Zoe's Blockade (Destiny's Trinities Book 5) by Tracy Cooper-Posey

you first. I can’t take that away from either of you, now you’ve got it back.”
    Cole shook his head. “That’s just like you,” he said softly. “Everyone else first, while what you want is back there in the dust.”
    “It’s called being human,” Zoe said stiffly. “It’s what decent people do. I grew up hunting alongside my father and that world, that life, teaches you to watch out for yourself, first and foremast. Survival is the priority. I walked away from that when my father died. I swore I would not go back to that world and here I am,” she said bitterly.
    “You loved your father,” Declan said.
    “Of course I did!”
    “How did he die?” Cole asked. “I mean, the real story. He didn’t die in a car accident, the way you told me, did he?”
    Zoe wiped at her cheeks. “A demon took him.”
    “Why didn’t the demon take you as well?” Declan asked.
    Zoe’s heart squeezed. “My father…he….” She put her face in her hands, blocking out the light, trying to block the memory.
    “He protected you,” Cole guessed.
    She nodded. Her throat was too tight to speak.
    “So, in fact, he didn’t look out for himself at all,” Declan said. His voice was closer. She didn’t have the courage to look. The miasmic stew of hot feelings swirling in her gut were making her feel dizzy and a little sick. “I don’t want to give up this life I worked so hard to create,” she said into her hands. “Only, if I fight for it, you and Cole will be hurt.”
    “You don’t have to give up anything,” Cole said, his voice gentle.
    That made her look. He was calm. There was even a little smile playing around the corner of his mouth. “You said it yourself, Zoe. You said you were still the same person I always thought you were, just with additions I hadn’t known were there before. That could be us, too.”
    “You and me?” she breathed.
    He nodded. “We stay the same. We stay married, only there are additions we didn’t know about before.”
    “Only you did know about Declan before!” she cried. “You loved him. I held you every time you cried. I listened to your stories. You bled over his loss, Cole. That gaping hole has never gone away.”
    Cole nodded. “We both have pasts that dog us, even now. Declan does, too. That’s what makes us human. I just don’t think we should go back there. If Diego is right, then we’re all going to be something more than human. More additions.”
    “Additions, not subtractions,” Declan added. “We include, we don’t take away.”
    Zoe wiped her cheeks again. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said flatly. “If you include me, then you’ll lose something.”
    Declan laughed.
    Even Cole smiled. “Didn’t you hear a word of what we were saying, a while ago?”
    “We seem to have been talking for an ice age,” Zoe said tiredly. “Remind me.”
    Declan answered, though. “Cole has loved you since he came back from Afghanistan the first time after he moved in here. I watched him meet you in the surgery, that day. I saw his heart drop onto the floor at your feet.”
    Cole was staring at the floor, a hard frown squeezing his brows together.
    “You…didn’t mind?” Zoe whispered to Declan. She thought her heart might explode if any more pressure was exerted.
    “How could I mind?” Declan said. “I’d been in love with you for months already.” He gave her a skewed smile. “Cole losing his heart just confirmed I wasn’t wrong about you.”
    “You didn’t say anything, either of you! You got married!”
    Cole still wasn’t looking at them. “I loved Declan more, right then. There was no way I was going to fuck that up with badly timed confessions.”
    Declan was nodding. “Then, you just sort of…fitted in. It was good. Life was good. I had Cole and you were still there. Not quite the way I wanted, but there anyway.”
    “I was so afraid that if I said anything , it would all explode and I would lose everything ,” Cole said. He lifted