15. Maya
Maya
The morning after the headboard hit the wall, I make coffee before either of them comes downstairs.
Early sun cuts through the window above the sink and hits the counter hard enough to make me squint. I wrap both hands around my mug, my hair damp against the back of my neck, and last night keeps coming back in pieces I can feel in my throat, my stomach, the inside of my thighs.
Cole's voice came through the wall first, low enough to make my stomach pull tight before the headboard found its rhythm against the plaster.
Then Dante's breathing followed, rough and broken, Italian slipping out of him in pieces I couldn't translate and understood anyway.
The bed frame hit the wall faster and faster until it stopped, and somehow the silence after was worse, because silence meant they were lying there together while I was twelve feet away with my hand pressed into the mattress, my thighs clamped tight, and heat still crawling through me long after the room went quiet.
The text went out at 1 a.m. The walls in this house are thin. I watched the screen until the read receipt appeared, my pulse beating so hard I felt it under my tongue.
Now it is morning. The coffee is ready, my hands are steady around the mug, and the kitchen is waiting for the two of them to come downstairs and stand inside what we made last night.
Cole comes down first and stops in the doorway. His gaze moves from me to the coffee to my face, the usual sweep, but slower this morning. Heavier. The text I sent at 1 a.m. is still on my phone upstairs, but it might as well be open on the counter between us.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning. Coffee's ready."
He crosses to the coffee and pours a cup. His shoulder brushes mine at the counter, and he lets the contact hold for one extra second before reaching for the sugar.
"Sleep okay?" he asks.
"Eventually."
The spoon pauses halfway to his cup. That one word hangs between us, and his throat bobs.
Dante comes down three minutes later, dressed in black, his hair still damp.
He walks into the kitchen, sees me, and his stride catches for half a step before he recovers.
Without speaking, he pours coffee, black and measured, his fingers precise on the mug, his shoulders squared, his jaw set hard enough to cut off whatever almost made it through.
The three of us stand in the kitchen without speaking.
Cole leans against the counter. Dante stays at the far end with his mug.
I stand between them, both hands tight around a mug I keep lifting to my mouth without drinking.
Morning light pools on the counter, the coffee maker clicks off, and none of us breathes right.
"How much did you hear?" Cole asks.
The question sounds casual. With Cole, casual means his gaze is already on Dante before my answer leaves my mouth.
"Enough to know his Italian gets creative under pressure." Dante's mug stops halfway to his mouth. "And enough to know you're louder than you think you are," I say to Cole.
"I'm not—"
"You are."
Dante takes a deliberate sip. His eyes find mine across the mug, and the flush climbing my neck is visible. I let it climb.
"The headboard needs reinforcing," Dante says. His voice stays low, the corner of his mouth barely shifting. "Structural issue."
"The headboard isn't the structural issue," I say.
Cole chokes on his coffee.
Dante's jaw tightens, and whatever answer he meant to give never makes it past his teeth.
He holds my gaze for three seconds longer than the joke deserves.
The muscle there jumps. His hands go too still around the mug.
He swallows once, hard, and looks like he would rather cut his own tongue out than say the truth in daylight.
Cole sets his mug down. His gaze moves from me to Dante and back again.
Dante's almost-answer sits there in the jump of his jaw.
Heat crawls up my neck. Dante holds the mug too carefully.
Neither of us has enough sense to look away.
Cole's shoulders drop a fraction, his breathing slows, and the corner of his mouth softens.
"You're standing in our kitchen," Cole says quietly. "In my hoodie. Making coffee."
"I am."
"And you slept through none of it."
"I slept through none of it."
He holds my gaze. The challenge in his eyes is the same one he has been throwing since we were thirteen, except the stakes have changed.
I hold his gaze back while the flush spreads and my hands tighten around the mug.
My neck is hot, my thighs still ache, and I am not going to say a damn word about it in this kitchen at seven in the morning with Dante three feet away and my body still remembering the wall between us.
"I should go get clothes from my apartment," I say. The words come out even. My pulse tells a different story.
"You'll be back," Cole says carefully.
Dante's eyes stay on my face. "Tonight," he says.
The word lands low and certain, a fact he has filed before I confirm it. My stomach dips, and my fingers tighten around the mug because he says it like my return is already measured into his night.
"Yes," I say. "I'll be back tonight."
I take one sip of coffee. The mug is warm in my grip, and my hands stay steady. The rest of me can wait until I am outside.
The walk back to my apartment takes ten minutes through the March cold, and the air leaves every bit of heat trapped under my skin.
My bag bumps against my shoulder. My keys bite into my palm.
The morning-after kitchen sits behind my ribs with every sound I cannot unfile.
Cole called it our kitchen. Dante said tonight.
My body answered both of them before my mouth caught the hell up.
The cold stings the skin of my neck where the flush still has not faded, my hands shake in my pockets, and my thighs ache from spending half the night pressed together.
By Monday, I have an excuse to go back.
The heat goes out again. The landlord reschedules. I end up at Elm House in the spare room with the lock turned from the inside. The calls keep coming, first four total, then five, each one the same six seconds of nothing. I delete them. I keep them away from Cole. I keep them away from Dante.
On Wednesday, the filing deadline for the power play piece gives me another excuse. Cole offers the couch for a working session that runs until midnight, and by then it is too cold to walk home. I sleep at Elm House in the spare room with the lock turned from the inside.
Cole asks about the phone that night.
We are on the couch with his laptop on the cushion between us and the film paused mid-frame.
His arm stretches along the back of the couch behind my head, close enough that I know the exact distance between his wrist and my hair.
My phone buzzes against the armrest, and the flinch goes through me before I can stop it.
My shoulders jerk. Cole's hand goes still.
"Maya."
"It's nothing." I pick up the phone and check the screen. Chronicle notification. The 413 is absent from the screen. The flinch already happened, and Cole already filed it.
"That's the third time tonight," he says quietly. "Every time your phone buzzes, you go white around the mouth."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You've been flinching at your phone for weeks and I've been watching it happen and I'm done watching." His voice stays low and level, the Maddox frequency, the tone Richard uses when the conversation has stopped being optional.
I set the phone face-down beside my thigh and press my hands together in my lap. Four in. Four hold. Four out. The count keeps my voice from cracking. It does nothing for the heat crawling up my face.
"There's an area code," I say. "413. Western Massachusetts. Calls started in early March. Six seconds of silence. No voice. I delete them."
Cole's breathing changes. His hand on the back of the couch stays exactly where it is, the quality of its stillness shifting. "How many?"
"Five. Maybe six."
"You know who it is."
"I have a theory."
"Maya." My name carries the weight of thirteen years. "Do you know who it is?"
"I think so. I'm not ready to say the name." My hands press tighter. "Not tonight."
He keeps his mouth shut. He sits there with the film paused and his hand behind my head, and he gives me the one thing I did not ask for out loud. After a minute, his thumb traces the ridge of my neck once, the grounding touch he has been using since we were kids.
"When you're ready," he says.
"When I'm ready."
The film resumes. My phone sits face-down beside my thigh. The 413 has a place on the couch now, sitting inside Cole's silence, beside the laptop and my locked jaw.
On Friday, I go without an excuse. The heat works. My article is filed. I still end up on Dante Voss's couch at 10 p.m. with my laptop on my thighs, his tea in my hands, and the house hushed around us while Cole watches film on the floor.
My apartment has started changing on me.
Everything stays where I left it. The locks hold.
The door bar sits exactly where I put it.
Every night, the scan takes longer, stretching from two seconds to five to eight while I check the closet twice and count the distance from the window to the fire escape latch.
The breathing count has moved from occasional to nightly. Four in, four hold, four out. The structure Talia taught me on a library floor.
So I come to Elm House, and I leave the reason sealed behind my teeth.
Cole is on the floor with his laptop, cutting game film for a project Addison assigned.
His handwriting is terrible. His annotations are surprisingly sharp.
He wears a white T-shirt that rides up when he reaches for his notes, exposing a strip of stomach above his waistband, and I look for one second too long before dragging my gaze back to my screen.
I have been noticing more since last Friday, when he told me I was the opposite of bothered.