Page 103 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
“It’s messy, Owen! It’s complicated! Who gets her? Do we draw straws? Do we fight for her? Do we make her choose and then resent the brother she picks for the rest of our lives?”
“We don’t make her choose,” I say.
The realization hits me like a physical blow, sharper than the rejection in the elevator.
“That’s why we lost her,” I say, my voice rough. “We made her choose. I tried to charm her in the elevator just now. I tried to be the ‘nice one.’ She shut me down because she said I chose you over her.”
Ethan goes still. “You chased her?”
“Yes. And I failed. Just like you failed to buy her with a counter-offer.”
I look at Asher.
“And you failed to solve her with logic.”
I look back at Ethan.
“We pulled her in three different directions until she snapped. As long as we make her choose, she loses. And we lose.”
“We don’t make her choose,” I repeat, the idea taking root, wild and desperate. It’s crazy. It’s forbidden. It’s something we haven’t done since we were in the sandbox. We were fueled by adrenaline and the desperate need to feel alive.
But looking at my brothers, looking at the shared hunger in their eyes, I realize it’s the only way.
“We share everything,” I say slowly. “We share the company. We share the risks. We share the rewards.”
“This isn’t a company,” Ethan snaps. “This is a woman. A woman we all… care about.”
“Exactly. We all care about her. We all want her. And maybe… maybe she wants us too.”
Ethan laughs bitterly. “She doesn’t want us, Owen. She’s a nice girl from Ohio. She wants a boyfriend. A husband. Not a circus.”
“Does she?” I challenge. “She sent that text to all three of us. She flirted with all three of us.”
“She’s confused.”
“She’s not confused,” Asher interrupts. “She is multi-faceted. She responds to different stimuli. She laughs with Owen. She debates with Ethan. She exists in silence with me.”
“See?” I gesture to Asher. “She needs all of it. Maybe one of us isn’t enough. Maybe she needs the whole Unit.”
Ethan stops pacing. He looks at me, and for the first time, I see genuine disgust warring with desperation.
“Share her?” he spits the words out. “Do you hear yourself? She isn’t an equity split, Owen. She isn’t a timeshare.”
He walks to the window, gripping the sill tight enough to crack the marble.
“I want her to be mine,” Ethan says, his voice low and raw. “Just mine. I want to wake up next to her every day. I want to be the only man who knows what she sounds like when she comes. I can’t… I can’t watch you with her.”
“You’d have to,” I say softly.
“If we can’t share her, and we can’t fight for her without destroying the Unit… then we let her go. It’s the only logical outcome,” Ethan says, turning back to us.
“Logic,” Asher cuts in, his voice sharp. “That is the problem. You are applying binary logic to a quantum problem.”
“We have to try,” I insist. “Because the alternative is losing her to Markus Vance. The alternative is her walking out that door and never coming back.”
“We need data,” Asher says.
“We don’t need data, Ash, we need a miracle.”
