Exclusive Trio (MM Romance)

“Tell me you didn’t know.”

Ryan’s voice cut through the applause.

Ethan stopped beneath the ballroom’s glittering lights, one hand still wrapped around a glass of sparkling water. Onstage, Lucas stood close to Ryan, his student council sash crooked across his suit. The gala’s photographer had just asked them to pose beside the university banner.

Lucas didn’t answer.

Ryan’s smile vanished. He shoved the microphone into Lucas’s chest hard enough to make it squeal. “You said it was over.”

“Ryan, wait—”

“You said you ended it.”

A hush spread across the ballroom. Someone lowered their phone. At the tables, students leaned toward one another, hungry for a scene.

Ethan’s fingers tightened around his glass. He knew Lucas’s face better than he knew his own: the dimple that appeared when he was teasing, the little crease between his brows when he was worried, the careful, still expression he wore when he wanted to avoid a fight.

Lucas wore that expression now.

“Can we not do this here?” he asked.

Ryan let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “You chose the stage.”

The emcee hovered at the wing, frozen between stepping in and pretending not to see. The gala decorations—gold streamers, white roses, the university crest—suddenly looked ridiculous. Ethan moved forward before he had decided to move at all.

Then Ryan grabbed Lucas’s lapel and kissed him.

It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t the kind of kiss people shared when they wanted the room to believe they were happy. Ryan kissed him like he was trying to make Lucas feel the damage he’d caused. Lucas went stiff, one hand lifting as if to push him away.

Instead, his fingers closed around Ryan’s shoulder.

For one awful second, Ethan couldn’t breathe.

Three years of swallowed words crowded his throat. He had watched Lucas date people, complain about them, break up with them, and move on. He had listened when Lucas talked about Ryan—how clever he was, how stubborn, how impossible to ignore. Ethan had nodded, laughed at the right moments, and gone home afterward with the familiar ache tucked under his ribs.

Now he watched Lucas kiss Ryan in front of the whole university.

The applause had died. A phone camera flashed.

Ryan broke away first. His eyes shone, but he blinked hard and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “That’s what you wanted, right? One more performance?”

“Ryan—”

“Don’t.” Ryan stepped back, nearly clipping the microphone stand. It wobbled. He caught it with a furious shove and turned away from the crowd.

Ethan set his glass on a passing tray. The water sloshed over the rim.

Lucas looked across the stage and found him.

Their eyes met. Lucas’s expression cracked—one brief flash of panic, then something softer and more familiar. The look he gave Ethan when he’d hurt himself skating at sixteen. When his mother forgot to pick him up after a school event. When the world disappointed him and Ethan was the person he expected to fix it.

Ethan hated that he still wanted to.

He pushed through the crowd and climbed the stage steps. The emcee tried to say something about the evening’s program, but his voice disappeared beneath the shuffle of chairs and whispers.

Ryan had already left the stage. A door swung shut behind him.

Lucas came down toward Ethan. “Hey.”

“Don’t ‘hey’ me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Lucas’s mouth opened, then shut. He glanced toward the door Ryan had gone through. “For making this public.”

Ethan gave a short laugh. “That’s what you’re sorry for?”

Lucas flinched. Someone near the front whispered Ethan’s name. Heat crawled up the back of his neck. He wanted to leave, but his feet stayed planted.

“Did you end it?” Ethan asked.

Lucas looked at him. “It’s complicated.”

“That means no.”

“It was already falling apart.”

“Then you should’ve said that to him before he had to find out here.”

“I know.” Lucas dragged a hand through his hair, undoing the careful sweep he’d spent twenty minutes perfecting. “I know, okay?”

Ethan could see the guilt in his face. He could also see the familiar pull: Lucas reaching for him without quite asking, confident Ethan would make room.

“I can’t do this right now,” Ethan said.

He turned toward the stairs.

Lucas caught his wrist.

Ethan looked down at Lucas’s hand. “Let go.”

Lucas released him at once, but his fingers hovered between them. “Please. Just give me a second.”

“You’ve had three years of my seconds.”

The words escaped before Ethan could stop them.

Lucas stared at him. For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The music remained silent. All around them, the gala waited for someone to tell it what to do next.

“What does that mean?” Lucas asked.

“It means I’m not your emergency exit.”

“I never said you were.”

“You don’t have to say it.”

Lucas’s face tightened. Anger flared there—not clean anger, but the defensive kind that arrived when someone recognized the truth. “You think I use you?”

“I think you come to me whenever you need someone to make you feel better.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

Lucas stepped closer. His voice dropped. “Ethan, I’ve always been there for you.”

The unfairness of that almost made Ethan smile. Lucas had been there for him, too. He had carried Ethan’s books when his arm was in a sling. He had waited outside a hospital room when Ethan’s sister had needed surgery. Their friendship was real. That was what made it hurt.

“You’re my best friend,” Ethan said. “That’s not the same as being allowed to take whatever you need from me.”

Lucas swallowed. His eyes searched Ethan’s face as if the answer were written there. “I didn’t know you felt like that.”

“You never asked.”

“I’m asking now.”

A laugh pushed out of Ethan, broken at the edges. “Now?”

Lucas’s hand dropped between them. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that when you don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”

“I know what I did to Ryan.” Lucas’s voice roughened. “And I know I dragged you into it.”

“You didn’t drag me. I walked up here.”

“Because you always come when I need you.”

Ethan’s chest tightened. “That’s the problem.”

Lucas looked down. For a moment, he seemed younger than twenty-one, stripped of the effortless confidence he wore around campus. Then he stepped forward and seized Ethan’s hand.

Ethan’s body went still.

Lucas’s fingers were warm around his. His grip wasn’t forceful, but it was desperate. A spark of alarm went through Ethan; he tried to pull away, then stopped when Lucas leaned close enough that only he could hear.

“I chose you first,” Lucas whispered.

The ballroom noise blurred. Ethan stared at him, unable to make the words fit around the years between them.

“What are you talking about?” he breathed.

Lucas squeezed his hand once. “I mean—”

A sharp intake of breath came from behind them.

Ethan turned.

Ryan stood at the edge of the stage, one hand braced against the curtain, his face drained of color. His gaze dropped to their joined hands.

Then he looked at Ethan.

Ryan had turned from the stage and caught them holding hands.

Ryan’s gaze stayed fixed on their joined hands.

Lucas let go.

Too late.

“Explain,” Ryan said.

The word cracked across the stage. Behind him, the curtain shifted as the emcee tried to coax the gala back to life. A few students still watched from their tables, pretending they weren’t listening.

Lucas stepped between Ryan and Ethan. “It’s not what you think.”

Ryan’s laugh was small and sharp. “That’s the best you’ve got?”

“I was talking to him.”

“With your hand wrapped around his?”

Lucas glanced at Ethan, as if expecting him to help. Ethan’s palm tingled where Lucas had held it. He curled his fingers into a fist.

“Ryan,” Lucas said, “I’m trying to explain.”

“Then explain.” Ryan’s jaw worked. His eyes were bright, but he refused to blink. “What did you mean when you said you chose him first?”

Lucas’s face tightened. “I didn’t mean—”

“You said it.”

“I was upset.”

“So you said the first honest thing