A Kiss For Three

chapter 9

Last night still lingered on my skin like perfume. The rooftop air had been cool, almost tender, brushing against us as the city pulsed below—an ocean of light, movement, and murmured noise.

We had laughed. God, we had laughed too easily. Then the silence came—soft, electric, suspended between breaths—before Nico leaned in first.

His kiss had been unhurried, exploratory, as if he were testing whether reality would hold. Then he had kissed Adrian, slow and sure, like the act was older than either of them. When Adrian’s mouth met mine, the city disappeared entirely. For the first time in years, I wasn’t observing or testing. I was just… feeling.

I remembered my hands trembling after—not from fear but from recognition—of warmth, of belonging, of something that should have frightened me but didn’t.

Daylight felt wrong.

The rehearsal studio hummed with low chatter, strings tuning, bow hair scratching. I blinked and realized I had been staring at my reflection in the violin’s glossy surface, seeing nothing at all.

“Iris?” Mr. Levin’s voice snapped me out of it.

I looked up. My violin teacher’s face studied me from across the room. He tilted his head, brown locks falling against his forehead. “You with me, or were you somewhere far more interesting?”

“I’m here,” I said quickly, tightening my grip on the bow.

He didn’t look convinced. “Then prove it. From the top.”

I nodded, lifted the violin, and began to play. The melody wavered. My fingers stumbled on notes I had known since I was sixteen. The sound that emerged wasn’t terrible—but it wasn’t me either.

Mr. Levin stopped me with a gentle wave of his hand. “What’s messing with your head today?”

I let out a breath. “Honestly? I’d like to know that too.”

He chuckled softly and left it there. I was grateful for that. Some truths weren’t meant for polite daylight conversation.

The rest of the week drifted by like a dream.

The rooftop became our meeting place again and again. Each time we gathered, the world outside blurred. There was always takeout—sometimes sushi, sometimes noodles—and cheap or expensive wine, depending on who brought it. The three of us built forts of blankets beneath café lights, stories spilling between us like shared secrets.

“No regret in the morning,” I reminded them once.

“No lies at night,” Adrian echoed, raising a glass.

“Play is mandatory,” Nico added, sketching invisible stars on the roof tiles.

And somehow, we lived by those rules.

We wandered through markets and side streets, me in sunglasses and a cap, hiding in plain sight while they laughed beside me. I watched Adrian argue with a vendor over overpriced honey jars; Nico stopped to photograph street murals, muttering that “light always paints better than people do.”

There were evenings at gallery openings, where I slipped through crowds in borrowed gowns, the men on either side of me pretending not to know who I was. Sometimes I caught our reflections in mirrored walls—three people who shouldn’t have fit together, yet somehow did.

Once, they took me to an amusement park.

It rained halfway through, the kind of summer drizzle that made everything shimmer. Adrian won me a stuffed toy I didn’t need, and Nico insisted on taking a photo of the three of us—drenched, ridiculous, alive. We rode the carousel until my sides hurt from laughing.

It was absurd. And beautiful.

I started to feel real again. That was what scared me most.

For years, my life had been built on precision and performance—disguises, rehearsed empathy, falsified truths. But there, between two men who were supposed to be targets, I started to forget the difference between honesty and survival.

Adrian listened when I talked. His attention was an anchor—steady, grounding, unwavering. He didn’t need to control the conversation; he just made space for it.

Nico, on the other hand, filled silence with color. His words were slow, thoughtful, sometimes strange, always sincere. He looked at the world like it was an unfinished painting and at me like I was part of its missing brushstrokes.

And I hated that I loved it. Because I knew it couldn’t last. Serena and Camille’s names still sat at the top of my messages like weights waiting to drop. I owed them results, not feelings. Proof, not happiness.

But every time I saw Adrian’s half-smile or heard Nico’s quiet laugh, my walls lowered a little further.

I couldn’t tell whether I was falling or unraveling.

***

That night, I stayed late in my office. The city outside hummed in gold and blue, skyscrapers blinking like they were winking at me in judgment. My phone lay face down on the table, silent and still.

I tried to focus—rereading reports, highlighting irrelevant details just to feel productive—but the words blurred. My mind kept circling back to the rooftop, to their laughter, to the softness of the evening air. I felt the ghost of Adrian’s hand on my shoulder, the way Nico’s eyes softened when I laughed too hard.

It was dangerous, how easy it was to remember.

Eventually, I gave up on pretending to work and leaned back in my chair. The window reflected me: tired, messy, human. A woman who no longer fit neatly inside her own armor.

Then my phone buzzed.

The vibration cut through the quiet like a warning shot.

I stared at it for a moment before flipping it over. The screen glowed with a notification from an unknown number. No name, no preview. Just that faceless gray circle that made my stomach knot.

My thumb hesitated. Then, slowly, I opened it. The message loaded—and my breath stopped.

Photographs filled the screen.

The first showed the rooftop—me sitting between Adrian and Nico, mid-laughter, sushi boxes stacked around us like a fortress. The next captured us walking through a crowded market, my hand brushing Nico’s sleeve as Adrian looked over his shoulder, smiling. Another—at the amusement park, my face lit with laughter, both men flanking me under the glittering lights.

Every image was taken from a distance. Framed too carefully to be accidental.

Someone had been watching us.

My pulse hammered so hard I could feel it in my throat. I swiped through the photos again, disbelief tightening into dread. Those had been moments that felt private. Safe. Untouchable.

They weren’t.

The last image froze me entirely. It was grainy, shot through glass, but I recognized it instantly: the rooftop again. Three silhouettes close enough to blur into one shape.

Whoever took it had known exactly where to look.

My mouth went dry.

The warmth of the past week drained out of me, replaced by the cold, metallic taste of fear. Every laugh, every secret, every soft, careless moment—they all felt tainted now.

I stared at the screen, my heartbeat stumbling. The phone vibrated again, another message arriving, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it.

All I could do was watch those photos and feel the illusion of safety shatter.

For the first time in weeks, I remembered who I was.