Working while your brain is stuck in a constant loop of "holy shit I'm fucking three brothers" is not, as it turns out, conducive to productivity.
Every spreadsheet became a mental comparison chart. Every blueprint reminded me of different hands, different touches, different ways of making me completely lose my mind.
Stephen: Charming bastard with a possessive streak that should terrify me but instead makes me want to test every single one of his boundaries.
Titus: Quiet intensity personified, says maybe ten words but each one hits like a precision strike to my emotional defenses.
Raphael: Grumpy single dad whose vulnerability slips through the cracks of his control-freak exterior like light through broken blinds.
Did I have a favorite? That's like asking if I prefer oxygen, water, or food. Different needs, equally essential, would die without any of them.
Fuck. I was so screwed.
Thursday morning started like any other—coffee strong enough to wake the dead, emails that made me question humanity, and the general existential dread of being a woman in architecture. Then I walked into my office and stopped dead.
Flowers. Not just flowers—a fucking botanical garden exploded on my desk.
Roses, peonies, something that looked expensive and French. The kind of arrangement that screamed "SOMEONE IS DEFINITELY FUCKING THE ARCHITECT" to anyone with functioning eyeballs.
No note. Because of course not. That would be too easy.
My skin went cold, then hot, then some temperature that probably required medical attention. This was bad. Catastrophically, career-endingly bad.
I grabbed my phone, fired off a text to our group chat: "Conference room B. Now. We have a problem."
They filed in within minutes—the advantage of all working in the same building complex. Raphael looked concerned, Titus looked curious, and Stephen looked... amused? The fuck?
"What's wrong?" Raphael asked, immediately scanning me for injuries like I might've been attacked by rogue blueprints.
I pointed to the floral monstrosity I'd dragged with me. "This. This is what's wrong. Someone left Fort Flower on my desk for the entire office to see."
Titus frowned, studying the arrangement like it might contain hidden explosives. "There's no card."
"Yeah, I noticed that when I was having my panic attack," I snapped. "Do you know how many people probably saw this? How many questions I'm going to get? Margaret from Accounting was already giving me looks, and she gossips more than a Real Housewife."
"Dakota—" Raphael started, but I was on a roll.
"We agreed to keep this secret. We agreed to be careful. This?" I gestured wildly at the flowers. "This is the opposite of careful. This is a neon sign saying 'hey everyone, Dakota's getting railed by someone with money and zero subtlety.'"
Stephen's smile widened. Actually fucking smiled.
"Why are you smiling?" I rounded on him, voice sharp enough to cut glass. "This isn't funny. My professional reputation—"
"They're from me," he said, casually as discussing the weather.
The room went silent. Not regular silent—the kind of silent that happens right before everything goes to shit.
"You?" I stared at him. "You sent these?"
"Guilty." He leaned back in his chair, still wearing that infuriating smile. "Though I have to say, 'Fort Flower' might be my new favorite description."
"Stephen," Raphael's voice carried a warning. "What were you thinking?"
"Yeah," Titus added, which for him was basically shouting. "This compromises everything."
Stephen's smile faded, replaced by something more serious. Something that made my stomach flip in ways that had nothing to do with anger.
"While everything between the four of us has been exciting and fun," he said, each word deliberate, "I want more."
The air got sucked out of the room. Or maybe that was just my lungs forgetting how to function.
"More?" I echoed, because apparently my vocabulary had been reduced to parroting.
"I'm tired of ambiguity." He leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes locked on mine. "I want clarity. Commitment. Something real."
Titus made a sound that might've been a surprise or agreement. Raphael's jaw went tight, his eyes darkening with something unreadable.
"Stephen," I started, but my voice came out strangled. "We agreed—"
"We agreed to see where this goes," he interrupted. "Well, I've seen. And I know where I want it to go."
My heart was attempting to escape via my throat. "Are you trying to get me to choose?"
The question hung in the air like a live wire. Because that's what this was, wasn't it? A push. A test. A demand for definition in our carefully undefined situation.
"Are you asking me to finally define what I feel for each of you?" My voice barely made it above a whisper, but in the silent room, it might as well have been a scream.
Stephen's eyes never left mine. The charming diplomat was gone, replaced by someone intense and unwavering and absolutely terrifying in his certainty.
"Yes."
One word. Three letters. Everything shattered.
I looked between them—Stephen's determined certainty, Titus's quiet intensity, Raphael's controlled fury—and realized the delicate balance I'd been maintaining was about to collapse spectacularly.
The careful compartments I'd built—professional Dakota, private Dakota, Dakota who somehow thought she could have her cake and eat three of them too—were crumbling.
"I—" I started, then stopped. Because what the fuck was I supposed to say? How was I supposed to choose between air and water and food? How was I supposed to quantify feelings that didn't fit in neat boxes with clear labels?
The silence stretched, elastic and suffocating. Four people in a conference room, three relationships hanging by a thread, and one woman who'd just realized she was completely, utterly, catastrophically fucked.
And not in a fun way.