Chapter 28 – Bells
BELLS
The elevator doors open and I am done.
Done with Carmine.
Done with the words gothic romance and Phantom of the Opera and strategy rattling around my skull like a pinball.
Done with fucking roses being delivered again.
Done with the dick print on my jeans, which I didn't notice until we were in the car and Raf reached over, pointed directly at the smudge on my thigh, and said, "Did your dick fall off when you were toking marijuana on the roof?"
Phoenix nearly drove us into oncoming traffic.
So the first thing I do when we get inside is announce, "Everyone change. Now. Sleep clothes. We're done for the night."
"It's eight thirty," Raf protests.
"Yup." I kick off my combat boots. "And we're having a fucking slumber party so we can recover from all the bullshit happening right now.
Let's get all the mattresses, blankets, and pillows we can find into the living room.
I'm declaring a moratorium on all band talk whenever we're home, starting tonight. "
Nobody argues.
I go straight to Rex's room and lock the door.
The binder comes off first—fuck, the relief—and then the prosthetic, which I rinse and set on the counter without ceremony.
I kick off my pants, note that is definitely an unmistakable silicone dick print and there's no way Carmine didn't see it, groan, and pull one of Rex's many black hoodies over my bare chest. It hangs to mid-thigh, the sleeves dangling past my fingertips.
It's a thinner one than usual, and the peaks of my breasts are visible through the fabric.
No binder.
No prosthetic.
No cologne. Just me and an oversized hoodie and a pair of boxer shorts.
The collar stays on.
When I emerge, Phoenix is already in the kitchen in gray sweats and a white t-shirt stretched across his massive chest, the sleeves riding up over his biceps. His hair is loose. He's microwaving popcorn.
Raf appears from the hallway in red flannel pants and nothing else with an armful of snacks, including a family-sized bag of sour gummy worms I immediately yoink out of his hands.
"Hey!" He tries to grab them back, but I'm already stuffing them into my mouth like a woodchipper.
"Where did those come from?" Phoenix asks him, his eyes narrowing.
"None of your business."
"You have a candy stash and didn't tell me?"
"I wouldn't have a candy stash if I did."
"Go get the mattresses," I tell Raf, holding the bag just out of his reach with one hand and pushing him back by the chest with the other. He struggles against me as if he couldn't pick me up with one finger.
Raf finally stops fighting me for the gummy worms and disappears down the hall to get mattresses. I shove another handful into my mouth and survey the living room.
The sectional is big, but it's not nest big.
Not that this is a nest.
Obviously.
This is a totally normal, non-omega, non-instinct-driven decision to pile soft things in a room and surround myself with my pack while we watch a movie.
It has nothing to do with how exhausted and stressed we all are or the fact that my fucking stalker delivered roses to the studio tonight and nobody is talking about it, including me.
Despite everything, the word pack echoing through my head sends another flurry of butterflies through me.
And I'm so close to getting Rex to accept he's my mate—to accept himself as my mate—I can fucking taste it.
I start with the hall closet.
Three fleece throws. One weighted blanket that weighs as much as a dead body and almost knocks me over when it slides off the shelf. Two decorative pillows from the guest bathroom that have no business being in a bathroom. A quilt that smells like cedar and Phoenix.
I haul everything to the living room and start arranging.
Throws on the base layer. Weighted blanket folded at the center for whoever wants it. Pillows banked along the edges.
I catch myself fluffing a pillow and positioning it at a specific angle and freeze.
You're nesting, you idiot.
I'm not in heat. Not even close. The suppressants are garbage but I'm solidly between cycles.
My hands keep arranging anyway.
Fine.
Let my inner omega have something, for once.
A crash from the hallway makes me jump. Raf appears dragging Phoenix's enormous mattress. His muscles are straining, bronze skin gleaming, the kraken tattoo writhing across his arm.
"Little help?" he grunts.
"You're doing great!" I say, clapping to encourage him.
"Bells."
I grab the far end and we wrestle it into position beside the sectional. The combined surface area is now enormous.
Yeah. This is totally a fucking nest.
"I'll get mine," Raf says, disappearing again.
I raid Phoenix's room next. The man has an endless supply of pillows that all smell fucking insane. I huff them because his scent is like a drug to me and grab an armful—the body pillow, the memory foam one, three regular ones—and dump them into the growing pile.
Phoenix appears from the kitchen with two enormous bowls of popcorn, one buttered, one not. He stops and stares at the living room.
"Did a nesting supply store explode in here?"
"Shut up and give me that. Rex still won't let me tell him I'm an omega. No omega-adjacent words right now or he'll catch on and freak out." I grab the weighted blanket from the couch, unfold it, and drape it across the mattress.
"What do you mean, he won't let you tell him?" Phoenix asks, frowning.
"I mean every time I try, he stops me," I grumble, layering two throws on top of a couple of pillows and squishing them into submission to create a pocket of softness that makes my starving inner omega purr happily.
Shit, I feel kind of bad for it.
Her?
"He probably already knows and he's in denial," Phoenix murmurs, helping me push one of the mattresses over.
"Whatever he's in denial about, the answer is yes," says Raf, shoving his own mattress into the room with a series of thuds and creative profanity. He angles it alongside Phoenix's, creating one massive padded platform that fills most of the living room floor.
"Shhhh," Phoenix whispers to him, as if he isn't the one with the megaphone mouth.
"One more. We'll leave Rex's since he'll skin us alive if we touch it," Raf pants, swiping the sweat off his brow.
Phoenix smiles mildly. "Maybe if we get skinned alive, we won't need to watch a horror movie? Considering our lives will be horrifying enough?"
"That was dark," I say through another mouthful of candy.
Raf gives a low chuckle and pokes Phoenix's soft side. Phoenix yelps and smacks his hand away. "You trying to get out of the movie? What, are you scared, Phoenix?"
"No," Phoenix hisses. "I'm not fucking scared."
He is scared. I can tell.
He vanishes again.
I keep building. More pillows along the perimeter. The cedar quilt folded into a bolster along one edge. Phoenix's softest throw—the sherpa one that feels like petting a cloud—laid out in the center where someone could burrow into it.
That someone is gonna be me.
I'm standing in the middle of it, barefoot in Rex's oversized hoodie, surveying my work with the critical eye of an architect who just completed a cathedral, when the final mattress hits the bookcase.
It happens fast.
The whole unit lurches forward, books sliding, the top shelf tilting toward me like a falling tree.
"SHIT!" Raf yells.
Someone grabs me by the waist and yanks me sideways.
The bookcase crashes onto the mattress pile with a spectacular WHAM, books exploding across the blankets like shrapnel, a hardcover copy of The Count of Monte Cristo pinwheeling past my face close enough to ruffle my hair.
I'm pressed against a chest.
A warm, solid chest.
Rex's arm is banded around my waist, his hand gripping my hip. He pulled me clear in one motion, spinning us both out of the impact zone, his body between me and the falling furniture.
He's in black sleep pants and a black long-sleeve shirt, his simple mask in place and his dark hair still wet from the shower and plastered to his face.
"Holy fuck," I say, staring at the wreckage of the bookcase. "My hero."
Rex's visible eye narrows with a growl and he releases me. He doesn't push me away exactly. Just drops his arm and steps back, looking mildly annoyed about the entire concept of having just saved me.
"You could've moved," he mutters, walking past me.
"I was about to!"
He surveys the destruction. Books everywhere. The bookcase lying face-down across the mattress stack.
"What the fuck is all this," he says flatly.
"Slumber party." I gesture at the wreckage. "Obviously."
Raf has the good sense to look apologetic as he rights the bookcase. "My bad."
"Your bad is correct," Rex says. He starts picking up books and stacking them. Organizing them by size, I notice, because of course Rex alphabetizes under stress.
Phoenix emerges from the kitchen with his popcorn bowls held above his head like he's fording a river. "What happened?"
"Raf tried to kill me," I say.
"It was an accident—"
"I mean, it would've been an epic way to go. Death by literature." I'm already reassembling the nest. Smoothing the throws, restacking pillows displaced by the impact.
Between Raf and Phoenix, the bookcase goes vertical again. Books are reshelved. The mattresses are realigned.
The nest is complete.
It's magnificent.
Three mattresses layered edge to edge, covered in throws and blankets, ringed by pillows, the weighted blanket folded at the center like a cocoon waiting for a body. The sectional curves along one edge, creating a natural wall. Phoenix's sherpa throw is draped over the highest pillow bank.
Not a nest.
A sleep zone.
"Blood Meal," I announce, grabbing the remote.
"What?" Phoenix asks warily.
"The movie. It's called Blood Meal. It's terrible." I'm already scrolling through streaming options. "Low-budget seventies slasher. The kills are so bad they loop back around to being art."
"I'm in," Raf says immediately, flopping onto the mattress pile and sinking approximately eight inches into the pillow layer. "Oh fuck, this is comfortable."
Phoenix settles in beside him, taking up half the available real estate. He sets the popcorn bowls between them.
I look at Rex.
He's standing at the edge of the living room, arms crossed, watching the three of us with an expression that suggests he'd rather gargle broken glass than participate.
"Don't look at me like that," he says.
I bat my eyelashes at him.
His eye narrows. "I'm not joining you."
"Yes you are."
"No."
"Rex." I pat the empty space beside me. "Get in the cuddle pit.”
"I'm going to bed."
"It's eight forty-five."
"I'm tired."
"You took a nap on my shoulder this morning."
His eye flickers. The tiniest crack in the wall.
I reach out and grab his wrist.
He resists for exactly one second. Then I tug, and he lets himself be pulled forward, stepping onto the mattresses with the reluctant grace of a cat being lowered into a bathtub. His feet sink into the layers.
"This is absurd," he mutters.
"Sit."
He sits.
I immediately pull the weighted blanket across both our laps and nestle into his side before he can change his mind. His body goes stiff.
Then, degree by degree, he settles.
The lights go off. The TV bathes the room in blue. Blood Meal opens with a synth score so cheap it sounds like it was recorded with a potato and a Casio keyboard, and a title card in dripping red font.
"Oh, this is going to be terrible," Raf says happily. He reaches into the popcorn bowl, throws three pieces at his own face, misses two.
Phoenix catches one of the strays and eats it.
On screen, a woman in a crop top investigates a noise in a basement with all the survival instincts of a lemming.
"Don't go down there," Phoenix says immediately.
She goes down there.
"Called it."
"They always go down there," Raf mutters through a mouthful of popcorn.
The basement scene involves a rubber monster suit that's clearly being operated by someone hunched inside it, the zipper visible along the back seam. The kills are spectacular in their incompetence. Fake blood splatters across the lens. An arm detaches at the elbow and wiggles independently.
Phoenix blanches.
"Not how arms work," Rex says.
I grin into his shoulder.
He's watching.
The bastard is watching.
Twenty minutes in, Phoenix has migrated closer to Raf. Their shoulders are touching. Phoenix's hand rests on the blanket between them, and at some point during a particularly terrible jump scare, Raf's hand lands on top of it and neither of them move away.
I pull my legs up and tuck them underneath me, leaning harder into Rex's side. His arm is braced behind me on the pillow bank, not quite around me, not quite not.
I snuggle deeper against Rex. His arm drops from the pillow bank to my shoulder.
Light.
Barely there.
I don't acknowledge it.
The movie lurches toward its climax. The Final Girl defeats the monster with a combination of disco and a fire axe. Phoenix looks like he's going to puke with relief when the survivors stumble into daylight, covered in blood and gore.
"That was sick," Phoenix says weakly.
"Yeah. Sick," I breathe.
I reach for the remote to queue up something else, but my arm feels heavy. The weighted blanket is doing its job too well. Rex's body heat is radiating through the hoodie into my side and his breathing has slowed to a deep and steady rhythm.
I glance up.
His eye is closed.
His head has tipped sideways, resting against the pillow bank. His arm is still draped across my shoulders, his fingers curled loosely against my upper arm. The tension that lives permanently in his jaw has eased for once.
Across the mattress, Raf is out cold, one arm flung across Phoenix's lap, his face buried in the blankets. Guess he missed the grand finale.
Phoenix meets my eyes and gives me a slow, sleepy grin as the credits roll in silence.
My own eyes are heavy. Rex's heartbeat thumps slow and steady against my ear where my head has drifted to his chest.
The TV clicks to its screensaver and soft blue light undulates across the ceiling.
I close my eyes. Despite the fear simmering in my veins after the roses were delivered to the studio, I feel safe.
And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I sleep without dreaming.