The nurse discharged Jamie the next afternoon with instructions to rest, hydrate, and avoid stressful situations.

He returned home with five men who had apparently interpreted the final instruction as a personal challenge.

Noah argued that Jamie should sleep on the ground floor to avoid stairs. Mason insisted the quietest room was his. Caleb recommended Jamie’s own bed. Lucas had already installed a camera outside Jamie’s door. Ethan announced that nobody would enter that room without permission.

“I live with a committee,” Jamie said.

“A competent committee,” Ethan replied.

“Debatable.”

Jamie sat on the living-room couch. His ankle hurt from the fall, and Caleb had ordered him not to put weight on it for the evening.

Noah knelt to examine the wrap.

“Caleb already checked it.”

“Caleb has no appreciation for comfort.” Noah slid one arm behind Jamie’s knees and the other around his back. “May I?”

Jamie understood a second too late. “May you what—”

Noah lifted him.

Jamie caught Noah’s shoulders. “Put me down.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

Noah’s grin invited a fight, but his arms remained steady. Jamie became intensely aware of Noah’s chest, the warmth of his skin, and the ease with which he held Jamie’s weight.

“You enjoy this too much.”

“I’ve wanted to carry you upstairs since the day you moved in.”

The room went silent.

Noah’s smile faded. “There. That’s mine.”

“Your what?”

“Confession. Ethan doesn’t get to be brave first and claim the prize.”

Jamie stiffened. Noah immediately lowered him onto the couch.

“Bad wording,” Noah said. “You’re not a prize.”

Ethan leaned against the doorway. “For once, we agree.”

“Are all of you doing this?” Jamie asked.

Mason entered with a tray. “Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“We made an agreement not to overwhelm you.”

Jamie looked around. “Your agreement needs work.”

Mason placed soup on the table. He sat beside Jamie and unfolded a napkin over Jamie’s lap with domestic intimacy that somehow felt more dangerous than Noah’s arms.

“My turn, then,” Mason said.

“You don’t have to—”

“I fell in love with you when you ate the worst meal I ever cooked and told everyone it was excellent because I had just lost my first restaurant job.”

Jamie remembered burned pasta and Mason crying silently in the pantry afterward.

“You knew?” Mason asked.

“Of course I knew. It tasted like salted tires.”

Mason laughed. His thumb brushed a drop of broth from the corner of Jamie’s mouth, then paused.

“May I?”

Jamie knew what he meant.

The other four men watched.

That should have made the answer impossible. Instead, it made honesty unavoidable.

“Yes.”

Mason kissed the same corner of Jamie’s mouth his thumb had touched. Soft. Brief. Warm enough to leave Jamie leaning after him when he withdrew.

Noah muttered something impolite.

“Kitchen,” Ethan ordered.

“You are not the relationship police.”

“There is no relationship,” Jamie said.

Five expressions told him that statement had injured everyone differently.

Caleb approached after dinner. He replaced the bandage on Jamie’s palm with meticulous care.

“My confession is less romantic,” Caleb said.

“Please tell me you diagnosed love through a blood test.”

“I noticed your pulse changed whenever I entered a room.”

Jamie stared at him.

Caleb’s eyes remained on the bandage. “Then I realized mine did the same.”

His fingers circled Jamie’s wrist, measuring the beat.

“It’s happening now,” he said.

“Medical invasion of privacy.”

“You consented to the examination.”

“Not the flirting.”

Caleb finally smiled. “May I flirt with you?”

Jamie laughed despite himself. “You’re terrible at it.”

“That wasn’t a no.”

Lucas waited until midnight.

Jamie found him in the security room, blue monitor light cutting across his face. Lucas had recovered three additional seconds of hotel footage.

On-screen, Jamie stood between Noah and Mason, laughing as Ethan watched from the bar. Caleb said something that made everyone protest. Lucas himself remained beyond the camera’s edge.

“You always stand outside the group,” Jamie said.

“It’s easier to protect people from there.”

“Or avoid them.”

Lucas turned in his chair.

Jamie stepped between his knees. The position was bolder than he felt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because wanting you does not entitle me to you.”

Jamie’s breath caught.

Lucas lifted one hand. His fingers hovered beside Jamie’s wrist.

“May I?”

Jamie placed his wrist in Lucas’s hand.

Lucas closed his fingers carefully, thumb resting over Jamie’s pulse.

“I love that you knock twice even when my door is open,” Lucas said. “I love that you pretend not to understand my work, then remember every detail. I love that you sit beside me when silence is all I can offer.”

Jamie’s throat tightened.

Lucas drew him half a step closer. “And I have imagined this hand around your wrist far too often.”

The words were dark. The grip was gentle.

Jamie understood the difference.

“Four confessions,” he whispered.

“Five. Ethan confessed at the hospital.”

“Ethan said he liked me.”

“Ethan considers love a hostile acquisition.”

Jamie laughed.

Lucas’s monitor chimed.

A recovered video file appeared on-screen, labeled HALCYON_PRIVATE_0017.

Lucas’s grip loosened.

“What is that?” Jamie asked.

“The camera inside the private lounge.”

“It shows before I blacked out?”

“Yes.”

“Then play it.”

Lucas did not move.

“Jamie, the video shows all five kisses.”

“Good. I want to see what I chose.”

Lucas looked toward the file.

“It also shows the man who put something in your drink.”

Jamie did not immediately press play.

Instead, he made them sit in a line across the living room, absurdly handsome and visibly miserable, while he stood in front of them with a notebook.

“New rule. A confession is not a claim. Nobody gets rewarded because he announced feelings during a crisis.”

“Reasonable,” Caleb said.

“Painful, but reasonable,” Noah added.

Jamie pointed his pen at Ethan. “No secret legal maneuvers.”

At Mason: “No feeding me instead of answering questions.”

At Noah: “No turning jealousy into jokes.”

At Caleb: “No treating my decisions like symptoms.”

Finally, at Lucas: “No deciding what I can handle.”

Lucas held his gaze. “Agreed.”

The others echoed him.

Jamie sat opposite them. “Now tell me why you waited until today.”

The answers were different. Ethan feared destroying the household. Mason believed Jamie wanted friendship only. Noah had hidden sincerity behind flirting so long he no longer knew how to stop. Caleb worried the age difference—small but real—made his steadiness feel like pressure. Lucas had recognized the others’ feelings and refused to turn Jamie into a prize.

“So everybody chose silence,” Jamie said.

“Cowardice,” Mason corrected.

“Discretion,” Ethan argued.

“Idiocy,” Caleb said.

Noah raised a hand. “I vote for sexually charged group incompetence.”

Jamie laughed despite himself. Then Lucas opened the recovered video.

The image showed Jamie at the bar, smiling, steady on his feet. Adrian approached from behind while all five roommates were distracted by a spilled tray.

His hand moved over Jamie’s glass.

The room stopped breathing.

Jamie forced the video forward frame by frame. Adrian wiped the rim of the glass, then guided it toward him with a smile the camera could not hear. Jamie remembered that smile now—not as an image, but as a cold sensation along his spine.

“Stop,” Mason said softly. “You don’t have to watch more tonight.”

Jamie considered it. The choice mattered more than endurance.

“Five-minute break,” he decided. “Then I continue.”

Nobody praised him for being brave. Caleb brought water. Noah opened a window. Ethan wrote down the time stamp. Lucas saved three redundant copies while Mason sat nearby without filling the silence.

After five minutes, Jamie pressed play himself.

The screen showed Adrian steering him toward the elevators. Then five figures converged from different directions, blocking Adrian’s path.

Whatever else the missing night contained, that instant was clear: all five had chosen Jamie before any of them knew whether he would ever choose them.