Chapter Two
Rowen
There’s a particular kind of chaos that follows when you finally stop pretending—and it’s not the destructive kind. It’s the kind that settles into place like a long-stuck door finally swinging open.
“Okay, but did you see her face?” Ronan cackles, throwing himself backward onto my bed with enough drama to shake the mattress.
His laughter is wild and bright—the kind that only shows up when he’s buzzing on pure adrenaline.
“She looked like someone told her the world was ending and puppies had just been outlawed.”
Emerson smirks from where he’s leaning against my desk, one shoulder propped in a relaxed half-shrug. “She panicked,” he says, voice smooth but undeniably amused. “Classic Berk. Fight or flight. And she went full-blown flight mode. Olympic level. Pretty sure she set a new world record.”
His laugh—low, deep, rare—escapes before he can reel it back, and the sound loosens something knotted inside my chest. He hasn’t laughed like that in a long time. Not since his life veered hard into territory none of us fully understand.
We all know the reason. His father.
Ours is bad enough. Lately he’s been obsessed with “preparing us” to step up and start training for the family business, whatever that even means.
But Emerson? His father started molding him years ago—quietly, intensely, under a shadow that never seems to lift.
A couple of weeks ago, when we were all complaining about it, he casually mentioned he’d already been training.
For years. But he wasn’t allowed to talk about it.
“They’ll know if I do,” he’d said. No explanation. Nothing more.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
“Honestly,” I say, sinking into the armchair by the window and running my fingers through my hair, “I don’t blame her.”
Silence settles over us—not heavy, not awkward. Just still. Warm. With three shared smiles, all of us were a little shocked, a little relieved, and a whole lot holy-hell-did-that-seriously-just-happen?
The air hums with a new kind of energy—part disbelief, part exhilaration, part quiet freedom.
It feels like someone cracked open a window in a room we hadn’t realized was suffocating us.
Like we’ve been holding our breath for months—maybe years—and suddenly remembered what it feels like to exhale.
Berk knows now.
It’s out there. Finally.
No more hiding. No more weird silences or pretending our hearts didn’t stretch wider than the lake we practically grew up on. No more pretending we weren’t already bound together by something far deeper than friendship.
For the first time in what feels like forever, we’re not tiptoeing around the truth or tripping over each other trying to bury it. We’re not competing. We’re not denying what has been sitting in front of us this entire time, waiting for us to finally acknowledge it.
“We’re gonna have to ease into it,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck as reality settles beneath the adrenaline. “Let her get used to the idea of... us. All of us.”
Ronan pushes himself upright, the playful grin fading into something sincere—a version of him that shows up only when it matters. “She’s been hiding it too. You could see it all over her face. She just didn’t know how to put it into words.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Emerson murmurs, voice rough but grounded. “We already know. We’ve known for a long time.”
He’s right. We have known. Even if we never spoke it aloud, even if we joked our way around it or chalked it up to coincidence, the signs were everywhere.
The way her eyes lingered on us a heartbeat longer than necessary.
The way her hand brushed ours like something she couldn’t help.
Her laugh softened when she looked at Ronan.
Her breath caught whenever Emerson leaned in too close.
And when she rested her head on my shoulder, it felt like she was settling somewhere safe.
And every single moment—every glance, every touch—wasn’t directed at just one of us.
It was all of us.
Equally.
Steadily.
Intentionally.
I used to lie awake wondering if I was imagining it. If I were seeing things I wanted instead of what was real. If her fingers grazing mine meant something different from when they grazed Ronan’s or Emerson’s.
Turns out I wasn’t delusional.
Just unwilling to see what was right there.
Because she looked at each of us like that. And impossibly, it never felt wrong. It felt like things were finally aligning.
One night—months back—we got drunk. Stupid drunk. Courtesy of Ronan’s infamous “margarita mix,” which tasted like tequila, lime juice, and a lifetime of poor decisions.
We were crowded around the backyard fire pit—a night where the world felt stripped down and honest.
Emerson leaned back in his chair, eyes half-lidded, words slurred but clear enough to hit their mark. “So... what are we gonna do about her?”
Ronan let out a dramatic groan and rolled into the grass like the question itself wounded him. “We’re all in love with her, aren’t we?”
None of us spoke at first. We didn’t have to. The silence filled in the blanks.
Then I said it—the thought that had been circling my mind for months like a predator biding its time. “She shouldn’t have to choose. I don’t want to fight over her.”
Emerson nodded, slow and deliberate, weighing the truth in the air. “I don’t want that either. We’ve survived too much already. Losing each other over this? Not happening.”
Then Ronan pushed himself upright, his expression open and earnest in that way only he could pull off. “We’ve always shared everything. Why would this be any different?”
It should have felt strange. It should have been uncomfortable.
But it wasn’t.
It made a surprising, almost undeniable kind of sense.
We already loved each other like brothers—because that’s exactly what we are in every way that matters. We’ve pulled one another out of darkness, patched up wounds both physical and emotional, held each other together when everything else fell apart.
We’ve watched one another break and still rise again.
So maybe it isn’t so impossible that we fell for the same girl.
And Berk?
Berk is everything. Fierce and bright. Soft at the right moments, sharp when she needs to be. She’s sunshine wrapped in thorns, laughter wrapped in armor, and somehow, she’s never once made any of us feel like we were in competition.
She’s the piece we didn’t know we were missing.
And now we’re ready—finally ready—to offer ourselves to her. However she wants us.
“So,” Ronan says, flinging a patio furniture pillow at my head with no warning, “what’s the plan, General? Lead us into glory.”
I catch it midair and level him with a flat stare. “Step one: don’t scare her off with your over-the-top personality. Subtlety. Try it sometime.”
Emerson laughs from his seat by the fire, arms folded, one eyebrow arched. “She did run like we proposed, in front of a live audience. Mid-sunset. With matching rings and a full dance number.”
“Too soon?” Ronan asks, feigning innocence while wiggling his eyebrows.
“Way too soon,” I shoot back, though a laugh presses hard against my throat.
We all feel it—humor buzzing just under the surface, tangled with something deeper. Excitement. Nerves, sure. But the good kind—the spark-in-your-chest, stomach-flipping kind that means something real is finally happening.
The truth is, we’re ready.
Fully, completely ready.
Now we just have to show Berk she doesn’t need to run. That, whatever this becomes, whatever we become, we can make it work.
She doesn’t have to be scared.
Not of us.
Not of the way we love her.