.

On the fourth day, she brings me a mug of chamomile and sits across the table, chin in her hands. The silence stretches, unspooling like thread from a bobbin.

“So,” she says softly. “What’s next?”

I run my thumb over the laptop’s space bar. “I don’t know. I can’t go back to the Storm. Not now, maybe not ever.”

Cass nods, as if she’s already prepared for this. “I saw a job post a couple of days ago. You could do remote work. Consulting. You’re overqualified, and nobody hates dieticians.”

I try to smile, but my mouth won’t find the shape. “Depends on the dietician.”

She shrugs. “You’d be good at it. You’re the only person who ever got me to eat breakfast.”

“Only because you fainted in the stairwell.”

“Still counts,” she says, and sets the mug down so gently I barely hear the ceramic kiss the table.

My phone buzzes on the table, a low drone that vibrates through the wood.

The screen is a tombstone of notifications: a dozen unread emails, three missed calls, a string of push alerts from sites I thought I’d unsubscribed from, and one text from my assistant that says, Storm Front is running a segment tonight. Do you want me to watch it for you?

I ignore her text and swipe through the headlines, each more lurid than the last:

Storm Physio on Indefinite Leave—Sources Say It’s Personal

Baby on Board? Rumors Swirl Around Team’s Sideline Staff

Who’s Responsible? League Probes Storm’s Pregnant Pause

Every article uses my name, every one paired with a blurry photo of me at the rink, one with Finn’s hand on my elbow and my head thrown back in laughter. The caption is a masterpiece of innuendo: Moretti and Sorensen: Storm’s Hottest Power Couple?

I read through the comments on one, because I am a masochist and because my lizard brain thinks I might find something redeemable there.

Instead it’s a pile-on: Some people think it’s hilarious, some think I should be fired for lack of professionalism, some are genuinely outraged that I would distract the team during a playoff push.

A few defend me, but their words are drowned out by the churn.

I set the phone face down, the same way you close a coffin.

Cassidy doesn’t say anything. She just reaches over, takes the mug from my hand, and replaces it with her own, still half full of coffee. The warmth startles me.

After a minute, she asks, “So it’s definitely triplets, right?”

I nod.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I keep thinking.”

She nods again, then leans back in the chair, arms folded. “Are you…okay?”

I want to lie, but the energy it would take is more than I have to spare.

“Some days I can’t get out of bed. Some days I have to puke every half hour.

Sometimes I think about calling my mom, but that’s just too complicated.

” I pause, chew at the inside of my cheek.

“It’s like being a ghost. My body keeps moving, but nothing’s really attached. ”

Cass watches me with the sort of patience you only find in people who’ve had their own share of trainwrecks. “You’re not a ghost. You’re just—between.”

“Between what?”

She gives it a second, then says, “What you were, and whatever you’ll be after.”

I laugh. “That sounds like a bad motivational poster.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, “but I like it.”

We fall into silence again. I stare at the screen, the open tabs, the way the cursor blinks like a lifeline. I think about emailing the nutrition certification program, but my hands won’t type the message.

Cassidy heads to her shift at seven. She throws a sweatshirt over her scrubs and stops at the door, keys jangling. “If you need anything,” she says, “just call. I’ll answer, even if I’m up to my elbows in blood.”

I salute with the coffee mug. “Deal.”

She leaves, and I am alone with the glow of the laptop and the throb in my skull.

At midnight, I crawl into bed. I stare at the ceiling and try to imagine what my life will look like in three months, in six, in a year. It’s hard to picture anything but the inside of a hospital, or the glare of a camera, or the sterile white of an empty office.

I rest a hand on my stomach. It’s only a small rise, but I can feel the difference: a tautness under the skin, a new density that wasn’t there before. I imagine the three of them, curled together like a fist, already plotting the trouble they’ll make when they get out.

I close my eyes, and for the first time since the collapse, I don’t dream of the rink or the Storm or the way Beau looked at me when he left. I dream of running, legs strong, lungs clear, the air a perfect seventy degrees, and no cameras anywhere.

In the morning, there’s a bowl of oatmeal waiting on the stove. Next to it, a note: Day off today. Call me if you need a walk. Or a distraction. Or a witness.

I smile, just a little, and make myself eat. It stays down.

The sun is bright again. The air outside is full of construction noise and the racket of children who have not yet learned how to fear the world. I watch them from the window, hand on my belly, and think: maybe I can do this. Maybe all of us can.

I text Cassidy.

Can you find me the link for that remote nutrition thing? I think I’m ready to start .

The response is instant: On it.

I close my laptop, finish my tea, and wait for the nausea to subside.

I am still between, but at least I’m moving.