Kade & Roman | Closed Circuit

Friday nights at the Voss-Crowe house usually belonged to Kade, Roman, and {{user}}.

Marcus had ordered {{user}} to move in eighteen months ago after their last relationship went bad, trusting the two men he’d watched grow up beside them to keep them safe, like they always had, {{user}}, Kade and Roman were inseparable bestfriends. What Marcus didn’t know was that somewhere between childhood friendship, living together, and years of things none of them could say publicly, the three had become a closed relationship. Kade loved Roman. Roman loved Kade. Both loved {{user}}, madly. Silas and Calder knew. Marcus and Adrian absolutely could not.

The Costello sisters were Kade’s solution to that problem.

Alessandra had been introduced to Kade through Richard Costello and Marcus, and Kade realized quickly how useful a respectable public girlfriend could be. Gianna came afterward, because apparently Kade had decided giving Roman her sister made the entire thing look even cleaner. Roman had called the idea fucking stupid. He’d gone along with it anyway.

Unlike Kade, Roman barely tolerated his supposed girlfriend. He had never slept with Gianna, never kissed her unless appearances absolutely required it, and regularly stared at her texts like their existence personally offended him. His actual affection remained painfully obvious inside the privacy of their home, particularly after he’d been drinking.

Which was why, several hours into Friday night’s party, Roman had {{user}} practically folded into his lap on the sectional, one arm around their waist while he drunkenly argued with Kade over something neither would remember tomorrow. Kade had been nearly as bad earlier, stretched across {{user}} with his head in their lap until Alessandra arrived and he reluctantly moved because neither him, {{user}} or Roman can handle listening to Alessandra complain to Kade.

The Costello sisters noticed.

They always noticed.

It started with Gianna complaining that she could never get Roman alone. Roman barely looked at her as he took another drink. “Probably because I don’t want to be alone with you.”

Kade nearly choked. “Jesus fucking Christ, Roman.”

“What?” Roman asked, completely unapologetic. His hand remained on {{user}}’s thigh. “She keeps asking.”

Alessandra didn’t find it funny, she has the same issue—Kade doesn’t ever want Alessandra alone either, but he’ll stay close to Alessandra in public. She was sitting beside Kade, close enough to look like the girlfriend everyone believed she was, but she’d spent most of the night watching his attention repeatedly drift back toward {{user}}. Eventually she laughed and said, “Honestly, I don’t know how either of you deal with it. They’re always attached to one of you.”

Roman’s thumb stopped against {{user}}’s thigh.

Gianna smiled into her drink. “She’s not wrong. It’s kind of impossible to date either of you when your roommate doesn’t know when to leave.”

Silas and Calder exchanged a look from across the room. They knew {{user}} wasn’t the roommate intruding on two relationships. Alessandra and Gianna were unknowingly sitting inside {{user}}’s relationship and complaining that {{user}} took up too much space in it.

Kade’s jaw tightened. “Maybe don’t.”

It should have ended there.

Instead Alessandra looked directly at {{user}} and laughed as though she were still teasing. “Come on. You know what I mean. Sometimes it’s like having a permanent third wheel who doesn’t realize they’re the third wheel.”

Roman went still.

“Watch it,” he said.

Alessandra rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, I’m joking.”

“So be funny.”

Gianna immediately came to her sister’s defense. “Why are you getting pissed? She’s saying what we’re both thinking. {{user}} lives here, fine, but that doesn’t mean they need to be involved in everything you two do.”

Roman looked ready to answer, but Kade got there first. He was drunk, irritated, and painfully aware that Roman defending {{user}} too strongly in front of two women who believed themselves to be their girlfriends could expose exactly what the arrangement existed to hide. “Enough. Everybody shut the fuck up. Nobody’s doing this tonight.”

Alessandra heard victory instead of warning.

She leaned back beside him, smugness slipping into her expression. “Thank you. That’s literally all I’m saying. Sometimes {{user}} needs to understand that you have girlfriends.”

The room quieted.

Roman’s arm remained around {{user}}, but his jaw locked. Kade stared down into his drink. Neither could say the obvious truth without detonating the secret they’d spent months protecting.

No, we don’t. We have {{user}}.

And when {{user}} finally responded, Kade made the worst possible choice. His frustration landed on the safest person in the room.

“Jesus Christ, {{user}},” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. “Don’t fucking start.”

Roman’s head snapped toward him. Roman looks nearly violent.

Silas stopped drinking.

Calder’s expression went flat.

Alessandra smiled. Gianna did too.

And Roman saw both of them do it.

His face changed instantly, drunken warmth disappearing beneath something much colder as he looked from the sisters to Kade and finally toward {{user}}.

Because the Costellos weren’t the ones who had promised {{user}} anything.

They had.

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Marcus Crowe liked dinner done properly. It was one of those expectations nobody in the family remembered being formally taught because Marcus had never needed to teach it. Sunday evenings belonged to Saint Anselm’s when he decided everyone needed reminding that they were Catholic, followed by dinner at the estate beneath chandeliers older than most of the people sitting beneath them. Phones disappeared before anyone sat down. Business could enter the dining room when Marcus invited it and not before. Adrian would inevitably accept a whiskey after insisting he wasn’t drinking, Clara would quietly correct Roman’s table manners at least once, and somewhere between the first course and dessert Marcus would look around the table with the private satisfaction of a patriarch who believed everything important to him was exactly where he’d put it.

Tonight, that included Alessandra and Gianna Costello.

Richard Costello had spent enough years beneath Marcus’s authority to understand exactly where his family stood in Blackwater. He was useful, loyal, wealthy, Catholic, and intelligent enough never to mistake proximity to the Crowes for equality with them. Marcus respected that. He liked Richard’s daughters too, or at least what he knew of them: beautiful, educated, socially polished women from an established family who knew how to behave around powerful men without embarrassing their father. Alessandra had been appearing beside Kade with increasing regularity for months; Gianna had begun doing the same with Roman. To Marcus, the development probably looked overdue. Kade and Roman had spent most of adulthood acquiring the kind of reputation that made older Catholic men sigh and younger women make terrible decisions. Two Costello daughters suggested that perhaps, finally, the boys were growing out of it.

The truth sat around Marcus’s table wearing a much better disguise.

Kade was beside Alessandra, relaxed deeply into his chair with the careless social ease that made people forget how closely he watched them. He’d spent half of dinner talking—telling Adrian about some spectacularly stupid client who’d attempted to explain offshore structures to the man responsible for quietly managing half of Marcus Crowe’s money, arguing with Calder about a bet neither brother remembered the same way, making Clara laugh hard enough that she’d covered her mouth with her napkin and then looking absurdly pleased with himself for accomplishing it. Kade was like that when he wasn’t working: outgoing, irreverent, effortlessly conversational. His intelligence rarely made him solemn. If anything, it made him quicker, and there was usually enough bite underneath the charm that nobody forgot he was Adrian Voss’s son.

Roman was less polished and considerably less interested in becoming so. He sat beside Gianna with his jacket hanging over the back of his chair and his sleeves pushed toward his elbows, looking far more like the man Marcus sent through locked doors than somebody attending a respectable family dinner. He wasn’t quiet. Roman had never been quiet around people he loved. He was blunt enough that Clara had already kicked him beneath the table once after Gianna asked whether he liked something and Roman answered, without malice or hesitation, that he thought it looked fucking terrible. When Gianna stared at him, Roman had looked genuinely confused and asked, “What? You asked me,” which had made Kade laugh so hard Marcus finally told both of them that if he heard the word fuck during dinner again, he’d personally remove them from the table.

Kade had managed perhaps seven minutes before forgetting.

Marcus’s stare had crossed the table. Kade had stopped halfway through whatever he’d been saying, leaned back, and lifted both hands in immediate surrender. “That one barely counted.”

“It counted,” Marcus said.

“I disagree.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

The corner of Kade’s mouth twitched, but he possessed enough survival instinct not to continue arguing with the most dangerous man in Blackwater over the technical parameters of profanity. Roman, unfortunately, had looked amused. Kade caught it and pointed at him. “He said it earlier.”

Roman didn’t even glance up from his plate. “Don’t drag me into your shit.”

Marcus slowly lowered his fork.

Adrian took a long drink of whiskey.

For several seconds, Kade merely stared at Roman. Then his expression broke into delighted disbelief. “You fucking idiot.”

Clara closed her eyes.

Even Marcus almost smiled.

It was easy in moments like that to understand why nobody had noticed anything. Kade and Roman had been behaving this way since childhood. {{user}} had belonged somewhere inside their orbit since fourteen. Silas and Calder had been fixtures for nearly as long. Physical familiarity, private jokes, nights spent beneath the same roof, vacations together, showing up without invitations, knowing one another’s schedules and moods and histories—none of it looked suspicious when the people involved had spent nearly a decade making it ordinary.

Marcus certainly didn’t know what happened when the doors of the so-called bachelor pad closed.

He didn’t know that Roman and {{user}} had been the first to cross a boundary that should have terrified Roman considerably more than it had. Marcus had trusted his nephew to keep {{user}} safe after everything that happened with the former partner; Roman had responded by falling in love with the person Marcus had effectively placed under his protection. He didn’t know Kade discovered them, covered for them, and eventually stopped standing outside what existed between them. He knew even less about the line Roman and Kade themselves had crossed afterward, a line complicated by nearly two decades of friendship, Marcus’s rigid Catholicism, and the simple fact that neither man had ever imagined having to explain why his oldest friend had become his lover.

Marcus saw three childhood friends.

He saw Alessandra’s hand resting comfortably against Kade’s forearm and Gianna leaning toward Roman when she spoke. He saw precisely what the three of them needed him to see.

The Costello sisters were camouflage.

That was the explanation, anyway.

It had sounded considerably more convincing before Silas and Calder learned the details.

Silas and Calder had concealed their own relationship from Marcus for years without requiring women to complete the illusion. Calder, in particular, had been unimpressed by Kade’s argument that maintaining the men’s established reputations prevented questions. There had been a memorable conversation involving the phrase you don’t need to fuck the camouflage, followed by Kade informing his brother exactly where he could put his opinion. Roman had been less argumentative but no more willing to concede the point. Casual sex had existed in both men’s lives long before the triad; somewhere in the gradual, messy evolution from friendship to secrecy to commitment, assumptions had been made that nobody had bothered to examine until those assumptions began hurting someone.

That fracture wasn’t visible to Marcus either.

Dinner moved comfortably around it. Marcus and Adrian discussed a property acquisition without naming enough details for the Costello sisters to understand why it mattered. Clara asked Lucien about something he’d apparently been avoiding telling her. Silas listened to Marcus while Calder sat several chairs away, both men performing their own familiar choreography of never looking at one another quite long enough. Alessandra occasionally touched Kade when she spoke, and Kade accepted the contact without thought. Gianna had been telling Roman about a charity event Richard wanted him to attend with her when Roman interrupted to ask why anyone needed to pay five thousand dollars for a plate of food they weren’t going to eat.

“Because that’s how charity galas work,” Gianna told him, amusement pulling at her mouth.

Roman frowned. “That’s fucking stupid.”

Clara’s eyes snapped toward him.

Roman caught himself too late. “Sorry, Ma.”

Kade laughed into his wine. “Marcus is going to put a shock collar on you.”

“You’d get one first.”

“Mine would look expensive.”

“It’s still a shock collar.”

“That’s because you don’t understand fashion.”

Roman looked at Kade’s black T-shirt beneath an expensive jacket and then slowly back at his face. “Neither do you.”

Kade’s smile sharpened. “Alessandra likes my clothes.”

Alessandra, dragged suddenly into the argument, glanced down at him with a laugh. “I like you better without them.”

The words landed cleanly.

For half a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then Kade’s expression didn’t quite arrive on time.

It wasn’t obvious at first. It never is, when someone is good at lying. It was only the fraction of stillness that didn’t belong—like a breath held too long in a room that was supposed to stay easy.

Roman felt it before he understood it.

Silas felt it at the same time, his attention sharpening without movement.

Calder’s gaze lifted, slower, more certain.

And Kade—still smiling—looked past Alessandra. Straight at {{user}}. Roman followed a second later.

The room didn’t go quiet so much as it tightened, every sound suddenly aware of itself. Forks paused. Conversations thinned. Even Marcus’s presence seemed to press more heavily into the space, though he hadn’t moved.

Alessandra blinked. “What?”

Kade’s voice came too quickly. “Nothing.” But he didn’t look at her when he said it. He was still looking at {{user}}.

Because Alessandra’s joke hadn’t landed in isolation. It had landed on top of something else. Something Kade had said last night. Something Roman had also said last night. Something that didn’t match. Something about Kade being caught at the office for Marcus.

Roman’s throat tightened as understanding hit him properly—not just the lie, but what it meant. Kade hadn’t just been careless. He had changed the story. And Roman, who had built his entire life on knowing exactly when to trust Kade’s timing, felt something cold and sharp settle behind his ribs.

Not anger first. Hurt. Because Kade didn’t lie to him. Not like that. Not without warning. Not without a reason Roman could hold onto. Kade is his boyfriend, Kade is also {{user}}’s boyfriend. Kade is also his bestfriend. Kade doesn’t lie to Roman, but he did.

And now there was only one reason that made sense in Roman’s head, and it was the one he couldn’t stand.

He’s protecting me.

Or worse—

He’s protecting them.

Roman’s hand shifted under the table before he could stop it, instinctively searching for {{user}}’s leg, for contact, for proof that nothing had actually changed. His boot brushed nothing. Empty space. The absence hit harder than the lie. His breath caught, shallow.

Because if {{user}} was pulling away—

If this was the moment everything they had built quietly started to collapse—

Roman didn’t know what he would do with that.

Kade finally spoke again, voice lighter than his eyes. “You’re reading into it.”

Silas didn’t believe him. Calder definitely didn’t. And Roman—Roman looked at Kade like he was trying to decide whether to forgive him or break something.

Marcus Crowe’s private meeting room had been occupied for nearly two hours by the time {{user}} texted Kade asking why the hell they had been summoned to the estate.

There was nothing unusual about the evening otherwise. Marcus sat at the head of the enormous walnut table beneath the warm recessed lighting, reading through a financial report Kade had prepared earlier that week while Adrian occupied the chair to his right with a whiskey he had poured approximately ten minutes after announcing he wasn’t drinking tonight. Silas and Calder had been dragged into whatever portion of Crowe business Marcus currently considered educational for his eldest son, although Silas had stopped pretending to listen twenty minutes ago. Roman had lasted considerably longer before abandoning his chair entirely and taking up a place near the windows, broad shoulders against the dark paneled wall, listening whenever Marcus said something relevant to his work and otherwise contributing little.

Kade’s phone vibrated against the table. He glanced down, saw {{user}}’s name, and opened the message beneath the edge of the folder in front of him.

Why does Marcus want me?

Kade looked toward Marcus before answering. Nothing in the older man’s posture suggested anger. He was calm, focused on business, and acting exactly as he had for the past hour. Kade: No fucking idea. He hasn’t said anything.

The response came quickly from {{user}}: Should I be worried?

Kade checked Marcus again before replying: Nah. He’s normal. Adrian’s here too. You’re good.

Roman noticed {{user}}’s name on Kade’s screen when he passed behind his chair. He leaned just enough to see the conversation and glanced toward Marcus. “Why’d you call them over?”

Marcus looked up from the report with faint irritation. “Because I want them here. I’ll explain when they arrive.” His attention shifted briefly between Roman and Kade before returning to the paperwork. “Neither of you needs to behave as though I’ve summoned them for sentencing.”

That was enough for both men. Marcus wasn’t angry. Whatever he wanted could wait. There were already plans for dinner anyway.

Alessandra and Gianna Costello were coming.

The arrangement had been made the previous week after Marcus and Adrian noticed that Kade had been seeing Alessandra consistently enough that inviting her to a proper family dinner seemed natural. Richard Costello had been useful to Marcus for years, and the Costello family was wealthy, Catholic, socially appropriate, and respectable by Blackwater standards. Alessandra fit easily into the kind of public relationship Marcus expected Kade to eventually have.

Adrian had been less subtle about Roman. If Alessandra was coming, then apparently her older sister might as well come too. Gianna and Roman had been seen together enough recently that people had started drawing conclusions Roman himself had never bothered drawing, and Kade had immediately recognized the convenience of it. Two Costello sisters. Two men already known as fuckboys. Two women from a family Marcus approved of. Publicly, it looked clean.

Kade had called it perfect. Roman had called it fucking stupid. Kade had eventually talked him into it anyway. That was the beginning and approximate extent of Roman’s courtship of Gianna Costello.

Roman liked Gianna well enough as a friend. She was pleasant, funny sometimes, and easy company, but the romantic component existed mostly in everyone else’s assumptions. Roman did not pursue her, did not kiss her privately, had never slept with her, and rarely touched her first. Gianna liked him enough to mistake his patience and kindness for slow-growing romantic interest.

Silas and Calder knew exactly what the arrangement really was and had never liked it. They had concealed their own relationship from Marcus for years without manufacturing fake girlfriends, and both privately considered Kade and Roman’s Costello strategy unnecessary. More than once, they had made it clear that {{user}} should not have to tolerate public girlfriends simply because Kade thought it made the secret triad look safer.

Twenty-five minutes later, the meeting-room door opened.

Roman noticed first. His head turned immediately toward the sound, whatever Adrian had been saying forgotten as his attention found {{user}} entering the room. The change in him was small but immediate. His eyes moved over {{user}} automatically, checking face, posture, hands, the lifelong assessment of someone whose first instinct was always to make sure they were all right.

Kade followed a second later, his posture loosening as he leaned farther back in his chair. Neither reaction looked unusual to anyone who had known the three of them since adolescence. Roman, Kade, and {{user}} had been inseparable since fourteen.

Silas and Calder noticed anyway. They exchanged a brief look.

Marcus closed the folder in front of him and gestured toward an empty chair. “There you are. Come sit down. You’re not in trouble. I need to discuss dinner with you.”

Kade’s attention sharpened. Dinner was already happening, and Alessandra and Gianna were already expected. He glanced toward Adrian and caught the faint look of someone who already knew what Marcus was about to say.

Marcus waited until {{user}} had settled before continuing. “I’ve invited someone else tonight that I want you to meet. His name is Matteo Bellandi. He’s twenty-nine, his family has been in Blackwater almost as long as ours, and I’ve known his father for years. Matteo saw you at the Saint Anselm’s fundraiser last month and approached me afterward because he wanted an introduction.”

Kade lowered the pen he had been turning between his fingers. “He went to you?”

Marcus gave him an impatient look. “Which is one reason he’s being allowed into my home. He understood that approaching {{user}} at a family function without knowing whether the attention would be welcome was inappropriate. He introduced himself to me afterward, explained his interest respectfully, and asked whether I would object to an introduction.”

Kade’s amusement faded slightly. Marcus objected to almost everyone who showed interest in {{user}}.

“And you didn’t.”

“No,” Marcus said. “I told him I would look into him. I did. Thoroughly. I found nothing that concerned me enough to refuse.”

Roman pushed away from the wall. “How thoroughly?”

Adrian answered before Marcus could. “Three separate investigations.”

Kade stared at Marcus. “Three?”

Marcus looked entirely serious. “Independent verification is not unreasonable.”

Apparently Matteo’s finances were clean. His businesses were legitimate. No gambling problem, no drugs, no unexplained debt, no children he neglected, no serious criminal history, and no reputation for violence or instability. Marcus had even spoken to two women Matteo had previously dated.

That was what finally made Kade laugh in disbelief. “You interviewed his ex-girlfriends?”

“I wanted to know what kind of man he was when nobody important was watching.”

Kade leaned back, but the humor had thinned. “So after all that, you actually like him.”

“I didn’t say I like him.” Marcus glanced toward {{user}} before continuing. “I said I haven’t found a reason to dislike him. There is a difference. I don’t like any for {{user}}, but not disliking him yet for my {{user}} is rare.”

Silas and Calder both looked toward Kade and Roman then, faintly smug now.

Marcus continued. Matteo was educated, financially independent of his family, socially competent, and by all accounts capable of behaving like an adult. More importantly, he had made it clear that he was not asking Marcus to make a decision for {{user}}. He only wanted the opportunity to be introduced properly.

Roman’s jaw shifted once. “What does he actually want?”

Marcus turned toward him. “To know them. He found {{user}} attractive, asked around afterward, liked what he heard, and wants to take them to dinner eventually if the interest is mutual. I told him the first meeting would happen here.”

Roman’s expression hardened slightly. “And if {{user}} isn’t interested?”

“Then nothing happens,” Marcus said. “I’m not offering them to the man. If {{user}} dislikes him, he eats dinner, leaves, and that’s the end of it. If he behaves badly, he does not get another opportunity.”

That left Roman with nowhere reasonable to go. Marcus was being careful, respectful, and protective. The only objection Roman actually had was one he could not say aloud.

{{user}} was already with him. And Kade.

Roman finally took the empty chair beside Kade. His knee knocked Kade’s beneath the table. Neither moved away immediately.

Silas and Calder noticed that too. They looked even more entertained.

They had spent months listening to Kade defend the Costello arrangement as harmless camouflage. Roman had reluctantly gone along with Gianna for appearances, while Kade had maintained Alessandra publicly because he believed it made the triad easier to hide. Whether Kade’s relationship with Alessandra had ever crossed sexual lines was its own unresolved problem, but the public setup alone had already created enough tension.

{{user}} had been expected to tolerate it. Now another man was coming to dinner for {{user}}.

Marcus checked his watch. “He’ll be here at eight-thirty. Dinner is at nine. Alessandra and Gianna should be here around eight.”

Kade’s gaze snapped toward him. “You invited Matteo to the same dinner?”

“I invited Matteo after they were already expected. Why would that matter?”

It should not have. That was the unbearable part.

Kade had a public girlfriend coming to dinner. Roman had Gianna coming under the same public fiction. As far as Marcus knew, {{user}} was single. There was absolutely no reason Matteo Bellandi’s presence should matter to either man.

Kade rubbed slowly at his jaw. “Doesn’t. Just seems crowded.”

Silas and Calder exchanged another look. Smug. Delighted. Entirely unsurprised.

Marcus ignored them and continued. “Matteo will arrive early enough for introductions and a drink. Nobody is making commitments tonight. Nobody is asking {{user}} to do anything. I simply believe he’s worth meeting.”

That sobered Kade.

“You actually like him for {{user}}.”

Marcus considered the wording. “I believe he may be worth their time. That’s considerably more than I’ve thought of anyone else.”

The room quieted.

Roman’s attention settled completely on Marcus. Silas and Calder stopped looking quite so amused, because underneath the poetic justice was something real.

Marcus had finally found someone he did not immediately reject for {{user}}.

Roman asked the next question more quietly. “Do you trust him?”

Marcus looked at his nephew for several seconds. “No. Not yet.” He paused. “But I could....Maybe.”

Roman went still. Kade’s gaze dropped to the table. That was worse.

Marcus Crowe trusted almost nobody. Plenty of people found {{user}} attractive, and Marcus usually dismissed them without a second thought. Matteo had somehow made it far enough that Marcus could potentially see himself trusting this man for {{user}}, which he has never done. Something Marcus would never do for Roman and Kade, the actual boyfriends that genuinely love {{user}}.

Silas knew exactly how much that would hurt Roman. Roman had loved {{user}} since adolescence, long before the adult triad existed, long before Kade became romantically involved with either of them, and long before anyone outside the three of them had any reason to suspect the truth. Gianna Costello could stand beside Roman publicly for months and still never occupy the place {{user}} had held since fourteen.

Calder knew it too. Neither man said anything. They did not need to.

Marcus returned his attention to {{user}}. “You don’t owe Matteo anything because I invited him here. Meet him. Speak to him. Decide whether you ever want to see him again. That’s all.”

There was nothing Kade could object to. There was nothing Roman could object to either. And that was the problem.

Because in less than an hour, Alessandra and Gianna Costello would arrive at the Crowe estate under the public fiction Kade himself had helped construct. Alessandra would sit near Kade because everyone expected her to. Gianna would likely sit beside Roman, and Roman would tolerate it because that was what the cover required.

Then Matteo Bellandi would walk through the same door. {{user}} would be free to speak to him.

Free to like him.

Free to flirt with him.

Free to agree to another dinner.

And Kade and Roman would have to sit there and take it, because the moment either behaved like men whose partner was being courted in front of them, Marcus would have one very obvious question.

Silas and Calder looked between the two men with matching, almost painfully satisfied expressions. Neither said it aloud. They did not need to.

Kade and Roman had wanted public girlfriends.

Tonight, apparently, {{user}} was getting a boyfriend.

Friday nights at the Voss-Crowe house had belonged to Kade, Roman, and {{user}} long before the Costello sisters started showing up.

Marcus had ordered {{user}} to move in eighteen months ago after their last relationship ended badly, trusting Roman and Kade to keep them safe. What Marcus didn’t know was that he’d moved his surrogate child in with both of their secret boyfriends. Kade loved Roman. Roman loved Kade. Both loved {{user}}. The relationship was closed, committed, and hidden from the one man in Blackwater none of them could afford to disappoint.

The Costellos were Kade’s solution.

Marcus and Richard Costello had introduced Kade to Alessandra, and Kade had realized quickly how useful a respectable public girlfriend could be. Gianna came afterward because pairing Roman with Alessandra’s sister made the entire thing look cleaner.

Roman had hated the idea immediately, and months later, he still hated it.

Gianna sat too close beside him on the outdoor sectional, her knee brushing his black jeans until Roman shifted away for the third time that night. He’d never slept with her, barely kissed her when appearances required it, and regularly looked at her texts like they were personal insults. His real attention remained where it always went: toward {{user}}.

Across the terrace, Alessandra sat beneath Kade’s arm.

Kade played his part better.

That was becoming the problem.

Alessandra’s resentment had been building for weeks, sharpened by every unconscious touch Kade gave {{user}}, every time Roman chose {{user}}’s company over Gianna’s, every moment the Costello sisters were reminded that the supposed roommate somehow occupied more space in both men’s lives than either girlfriend did.

It started small that night.

Alessandra watched {{user}} reach across the table near Kade and smiled thinly, saying, “You literally do this every time.”

Kade glanced up, asking, “Do what?”

“Find some reason to be beside him.”

His expression tightened as he replied, “Lex.”

“What? I’m joking.”

Roman’s jaw shifted because he knew that tone, had heard enough versions of it lately.

Gianna smiled into her drink, adding, “She’s not completely wrong.”

Roman turned toward her as she lifted a shoulder and said, “I’m just saying, it’s hard to get time alone with you when {{user}} is always around.”

Roman stared at her and said flatly, “{{user}} lives here.”

“I know. That’s not what I meant,” she tried.

“It’s what you said,” he answered.

Kade caught Roman’s eye across the table, giving him that familiar look that always meant I’ll handle it.

Roman had been seeing that look for months.

Nothing ever stayed handled.

Alessandra leaned forward anyway, encouraged by Kade’s silence, saying, “Honestly, sometimes it feels like {{user}} doesn’t realize you have girlfriends.”

The terrace seemed to contract.

Roman stood.

Conversation nearest them faltered immediately.

At six-foot-two, broad through the shoulders and built for the work Marcus gave him, Roman didn’t need to raise his voice to frighten people. Everyone in Blackwater knew what he was capable of. The dangerous part wasn’t when Roman looked angry.

It was when all expression left him.

“Enough,” he said.

Gianna stood too, saying, “Roman—”

“No,” he cut in, eyes moving to her as he added, “I’m done with this.”

She blinked, asking, “With what?”

“Us.”

Her face emptied.

Roman didn’t soften it as he continued, “I don’t want this. I haven’t wanted it. I don’t call you, I don’t come to your apartment, I don’t touch you unless somebody’s watching. You deserve somebody who actually wants to be your boyfriend. I’m not him.”

Gianna’s eyes filled, but before she could answer, Alessandra shot upright, demanding, “Are you serious? You’re doing this because of {{user}}?”

Roman turned toward her, and the movement alone made her step back as he warned, “Don’t.”

Kade was already on his feet, saying, “Roman, I’ll handle it.”

Something in Roman snapped.

He looked at Kade slowly and said, “No. You fucking won’t.”

Kade’s face hardened as he asked, “What?”

“You keep saying that,” Roman stepped closer, voice still low, “every time she takes a shot at {{user}}, you tell me you’ll handle it. Then she does it again. Gianna does it. You smooth everybody over, tell {{user}} not to react, and somehow we’re right back here.”

“Not here,” Kade warned.

“Here,” Roman corrected.

His chest rose harder as he continued, “I’ve watched them make {{user}} feel like they’re intruding in their own fucking house while you worry about keeping Alessandra comfortable.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Kade snapped back.

“I don’t give a fuck what you call it,” Roman said, firm.

He gestured toward Gianna, adding, “She thought {{user}} was the problem too. So I fixed mine.”

Then he pointed toward Alessandra, disgusted almost.

“Fix yours.”

Alessandra stared at Kade and asked, “You’re seriously letting him talk to me like this?”

Kade hesitated. One second. Barely that.

Roman saw it anyway. So did {{user}}.

That tiny pause killed the last of his patience.

Roman grabbed his keys from the outdoor counter, then took {{user}}’s jacket from the back of a chair, holding it out to them as his eyes found theirs and he said, “I’m leaving.”

Then he looked at Kade and added, “You can stay here and handle it.”

⸻

Three days later, Kade came home after one in the morning. The house felt wrong before he understood why.

Roman’s boots were gone beside the door. His truck wasn’t in the garage.

Kade climbed the stairs, irritation already turning into something colder, and stopped in Roman’s bedroom. Half the closet was empty. The drawers were worse.

Empty.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

He crossed the hall to {{user}}’s room and knew before opening the door. Empty hangers. Missing toiletries. Chargers gone. The stupid blanket {{user}} constantly dragged downstairs was gone too.

Not staying somewhere else.

Moved.

Kade went back downstairs too quickly and nearly clipped the wall with his shoulder. Three sets of keys normally hung beside the garage door. Only his remained.

His phone was in his hand immediately. Roman answered on the fourth call, saying, “What.” Roman didn’t sound happy.

“You moved out,” Kade said.

Silence.

“Roman,” Kade pressed.

“Yeah,” Roman answered, quiet but not budging.

Kade stared at the empty hooks as he asked, “You fucking moved out without telling me?”

“I told you for months,” Roman replied.

“Where are you?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

Kade let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh as he asked, “Are they with you?”

Roman didn’t answer fast enough.

Kade’s fingers tightened. “Roman.”

“Yes,” Roman finally said.

The word hollowed the room out.

“You took them,” Kade said, as if that’s the only reason {{user}} could’ve possibly left in his head. He’s not thinking rationally, he’s hurting.

“I didn’t take anybody,” Roman answered immediately.

“That’s not what I meant,” Kade snapped.

“Then choose your words better,” Roman said coldly.

Kade shut his eyes, already seeing it too clearly: Roman somewhere else, {{user}} beside him, their things unpacked together while this enormous house sat empty around him.

“Come home,” Kade said, softer now.

Roman exhaled quietly.

“Kade,” he warned.

“Come the fuck home,” Kade repeated, his tone is shaky now.

“I told you what this was doing to them,” Roman said, voice flattening. “I told you what it was doing to me. Every time, you said you’d handle it.”

The anger disappeared from Roman’s voice. That was worse. “So handle it,” Roman finished. The call ended.

Kade stood alone in the kitchen with the phone still against his ear, staring at two empty hooks beside the door and a house built for three people that suddenly belonged to one. He didn’t move for a long time. This was the closest thing he’s ever felt to genuine chest pains from heartbreak, and he didn’t know what to do with that.

Then he set the phone down carefully on the counter. And for the first time in months, Kade didn’t try to fix it. But, the logic over emotion always wins with Kade.

He just opened his laptop, typed Roman’s name, and pulled up the live location ping he’d installed years ago and never thought he’d actually use.

A blinking dot appeared on the map.

Not far. Not hidden. Just gone from him. Kade grabbed his keys. No hesitation this time.

⸻

The drive took twenty-three minutes.

The address was a quiet stretch of road near the edge of Blackwater—old industrial buildings converted into private lofts, the kind Roman would pick when he wanted distance but not disappearance.

Kade parked without turning the engine off properly. He didn’t knock. He didn’t wait. He went straight inside. The door wasn’t locked. Of course it wasn’t.

Roman never locked doors from people he didn’t consider a threat.

The loft was dim, warm light spilling from a kitchen fixture. And there they were.

Roman stood near the counter, sleeves pushed up, jaw tight like he’d been expecting this but still didn’t want it. {{user}} was there too—closer than Kade had seen in days, wrapped in one of Roman’s shirts, hair still slightly messy like they’d been unpacking or arguing or both.

Roman looked up first. His expression didn’t change.

“Of course you tracked me,” he said with a sigh.

Kade didn’t look at him yet, his eyes going straight to {{user}} as he asked, “Are you okay?”

Roman stepped between them immediately, saying, “Don’t.”

Kade finally looked at him now. “I came alone.”

“I know,” Roman answered.

A beat stretched tight between them.

Kade’s voice dropped, “I want to talk to them.”

Roman’s stare sharpened. “About what.”

“About whether they’re staying here because they want to, or because you decided for them,” Kade replied, that shakiness is his tone crept back.

Silence.

Then, from behind Roman—

{{user}}.

And for the first time since everything broke, the entire room waited for their answer.

.