The gravel crunches beneath my feet as I approach the estate for the second time.
The Greenwich property looks different at dusk—softer somehow, the stone walls honey-colored in the fading light rather than the imposing gray.
The wrought-iron gates stand open as if expecting me, and warm light spills from windows that seem to multiply the deeper I walk into the grounds.
Cole waits at the entrance, silhouetted against the amber glow of the foyer with his hands in his pockets and an expression that makes my chest constrict.
"You came."
His voice reaches me before I finish climbing the stone steps, soft and warm in the December evening.
"I said I would."
My voice sounds steadier than I feel, which seems impossible given that my heart is trying to escape through my ribcage.
"I keep my word."
"I know you do."
He moves toward me with that unhurried grace I've come to recognize, each step deliberate, giving me time to run if I need to.
"That's one of the things I admire about you, Ethan. You're terrified, and you're here anyway."
"Is that supposed to be comforting?"
"It's supposed to be honest."
He stops an arm's length away, close enough that I catch the scent of him—clean linen and something woodsy underneath.
"We're going to be very honest with each other tonight, you and I. No more walls, no more hiding. Can you do that for me?"
The question lands somewhere deep in my chest, cracking open doors I've kept bolted shut for twenty-six years.
"I don't know," I admit. "I've never tried."
"Then let's try together."
His hand rises to my jaw, fingertips tracing the line of my cheekbone with gentleness.
"Tell me what you're feeling right now, at this exact moment."
"Terrified." The word escapes before I can catch it. "Excited. Ashamed of being excited. Angry at myself for being ashamed."
"What else?"
"I want this." L
My voice breaks on the admission.
"I've wanted this my entire life, and I've spent every single day pretending I didn't, and now I'm standing here with you and I don't know how to stop pretending."
"You don't have to figure that out alone."
Cole's thumb traces my lower lip, the touch so light it barely registers as contact.
"We're going to help you, Ethan. All three of us. But tonight starts with just us, with teaching you that wanting this doesn't make you broken."
Movement in the shadows behind him draws my attention—Blaine, leaning against the doorframe of what must be the bedroom, amber eyes catching the low light like embers in a dying fire.
He doesn't speak, doesn't move toward us, just watches with an intensity that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
"He's been waiting for this almost as long as you have," Cole murmurs, following my gaze. "But he agreed to let me go first. He knows you need gentleness before you can handle everything else he wants to give you."
"What does he want to give me?"
"Permission."
Blaine's voice carries across the space between us, low and rough.
"To stop apologizing for every part of yourself you've been taught to hate. To feel pleasure without cataloguing all the reasons you don't deserve it."
Cole takes my hand and leads me toward the bedroom, and I follow because there's nowhere else I want to be, no direction I want to go that doesn't end with both of them.
The room is larger than my entire apartment, dominated by a bed that could sleep six.
Blaine peels away from the doorframe as we enter, circling behind me while Cole faces me from the front.
"We're going to undress you now," Cole says, his fingers finding the top button of my shirt. "Slowly, so you can feel every moment of it. If anything becomes too much, you say stop and everything stops immediately. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
The word comes out hoarse, barely audible.
"Good."
He slides the first button free, then the second, his knuckles brushing bare skin with each one.
"You're safe here, Ethan. Whatever happens in this room stays in this room, and nothing happens that you don't want."
Blaine's hands find my shoulders from behind, warm through the fabric of my shirt as he guides it down my arms.
The garment falls to the floor, and I stand exposed between them, my breath coming faster now.
"You're shaking," Blaine observes, his lips close to my ear. "Is that fear or anticipation?"
"Both." I manage the honesty Cole asked for. "I don't know how to separate them anymore."
"Then don't."
His teeth graze my earlobe, and I gasp at the sensation—sharp and sweet and nothing like the shame I expected to feel.
"Let them exist together. Fear makes the anticipation better, and anticipation makes the fear worth facing."
Cole's mouth finds my collarbone, tracing a path across skin that's never been touched like this—reverently, like I'm something sacred being unwrapped for the first time.
His hands work at my belt while Blaine's palms map the planes of my back, and I'm drowning in sensation, in the overwhelming reality of being wanted by men who know exactly what they're doing.
"Tell me what you're thinking," Cole murmurs against my throat.
"I'm thinking I've wasted so many years."
The confession spills out of me like blood from a wound.
"I'm thinking about every time I looked at a man and forced myself to look away, every time I felt something and buried it so deep I thought it would never surface again. I'm thinking about all the versions of myself I could have been if I'd ever been brave enough to want this openly."
"Those years aren't wasted."
Cole pulls back to meet my eyes, his expression fierce with fierce, possessive tenderness that pins me in place.
"They brought you here, to us, exactly when you were ready. Every wall you built, we're going to take apart tonight, and when we're done, you'll see that what's underneath was never broken at all."
They guide me to the bed, and what follows is a revelation.
Cole's mouth on me teaches me that pleasure can be worship, that desire isn't something to be ashamed of but something to be celebrated.
He talks me through every sensation, his voice steady and warm, narrating each wave of feeling until I stop trying to analyze and simply let myself experience.
Blaine's hands move across my body with purpose, finding places I didn't know could feel anything at all and turning them into nerve endings on fire.
He whispers things against my skin—filthy, beautiful things about how long he's wanted this, how perfect I look falling apart between them.
When Cole finally enters me, slow and careful, talking me through the stretch and the fullness and the rightness of it, I shatter in ways I didn't know were possible.
He moves inside me like he has all the time in the world, like my pleasure is the only thing that matters, and I hear sounds coming from my own throat that I've never made before.
Blaine fills my mouth, and I take him like I was born for it—hungry, eager, desperate to give him everything I've been too terrified to offer anyone.
His fingers thread through my hair, guiding without forcing, and the dual sensation of being filled from both ends overwhelms every circuit in my brain until there's nothing left but this, this, this.
Afterwards, I lie between them in the wreckage of the person I used to be, my body humming with satisfaction I've never known.
Cole's hand rests on my chest, palm flat over my heartbeat.
Blaine's arm drapes across my stomach, heavy and possessive.
Neither of them speaks, letting the silence stretch into shared breath and slowing heartbeats.
And that's when I notice it—the absence that changes everything.
My father's voice, the one that's screamed wrong my entire life, has gone completely silent.