“What’s going on?” Gabe asks, setting down a brown paper bag that smells like it has cookies or some other baked good inside.

“You okay?” Banks mouths at me, frowning.

Tobias speaks before I can. “Where do you keep the bubbly, Gabe? We’re celebrating.”

“Bubbly what?”

“It’s champ—never mind,” Tobias sighs at the ceiling. “Elise is getting published. Thought you might like to celebrate, but apparently, we’ll have to do it with Budweiser.”

Banks’s chest rises and falls. “Elise, tell me you didn’t submit the mole story. The whole situation is way too volatile—”

“The article is about us, actually,” Tobias interjects. “It’s about us.”

Gabe shifts right to left, hesitantly amused. “You wrote an article about us?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Banks asks, his expression unreadable.

“Perhaps she wanted it to be a surprise for her—and I quote—rugby coach with debilitating mommy issues and an emotionally bullied construction foreman.”

The twin devastation on their faces is almost too painful to witness, but I force myself to stand there and take it in. The ground is moving underneath my feet, my breakfast on the verge of coming up. I can explain this to them and repair the hurt. I can. They will read the article and they will forgive me. Tobias is angry, lashing out. They’re sure to follow. But I can mend this.

That’s what my heart is telling me.

My gut is another story. It’s telling me this is the beginning of the end that I predicted since getting involved with these men. Everything was shiny and new and wonderful, but this is going to burn away the top layer of what we have. Then we’ll argue again in the future and another layer of this relationship will get skinned off. Another and another until we’re down to the bone. And then someone is going to leave. The thought of that happening, the idea of any of them walking away is causing a horrible, serrated punch of pain in my midsection. I’ve avoided any situation that might cause me to feel a sense of loss, the kind I felt so many times growing up, but here I am. I’m in the thick of it. I opened myself up for this.

I need to face the consequences like a grownup.

My throat is dry, eyes are burning. “I’m really sorry,” is all I can manage. “I wrote it in the beginning of us. When I was in denial that this was something important and special. I would write it very differently now.” I move to the bed under Tobias’s watchful eyes, open the laptop and hand it to Banks. “Read it. Whatever you need to do, I’ll understand.”

I leave the room, closing the door behind me.

The house looks very different now. Dimmer. More ominous. There’s no laughter or movement. The low murmur of voices behind me causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand up, my skin prickling with dread. There is a severe urge to bolt tickling the soles of my feet that I’m trying to ignore. Tobias hates me right now. Gabe and Banks could very likely follow in his footsteps. Avoidance would be so easy. Leaving now and pretending the whole thing never happened. My insides will be a shipwreck without them, but I know from experience that if I pretend to be aloof about something long enough, eventually I will convince myself that it’s true.