Four Of A Kind - Chapter 221: [4.39] I Want Everything

Diana and I stood in the wreckage.

“She’s right,” Diana whispered. “About all of it.”

I didn’t respond.

“I came here to ask you both to move to California with me. Jack and I talked about it and he said you’d be welcome. There’s a good school district. You could stop working so much. Iris could have a yard and a dog and—”

“No.”

“Just like that? You won’t even think about it?”

“There’s nothing to think about.” I sat back down on the couch, suddenly exhausted. “You left. We survived. We built something here. I’m not throwing that away because you found a new boyfriend with a nice house.”

Diana’s face went red. “That’s not fair.”

“None of this is fair.”

My phone buzzed again.

Harlow: u ok? ur sister text u were fighting with someone

Cassidy: if your mom is being a bitch i will fight her

I typed back to the group chat they’d apparently created at some point.

Me: I’m fine. Family stuff. I’ll text tomorrow.

Vivienne responded immediately.

Vivienne: We’re here if you need us.

Harlow: we meant what we said earlier btw

Harlow: all of it

Cassidy: yeah what she said

Sabrina: The offer stands. Take your time deciding.

Diana was staring at my phone. At my face. At the way my expression had softened reading their messages.

“Who are you texting?”

“Work.”

“Work doesn’t make you smile like that.”

I pocketed my phone. “You should go. There’s a hotel three blocks down on Market Street.”

“I wanted to stay here tonight. Spend time with you both.”

“The couch is mine. Iris has the bedroom. There’s nowhere for you to sleep.”

“I could take the floor.”

“No.” I pulled a blanket from the back of the couch, started making my bed. “You can come back tomorrow if you want. Ring the buzzer. Don’t just show up.”

Diana stood there for another minute. Watching me with wet eyes and a trembling mouth.

“I’m trying to fix this,” she whispered.

“You can’t fix two years with one night. You can’t fix eighteen years of leaving with one weekend visit.”

“I know that. But I have to start somewhere.”

I looked at her then. Really looked.

She was thirty-six but could pass for twenty-eight. Same dark hair as me and Iris. Same olive skin. Same eyes that saw everything and ran from most of it.

She looked good. Healthy. Happy, even.

California agreed with her.

And that pissed me off more than anything else. That she’d been thriving while Iris asked me every week when Mom was coming home and I had to invent new lies about Diana being busy.

“The hotel is called the Kensington Inn,” I said. “Three blocks south. They have vacancies.”

Diana picked up her purse. Walked to the door.

She paused with her hand on the knob.

“Those girls who keep texting you. They’re important to you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“They’re my employers.”

“Employers don’t text that much. And you don’t smile at work messages.”

“Goodnight, Diana.”

I stared at the ceiling after she left. The water stain shaped like Italy had gotten bigger since last month. Probably a pipe issue upstairs that I couldn’t afford to fix.

The Valentine manor didn’t have water stains. It had heated floors and rainfall showers and guest suites bigger than my entire apartment.

Four girls lived there. Four identical girls with purple eyes and wine-red hair who’d just told me they all wanted me.

Harlow, who remembered that I liked strawberry ice cream and made sure Chef Laurent kept it stocked. Who hugged me like I was the only solid thing in a liquid world.

Cassidy, who’d worked three hours on practice problems at two in the morning because she wanted to prove she wasn’t broken. Who looked at me like I’d hung the moon every time she got a problem right.

Vivienne, who’d kissed me in a bathroom stall and told me I made her forget to be perfect. Who touched my collar whenever she needed an excuse to be close.

Sabrina, who fell asleep on my shoulder and trusted me enough to show me the box of letters from her dead father. Who saw through every lie and stayed anyway.

They all wanted me.

And I’d said no because I was practical.

Because I had rent and Iris and a scholarship application and a mother who’d just shown up threatening to disrupt everything I’d built from nothing.

You deserve to be happy.

Cassidy’s voice echoed.

You deserve to have people who care about you.

Did I?

I’d never thought about it that way. Deserving was for people who had the luxury of wants. I’d spent eighteen years in survival mode where deserving didn’t factor into the equation.

But now four girls were offering something I’d never let myself consider. Something that sounded impossible and complicated and absolutely insane.

Sharing. All four of them.

What the hell did that even mean?

Did they expect me to date all of them simultaneously? Take turns? Schedule quality time like Vivienne scheduled everything else in her life?

The logistics alone made my head hurt.

And the money thing.

They had billions. Literal billions.

The power imbalance was massive. Insurmountable. The kind of gap that made relationships implode spectacularly.

But.

They’d driven to Philadelphia because they were worried. They’d tracked my car and showed up and dragged me to an arcade just to make me smile.

They saw me.

Not scholarship kid Isaiah. Not the tutor. Not the help.

Just me.

And apparently they liked what they saw enough to risk their mother’s wrath and their family reputation and whatever the hell else came with publicly claiming me.

I could picture it perfectly. Harlow bouncing around their theater room or wherever they’d ended up. Iris probably curled up in a blanket fort made of designer throws. Cassidy trying to act like she didn’t care while checking her phone every thirty seconds.

Vivienne pretending to work while her tablet sat unopened beside her.

Sabrina reading the same page over and over.

They were probably a mess right now.

Because of me.

Because I’d panicked and said no when what I actually wanted to say was yes, this is insane but I want it anyway.

I wanted Harlow’s sunshine and the way she made everything feel lighter just by existing nearby.

I wanted Cassidy’s fire and how she pushed me to be honest even when honesty hurt.

I wanted Vivienne’s walls cracking and the soft way she said my name when nobody else could hear.

I wanted Sabrina’s trust and her quiet presence and the way she saw through every defense I’d ever built.

I wanted all of them.

Which was the entire problem.

Normal people didn’t want four girls at once. Normal people picked one and hoped it worked out.

But apparently I’d stopped being normal somewhere between the coffee spill in September and tonight.