Chapter 12 #2
I rolled onto my side with a grunt, shifting until the pressure eased enough to breathe. My shoulder sank into the cushion I’d worn into a permanent groove. My eyes locked on the dark wall across the room. The words came quietly, certain as a verdict.
Letting her move in was a terrible idea.
Letting her see me like this.
Letting her see me at all.
Somewhere upstairs the house gave a tiny settling creak, like it was laughing at me, and I lay there in the quiet with my jaw clenched and my heart still racing—waiting for a door that didn’t open.
The next few days Clara and I barely made eye contact.
My house was filled with awkward hellos and noncommittal grunts, like we were speaking a language made entirely of avoidance.
The neon House Rules she’d slapped on my fridge stayed there like a hostage note.
I told myself I was leaving it up out of spite—because taking it down would mean she’d gotten under my skin.
Well, two can play that game.
I pulled a pen from the drawer and scrawled at the bottom:
Rule #6: Knock like you mean it.
I stared at the paper a second longer, then added:
Rule #7: No hostile workplace signage.
I scoffed like the whole thing was stupid, like I didn’t feel dangerously close to smiling. Then I grabbed my keys. I needed to get the hell out of there, and a night with the guys was the perfect excuse.
Brody’s kitchen smelled like beer, fried food, and whatever candle he’d convinced himself to buy to make the place feel less like a bachelor pad. It didn’t work. Not with the empty bottles lined up on the counter and the chip bags crinkling every time someone reached across the table.
The Horsemen were all here—crowded around Brody’s kitchen table like we were planning a heist instead of rolling dice and pretending we were fearless men with magical weapons and intact knees.
Austin sat at the head of the table, elbows planted, a screen propped up like a shield so no one could cheat and read his plans. His eyes shone with the enthusiasm of a man living his best life. He had maps. He had miniature figurines. He had a whole damn binder of notes.
Hayes sat across from me, but I could barely look him in the eyes—not after I’d pictured his little sister on her knees for me. Brody flicked a chip crumb off his character sheet. Cal was grinning like he’d actually gotten into this stupid game.
Me? I was there because, for a few hours, the only thing I had to manage was a set of dice.
It helped. More than I wanted to admit.
“All right,” Austin said, dropping his voice into that dramatic storyteller cadence he’d perfected.
“You enter the village at dusk. Smoke curls from chimneys. Lanterns glow along a muddy road. The townspeople are . . . nervous.” He leaned forward, eyes glittering over the top of his screen.
“Because something is hunting in the woods.”
Brody snorted. “Something is always hunting in the woods.”
Austin ignored him. “You hear a scream. A shape darts between the trees—too fast, too low to the ground.” He tapped the map with a pencil. “Wes, you’re the closest. What do you do?”
My fingers closed around my d20 dice. The tiny plastic edges bit into my skin. “Fine,” I said flatly. “I go after it.”
Hayes’s brows lifted. “You’re going alone?”
“Warrior,” I reminded him, pointing at my chest. “Not babysitter.”
Brody laughed and clinked his bottle against mine. “That’s my guy.”
Austin held up a hand. “Roll initiative.”
The dice clattered across the table, bouncing off character sheets and empty beer caps. I watched the numbers tumble like it mattered.
It shouldn’t have, but it did anyway.
“Okay,” Austin said, scanning his notes. “The creature lunges from the underbrush. It’s got a jaw like a bear trap and eyes like—”
“A Darling woman,” Brody supplied, clearly needling Hayes.
Cal choked on his beer. Hayes shot Brody a look that could’ve cut steel. I didn’t smile. I didn’t do anything except reach for my longsword figurine and push it forward on the map without laughing.
“Your warrior takes the hit,” Austin continued, unfazed. He pointed at me with his pencil. “The claws rake your thigh—deep. Your leg screams, but you push off anyway, launching yourself forward.”
The words landed like a fist to the ribs.
My jaw tightened. The kitchen blurred around the edges, and all I could feel was the phantom flare of pain, hot and electrical, like my body had heard Austin and decided to join the game.
I grunted, the sound low and involuntary.
Austin blinked. “Too soon?” he asked, suddenly uncertain.
“No.” The word came out sharp, clipped. I forced my mouth into something that almost passed for a smirk. “He’s fine. He’s a warrior.”
Brody waggled his brows. “Big tough guy.”
I rolled the dice again, harder than necessary. It bounced and hit my beer bottle with a dull thunk.
“Twenty,” I said when it landed, not bothering to hide the satisfaction.
Austin’s face lit up like he’d just been handed Christmas. “Critical hit! Describe it.”
“Uh . . .” I stared at the map, at the little creature mini. I didn’t want to describe it. I didn’t want to think about bodies and damage and pushing through pain.
But the table was waiting, so I did it anyway.
“My warrior doesn’t hesitate,” I said, keeping my voice even. “He takes the hit and keeps moving. Drives the blade straight through the thing before it can get away.”
Austin nodded solemnly, like this was sacred. “The creature collapses. The village is safe. For now.”
For a few minutes after that, it worked—the game. The stupid quest. The dice. The trash talk between friends who had known me before and after and didn’t ask me to explain myself.
It gave me a place to put my focus that wasn’t my body.
For a few hours, I could be a warrior again.
Even if it was only on paper.
We’d been at it long enough that the kitchen had shifted into that comfortable, lived-in chaos—empty bottles, scattered dice, chip dust ground into the grain of Brody’s table.
Austin had paused to flip through his notes with the intensity of a man decoding ancient scripture while Cal stood to refresh his drink.
The lull should’ve been a relief. A breath between battles.
Instead, it turned into a target.
Cal dropped back into his chair and looked at me like he’d been holding the question in his mouth for twenty minutes. “So,” he said casually, like he wasn’t poking a bruise, “how’s it going with your new roommate?”
My stomach tightened.
Tiny sleep shorts.
Bare legs.
The shape of her in my kitchen like she belonged there.
The way my body had reacted to her like it hadn’t gotten the memo that I was supposed to be dead inside.
I clenched my jaw and forced the thoughts back into the same locked room I shoved everything else into.
“Fine,” I said, which was a lie by omission. Then I added, sharper, because that was easier: “She barged into my life the same way she barged into my house.”
Hayes’s gaze flicked up fast, but I ignored it.
“It’s temporary,” I continued, like saying it enough times might make it true. “She’s . . . loud. And bossy. And thinks it’s funny to post house rules on my fridge.”
Brody leaned back in his chair, the legs creaking, and snorted. “That’s the Darling effect right there,” he said. “Those women are irresistible. They just . . . get in your head.”
The table went dead quiet for half a beat.
Austin froze mid–page turn, eyebrow lifting slowly.
Cal’s stare slid between Brody and Hayes like he was watching a tennis match and didn’t know which side he’d bet on. His mouth twitched, but he didn’t laugh.
Hayes went still, the muscles in his jaw tightening like a loaded spring.
Brody blinked, the confidence on his face flickering—like he’d just realized he’d said that with a little too much truth in it. He cleared his throat and coughed into his fist, trying to patch the moment.
“I mean,” he hurried on, waving a hand like he could physically bat the words away, “you know what I’m saying. The whole family’s intense. Big personalities. They sort of . . . take over a room.”
His save didn’t quite land.
Not with Hayes watching him like that.
Not with Austin still staring.
Not with my chest tight and my pulse suddenly too loud in my ears.
Because Brody wasn’t wrong, and that was the problem.
Clara Darling had taken over my house in less than a week, and I couldn’t tell which part of me hated it more—the part that wanted my space back or the part that was already bracing for what it would feel like when she eventually left.
Hayes’s stare cut first to Brody—sharp and warning, the kind of look that he used to shut down anyone who dared glance at his beloved sisters. Then his attention swung to me, and somehow it was worse.
Because with Brody, it was older brother annoyance, but with me, it was history.
All the shit we didn’t say out loud. The phone call on that dark road. The way his guilt sat between us like an extra chair at every table. The way he’d hovered since the accident like he could rewrite the ending if he just tried hard enough.
And now Clara was in the mix.
Hayes leaned back in his chair, casual on the surface, but his eyes stayed locked on me like he was bracing for impact. He kept his voice light, like he was asking about the weather.
“Something I should know about you living with Clara?”
My spine went rigid.
I felt the question like a hand closing around my throat.
It wasn’t even what he said—it was everything underneath it.
The protectiveness stitched into him where his sisters were concerned.
The suspicion that came with any man in their orbit.
The automatic need to make sure they were safe, even when they were grown women who could handle themselves.
He didn’t want to think about Clara in my house.
He sure as hell didn’t want to think about Clara in my house with me.
My mind flashed, unhelpfully, to steam and glass and tiny sleep shorts.
My stomach dropped.
I swallowed hard and snapped the answer out too fast, too sharp, like if I cut it clean enough it would stop the conversation from bleeding. “No,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
Hayes didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He just stared at me, the way he used to when we were out together and he could tell I’d made up my mind to do something stupid.
“It’s temporary,” I added, because apparently I couldn’t leave well enough alone. The words came out with an edge, as if saying them harder would make them truer. “She needed a place. I needed . . . someone who isn’t a nurse.”
I could feel the pin in place inside my chest, the needle of my pulse in my throat. The more I insisted it was nothing, the more the lie took up space. Too loud. Too obvious.
Because if it was really nothing, I wouldn’t have been so damn defensive.
If it was really nothing, I wouldn’t have pictured her beneath me as I sank into her and stretched her open.
If it was really nothing, my body wouldn’t have betrayed me the second I was alone on my couch.
Hayes held my stare for another beat, then looked away like he’d filed the moment in a drawer he planned to open later.
Austin cleared his throat awkwardly and flipped through his binder like it could save us. “Okay,” he said, too cheerful. “Back to the campaign. You’ve made it to the edge of the woods—”
But the air had already shifted.
The game pieces were still on the table. The dice still sat waiting to be rolled.
And yet it felt like we’d wandered into a different kind of dungeon altogether.