“How so?” I asked.

  “He’s going to give you a lot of freedom and let you do most of the work, as long as he thinks it makes him look good. And you’re going to ride the wave of his big return combined with Sonya’s name. Honestly, I’ve played your game and the two of you have better odds of telling an incredible story than ninety-five percent of the people he’d bring on.”

  We chatted with Dominic a few minutes longer, our excitement growing, and he said he’d have his assistant schedule a real meeting for us soon.

  Quentin set plates of pancakes in front of each of us, and saved one for himself as he stood across from us. “I feel like we should be having champagne or mimosas or something to go with this,” he said. “To celebrate.”

  Sonya wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. No champagne or any alcohol ever again.”

  “Never?” Quentin’s voice was flat.

  “At least not until I forget how much this morning’s hangover sucked.”

  I danced my fingers up Sonya’s arm. “I can make you forget a lot.”

  “Such a big promise.” Quentin still radiated disbelief.

  Too easy. “I’m a big guy.”

  “You’re not wrong.” Sonya clucked. “But if I may say something?”

  I gave her as much of a bow as I could from my seated position. “Always.”

  “Eat the food before you start talking us out of our clothes again. Quentin’s pancakes are as close to sex as you’ll get without it being the real thing.

  That was a big promise. I took a bite, and “Oh my God,” I mumbled through the best pancakes ever. I forced myself to not eat like a normal person, using the fantastic setting as a distraction. Watching Quentin smile and watching Sonya laugh…

  This was love. Without question. I saw my future and my heart in Sonya and Quentin. I was going to hold onto it—onto them—for all I was worth.

  Epilogue

  Six Months Later

  Quentin

  I’d been officially dating Sonya and Jeremy for a few months, and working out of Jeremy’s garage just as long. After wrapping up the sculpture for Carly’s client, another commission came in, and then another, until my schedule was full of people wanting me to weld sculptures for them.

  It was amazing, but today I was taking a break to finish something else.

  On days when I spent my time at Jeremy’s welding and sculpting, he and Sonya came here after work. On the not-welding days, the three of us usually ended up at Sonya’s. Regardless of whose house we went to, the three of us were spending the night together.

  I finished my surprise while the sun was still up. Now what? I could get started on a different project, but I was excited to share this. This love I had with them was something I never thought I’d have again—never thought I’d want again—but there was no way I was letting it go.

  Cleaning up my workspace only took so much time, and a shower took even less.

  The unexpected sound of a car in the driveway made my heart leap. AcesPlayed was only a few months out from their official launch, and that meant a lot of long days and weekends for Sonya and Jeremy. To have them home in the afternoon was wonderful but strange.

  A moment later they walked through the front door, expressions somber.

  “Good. You’re here.” Jeremy’s tone was flat.

  “Hey.” Sonya gave a short wave.

  My excitement shifted to concern in a heartbeat. “Is everything all right?”

  One corner of Sonya’s mouth twitched up.

  Jeremy frowned and nudged her.

  She cracked, a massive grin spreading across her face. “Oh. My. Goddess. You don’t even—I can’t—”

  “It’s good news.” Jeremy was smiling as well.

  “So spill already.” I had a few guesses as to what it could be, but I wasn’t in the mood to go through even a short list to wait for the answer.

  Jeremy bounced on the balls of his toes. “Your news. You tell him.”

  “Our news.” Sonya looked like she was going to fidget into another dimension. “We have a final contract for the TV show. Dom says it’s solid, we’re ready to sign.”

  “Fuck yes. Woo.” I let out a loud shout, and wrapped Sonya in a tight hug. They’d been putting in long hours on top of long hours to pull this negotiation and plan together, and to see them reach the next step was incredible.

  With a tight hug and a deep kiss, I poured all of my joy for Sonya through the connection. “I’m so proud of you. I’m so happy for you.” I gave her another kiss, then turned the same attention on Jeremy. They were Sonya’s books, but he’d been as much a part of this next step as she was. “This is way better than my surprise. Wait.” The rest of Sonya’s words caught up with me. “Ready to sign. Why haven’t you signed yet?”

  “We don’t want to hog the spotlight,” Jeremy said as if they weren’t about to start work on a fucking TV show. “What’s your news?”

  Seriously? “It’ll wait.”

  “No, tell us.” Sonya tangled her fingers with mine.

  “And then we’ll go back to celebrating your amazing news?” I asked.

  Jeremy nodded. “Of course. I mean, unless yours is better.”

  It wasn’t, but I did want to share. I led them out to the shed, and flipped on the lights to reveal a highly polished steel pyramid with a heart floating inside. It was suspended with a thin steel cable that vanished in most light.

  “Happy anniversary,” I said.

  Jeremy furrowed his brow. “It’s not—”

  “Six months after we all pulled our heads out of our asses and said I love you?” Sonya approached the sculpture and reached out, but she didn’t touch it. “It is. And this is gorgeous. Are those…” Her eyes grew wide and she hovered her hand over the three initials I’d created in a delicate script of raised steel. S+J+Q. “Our initials.” She had one detail wrong, though.

  “Yes,” I said. “But it hasn’t been said all around yet.” The time never seemed right for me with Jeremy. Or rather, a sliver of lingering fear held me back, and I assumed it was the same for him.

  It was time for me to let go of the pieces of my past holding me back, and move on to more wonderful things. I turned to Jeremy. “I love you. I never thought I’d be able to do this again, and now I have both you and Sonya, and I can’t imagine my world without you in it.”

  “I love you, too.” Jeremy yielded when I pressed my body to his. Gripped my shirt in his fists when I kissed him hard. Bit my bottom lip enough to sting then gave me an obnoxiously playful smirk.

  There would be payback for that soon enough. “Now are you going to tell my why you haven’t signed?” I felt light as air, having shared my surprise for them and saying what I wanted to say, but I was still missing an answer.

  Sonya and Jeremy exchanged a glance that said she’d been scheming, but I was about to be let in on the details. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “The thing is, we need someone actually managing parts of this project. Dominic has suggested we create a formal production company and he has the paperwork ready for that, but we want someone else to join us.”

  “The being vague will only be cute for so long,” I teased. And I was lying—she’d be cute regardless.

  Jeremy held up his index fingers. “Ooh, ooh, ooh.” He pointed at the heart sculpture. “We should use that. It would be the perfect logo.”

  “It totally would.” Sonya clapped.

  Though they hadn’t told me yet what they were talking about, I’d put the pieces together. “Are you going to ask me, or just assume?”

  “We want to work with you,” Sonya said. “For all three of us to be a part of this company. You know as much about the books as we do now, and you’ve got the management skills from when you were contracting, and there’s no one I trust more than you and Jeremy.”

  Despite knowing the request was coming, the words and the reality hit me hard. A business partnership. With the people I loved.

  It was a terrifying proposition.

  “If you don’t want to, or if you want to structure things differently, I do understand.” Jeremy’s tone was even.

  The furrow of Sonya’s brow wasn’t so neutral.

  But I really was ready to move on. “I’m in. Let’s do it. Three way partnership. Production company. Yes.”

  “Yay.” Sonya threw her arms around my neck. “I mean, if you’d said no I would’ve understood, but this is going to be so amazing. Yay.”

  It really would be amazing, and I was looking forward to every moment of the rest of my life with these two incredible, brilliant, sexy people.

  Jeremy

  The noise level in the theater lobby was as epic as the event we were here for. Almost everyone from work was here, and so were Sonya’s and my friends and family. The first three episodes of our TV show were dropping tonight at midnight.

  Could we all be watching from our own homes? Sure. But this was a monumental moment and it promised to be even better if we watched surrounded by everyone we cared about.

  Besides, this theater had been the first place to display Quentin’s artwork—his sculpture was the main draw in the lobby—and that just added to how amazing tonight would be.

  A sharp whistle cut through the room, and everyone stopped talking.

  “Showtime in ten minutes.” Dustin’s voice carried.

  Sonya squeezed my hand tighter, and with Quentin on her other side, I assumed she was doing the same to him. The last year had been a whirlwind of insanity as the three of us pulled this together. When Sonya and I weren’t working on the game, we were doing whatever Quentin needed from us to make sure production stayed on schedule. Or our benefactor in name only. Or the streaming network that had signed us after seeing a pilot.

  We’d seen the final, but this was different. Tonight was watched it with the world.

  “Succeed or fail, this was worth it,” Sonya said as we headed into the theater to find our seats.

  “This won’t fail.” Quentin’s self-assurance would have to stand for all three of us.

  I believed in the project, so very much, but there was still that sliver of terror that no one else would recognize how great it was.

  As everyone finished settling, the lights dimmed in the theater and the opening credits rolled on screen.

  For the next three hours, we laughed and groaned and gasped and cheered, and everyone in the room did the same at all the right spots. By the time the show was over, I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face and as the house lights came up, it was clear Sonya was the same.

  “We did it.” Her joy was almost tangible.

  I pressed my lips to hers. “You did it. We just helped.”

  “No.” Sonya shook her head “This took all three of us.”

  It took us more than an hour to get back to the lobby, with every person in attendance stopping us, stopping Sonya, to say how much they loved the show.

  Yes, I’d done a lot of the screenplay writing, and Quentin kept the project on track, but this was Sonya’s story. A brilliant creation from her mind. And it shone on screen.

  But really, the most important thing to me aside from seeing Sonya get the recognition she deserved was that the three of us had come this far together—that I knew they were mine and I was here for them. That our lives were so perfectly intertwined and I didn’t have to question if it was love or just friendship, because it was both.

  And that regardless of what came next, our entire future spanned out ahead of us.

  Sonya

  I should be working. We had a story deadline coming up for the game, and the rest of my writers—except Jeremy—were working.

  Technically I didn’t need the job at AcesPlayed. My books earned enough to do more than pay the bills, and a huge studio had picked up and was currently creating the second season of the associated TV series.

  But I loved my work. That, and I was an investor in the company now, so it was in my best interest to ensure the game continued to offer the stories players expected from us.

  Instead of working, Jeremy and I were recreating a moment from a little over two years ago. Back then, we’d been refreshing the bestseller site, to see if I’d made my first ever bestseller list. Today, we were refreshing our email and staring at our phones, waiting to see if we’d gotten any Emmy nominations.

  It seemed unlikely, but Quentin had worked with Dustin to make sure our series had the best possible chance.

  And now we were at the mercy of the people who made the decisions.

  Jeremy sat on the edge of my desk, supposedly distracting me but drumming his fingers as quickly as I tapped mine on the mouse.

  It had only been a few minutes, there was no reason to hit Refresh again.

  I did it anyway.

  Emmy Nominees stared back at me from the screen, and it took my brain a moment to catch up with what the words meant. My phone buzzed and I ignored it.

  “Are you going to look, or should I?” Jeremy’s question jumpstarted my thoughts again.

  “I can’t.” My stomach was a ball of knots.

  He took the keyboard from me, hit the hotkeys to search, and typed in Russel. I almost stopped him—that was guaranteed to return Epithet nominations as well.

  1 of 1 showed in the search box, and a name was highlighted in the middle of the screen.

  I covered my face with my hands and peeked through my fingers.

  “We did it.” Jeremy’s shout made my heart leap. “Holy fuck, we did it.”

  Sure enough, there were our names, nominated for Outstanding Writing for… the rest of it all blurred together in a wash of giddiness and disbelief.

  Luna’s shout echoed through the building, and a moment later she had joined us, along with several other people from the office. Jeremy and I found ourselves caught up in a wave of handshakes and hugs.

  This was all so surreal. How was I not prepared for this after all this time?

  Because I wasn’t, and honestly, I never wanted to lose this joy of amazing achievements like this. I accepted all of the congratulations, trying to memorize every one of them and sear this amazing feeling into my soul.

  Jeremy and I took the rest of the afternoon off—it wasn’t as if we were going to get any work done anyway, and we wanted to celebrate with Quentin.

  He spent the afternoon plucking quotes from various entertainment websites about how fantastic our show was. How groundbreaking. Quentin also threw in the occasional headline about how this was Epithet’s longest run without a nomination, people were starting to question Mary Russel’s management of the company.

  But mostly he focused on our show. The accolades. The positive press.

  It was all great to hear, but none of it meant as much as the fact that I was celebrating this moment with Jeremy and Quentin. My happily ever afters. The men who supported and adored me, who I loved more than anything.

  Without them, this wouldn’t mean nearly as much, but with them, nothing was impossible.

  Thank you for reading as Sonya, Jeremy, and Quentin tell their story.

  There’s more from the AcesPlayed gang in ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. When Megan finds her fiancé balls-deep in her wedding planner, she calls off the wedding and swears off love. She’s done waiting for the right guy to make her happy—she’s going to discover herself in all of the things she’s always wanted to do but was too terrified to try. Nigel is happy to help her out, and when they run into a friend of Quentin’s, things really get interesting.

  Click now to grab your copy of ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

  For more scorching office romance, check out THEIR NERD. Antonio is in love with his best friend and business partner, Justin. Justin is in lust with the new contractor, Emily. And Emily is fantasizing about both men at the same time. But giving into desire could cost them their jobs, their friendships, and everything.

  Start reading THEIR NERD today.

  For some Brooke’s story, including some single parent sweetness, an older woman and two younger men, check out THE AGREEMENT. Brooke’s trying to get back into dating after more than a decade of being single. Deacon is happy to help show her the ropes… and a few other kinky tips and tricks. But when they both start to fall for his best friend, things get messy.

  Grab your copy of THE AGREEMENT now

 

 

  Allyson Lindt, Matchmaking in Progress

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends