“Tris?” Josiah asked again, and he remembered he’d asked them a question.

“About the thing with your hair.” When Tristan and Josiah first started sleeping together, he would flinch if Tristan touched his hair. He didn’t anymore, but it wasn’t as though Tristan did it much anyway. It was their thing, and they deserved that. They all had bits and pieces that belonged to different combinations of two of them, and then those pieces that were a part of their whole—the three of them.

“It drove me fuckin’ nuts when we first met. Always in his face.” Mateo turned toward Josiah, history and memories being shared between them.

One would think jealousy would take root in him, but it didn’t. Their bond...their connection is what started all of this. It’s what made Tristan feel, even if he couldn’t always show it the way he should, because as much as he loved them, as much as he knew they loved him, the thought of needing someone the way he did them still made his finger seek the pulse in his wrist. As weak as it made him feel, needing still scared him to death. One night couldn’t change that.

“It was a way for me to hide, I think.” Josiah pulled a dish from the oven. “I’m not sure I planned it that way, but it was. Here,” Josiah set the pan on the middle of their set table, then grabbed the rice and moved it over as well before joining Mateo and Tristan.

“One of the first times we really spoke, it started because of my hair. Mateo hadn’t been with us long.” Josiah dished food onto a plate and handed it to Tristan. “We were sitting in our room, twin beds separated by a desk. I was doing my homework and hoping he would talk to me, scared he would at the same time. What would a guy like him have to say to someone like me? Teo was like, strength in human form to me. I was in awe of him.”

Tristan watched Josiah hand Mateo his plate next.

“I wasn’t shit,” Mateo said, and Josiah rolled his eyes.

“And then?” Tristan prompted, needing to hear more of their story. Needing to know more of where they came from.

Josiah chuckled. “And then he looked at me like there was absolutely no hope for me and said, ‘Doesn’t that bother you? The way your hair’s always gettin’ in your eyes?’ And all I could think was that he’d noticed me... This guy who people were afraid of, yet who had protected me, noticed me...I was shocked he would even pay attention to something like that.”

Tristan’s eyes found Mateo. He was bent toward the table, as though leaning over to take a bite of his chicken but then got caught in Josiah instead. His stare was dark—dark eyes, and a dark, hungry look.

“I always noticed you. Even when I didn’t want to. I couldn’t believe someone like you’d give a shit.”

Jesus, they were beautiful. They inspired Tristan to want more for himself. To want them.

“What did you tell him?” Tristan asked Josiah.

There was another chuckle. “Shit...I think I asked him about girls.”

Tristan found himself laughing, not having expected that one. Josiah had told him before that he’d never so much as kissed a girl. He’d always known he was gay, and the only person he’d been interested in was Mateo.

“Then he fuckin’ tells me he’s not into girls. I’m a seventeen-year-old gangbanger, and he just spits that shit out like it wasn’t a big deal. Dios, I coulda' killed him. In my world, shit like that coulda' gotten him hurt.”

That reaction right there was the one that made him love Mateo. With Josiah, it was obvious why either of them would love him. He was the best of them all. Good, honest, in a way that was rare in the world. With Mateo, it was his need to protect, the loyalty and sense of honor that made him defend someone he loved, regardless of what that defense entailed. It wasn’t something Tristan ever saw himself respecting in a lot of ways, but it was based from goodness. He was completely selfless where Josiah was concerned, even at that young of an age. Mateo would be where Tristan was concerned as well, though he didn’t deserve it the way Josiah did.

“I—”

“He wouldn’t have said it to anyone other than you.” Tristan cut Josiah off. “He’d never said it to anyone before, right, Josiah?”

His lover nodded his head.

“He knew he could trust you. You might not have known it, but you’d already proven yourself to him when you protected him at school.” Josiah had told Tristan about the guys who bullied him the first day of school, and how Mateo had been there. Mateo had always done everything to be there for Josiah, even going as far as letting him go to keep him safe from his world.