Theirs To Claim

The plan was to dodge my publisher's calls, and grow old beside a cat who actively resents me. The plan did not involve renting my spare rooms to a trio of enormous hockey players. The plan very much did not involve falling for all of them.

Beck is tattooed, grinning, allergic to boundaries, and fixes my faucet shirtless like that's a normal Tuesday.

Alexei is six-foot-something of silent Russian menace who ducks through my doorframe and leaves it cracked, then makes me tea at 3 AM like he's been doing it my whole life.

Fred is a quietly devastating single dad whose four-year-old immediately adopts my cat, my kitchen, and, apparently, me.

Then a kiss cam at center ice makes me internet-famous. The team's solution is a fake relationship for the season. I say yes because pretending to be wanted is easier than admitting I actually am. I set the terms, no real kisses, separate bedrooms, a firm end date.

Except nothing in this house feels fake anymore. Beck kisses my forehead like it's a vow. Alexei calls me from road trips but says almost nothing, and it's somehow the most romantic thing that's ever happened to me. Fred looks at me across a pillow fort like I invented the concept of home.

I have one heart. Apparently it comes with three separate, fully furnished wings, and I did not see that on the listing.

Turns out the house has three extra bedrooms, and eventually, none of them get used for sleeping alone. Why choose, when all three want to keep me?