Chapter 16: "Two Brothers, One Question "

I didn't find out what happened between the brothers that week until it was already decided.

The week itself passed in a strange, suspended quiet. No dinners, no gifts, no flowers waiting on my desk with no card attached. For the first time since the twins had reentered my life, my phone stayed blessedly silent, and I told myself I was relieved about it even as I found myself checking the screen more often than I would ever admit out loud. Madeline noticed the shift too, raising an eyebrow every time she walked past my empty inbox, though she had the good sense not to comment on it directly.

Kade told me later that it started with a drink that turned into an argument, which turned into something quieter and more honest than either of them had managed with each other in years. Two grown men, identical down to the bone, sitting across from each other in Kade's office long after the building had emptied out, finally admitting the same uncomfortable truth out loud.

Neither of them was going to walk away.

They called me into that same office on a Friday evening, the city lights just beginning to flicker on outside the wall of windows behind them. Both of them stood when I walked in, which should have warned me something serious was about to happen. Killian never stood for anyone.

"This feels ominous," I said, closing the door behind me. "Should I be worried?"

"Sit down, Mia," Kade said, gesturing to the chair across from his desk.

"I'd rather stand, thanks. Whatever this is, I want to be able to run."

Killian huffed out something close to a laugh, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. He looked tired in a way I hadn't seen on him before, the usual mischief dimmed down to something more careful.

"We talked," Kade said simply.

"About?"

"About this. About you. About the fact that neither of us is walking away, no matter how many rules you write or how many separate dinners we schedule." He glanced at his brother, something unspoken passing between them, twin shorthand I would never fully understand. "We're done competing for scraps of your time, Mia."

My stomach dropped. "What does that mean?"

Killian stepped forward, and for once there was no smirk waiting behind his words. "It means we're not asking you to choose. Not yet. Not until you actually know which one of us you want, if either of us, without a countdown clock forcing your hand."

"You want me to date both of you," I said slowly, the words feeling foreign even as I spoke them. "At the same time. Openly."

"Yes," Kade said.

"No secrets," Killian added. "No sneaking around, no separate schedules pretending the other doesn't exist. Everyone knows. The board knows. The city already thinks it, might as well make it true."

I laughed, short and disbelieving, the sound scraping out of me before I could stop it. "Do you hear yourselves? You want me to be the woman who's openly seeing two brothers at once. Twin brothers. Do you have any idea what that would make me look like?"

"Loved," Killian said. "By two men who are done pretending otherwise."

"That's not how the world sees it, and you both know that. I'd be a joke. A punchline in every gossip column from here to the West Coast. The city whore who couldn't pick a lane, wearing both twins like matching accessories."

"You'd be the woman brave enough to want what she actually wants," Kade said, "instead of what looks acceptable to strangers who will forget your name in a month."

"Easy for you to say. Neither of you has to live with what people whisper behind your back for the rest of your life."

Killian's jaw tightened at that, some old, private hurt flashing behind his eyes before he buried it again. "You'd be surprised what we've both had whispered about us. Try growing up as half of the same face your entire life and see how much privacy you have left afterward."

I hadn't thought of it that way before, and the admission caught me off guard enough that some of my anger drained out before I could stop it. I looked between them, really looked, searching for some crack in the united front they'd apparently spent an entire week constructing, and found none. Whatever had happened in that office, it had settled something between them that felt disturbingly permanent.

"You've clearly been rehearsing this," I said.

"All week," Kade admitted, without a trace of shame about it. "We wanted to get it right."

"Did you write it together? Practice your lines?"

"Would that make it worse or better?" Killian asked, and for once the question sounded genuinely curious rather than teasing.

"I honestly don't know."

"Happy," Kade said quietly. "If it's the truth."

"It would make you the only person in this whole situation who's finally being honest," Killian said. "Everyone else has already decided who you're supposed to be. The office. The blogs. Even Clover, probably. We're the only two people asking you to just be whatever you actually are, mess and all."

I opened my mouth to refuse outright, the word already forming on my tongue, some furious, indignant thing about not being anyone's arrangement, not being a scandal two men workshopped over expensive scotch.

Kade rounded the desk and stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. Killian moved in from the other side at the same moment, and for the first time since that first disastrous morning, I found myself standing between both Carter brothers without either of them fighting the other for space.

"Just think about it," Kade said. "That's all we're asking."

I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the office, despite the two large, warm bodies standing close enough to share heat with. Somewhere below us the city carried on, indifferent to the impossible thing being asked of me eleven floors up, oblivious to the fact that an entire life's worth of careful, respectable choices was about to be measured against a single reckless yes.

"Do you have any idea how insane this sounds?" I asked quietly. "Two brothers asking one woman to date them both, out loud, in front of God and the tabloids and my own mother, who already thinks I'm dating one Carter too many?"

"We know exactly how it sounds," Kade said. "We've had a week to sit with it."

"And you're both just fine with it? Sharing?"

Something passed between them again, that silent twin communication I would apparently never be fluent in. "No," Killian admitted. "Not remotely fine with it. But the alternative is worse."

"And if I say no?"

Killian's eyes softened in a way I'd never seen from him before, something almost vulnerable breaking through the practiced charm.

"Then we'll keep taking turns," he said quietly, "and keep losing pieces of you to each other every single day, until there's nothing left of what any of us actually wanted in the first place."

Neither of them moved. Neither of them said another word.

They just waited, side by side, for an answer I had absolutely no idea how to give.