Chapter 5
Brie
The door shut so hard it rattled the glass in the windows, and I just stood there, back pressed to the cool, flaking paint, half expecting Gunner to storm back in and finish the job; yell at me, or fuck me, or both.
Instead, the only sound was the distant crunch of gravel under his boots and the useless pounding of my own heart.
He’d called me “trouble,” Maverick, a “little girl playing grown-up,” and it was worse than any slap.
Worse than the way he’d kissed me, so hard I was certain my mouth was bleeding; worse than the way he’d looked at me just before he let go, as if he pitied me for not being enough.
I could still taste him—salt, coffee. It was all over my lips, my tongue, my teeth.
I sagged to the kitchen floor, knees knocking together, arms wrapped tight around my ribs like I could maybe hold the rest of me together.
The leftover adrenaline made my teeth chatter.
I pressed my forehead to the hardwood floor and let myself breathe, just breathe, in and out until the rush of blood slowed and the dizzy part of my brain stopped screaming.
He was right, obviously. I was a mess. A spoiled brat, a fuckup, a “project” no one would ever finish. I told myself I didn’t care, but every molecule in my body was vibrating with humiliation and hunger, and it was all for him. I hated him for it. I hated myself more.
The thing was, I’d never wanted someone to want me this badly.
I was good at making people notice me—could bat eyelashes, flash a smile, lean just so over the pastry case and score a free almond croissant without even trying.
At university, I’d won a barista’s entire week’s tips just for giving him my number, which I never answered. It was easy. It was a game.
But Gunner didn’t play games. At least, not with me.
He played them with everyone else. I’d seen him at Pearl’s, in the smoky warmth of the bar, laughing and trading stories, high-fiving the other wolves and ruffling the hair of the MC’s newest kid like an affectionate big brother.
He was golden, unbothered, the center of every joke.
But the minute I walked into the room, the humor dried up, and he’d stare at me with this complicated look—half disgust, half ache.
Why did he go cold with me? Was I so broken?
I picked myself up and paced to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me, then locking it for good measure.
The walk through the house was automatic; I’d memorized every creak in the floorboards, every spot where the paint peeled, every place the light hit wrong and made the whole place look haunted.
Sometimes I felt like the house was an extension of me—pretty enough from a distance, all cracks and holes if you looked too close.
I flopped onto the bed, barely missing the sketchbook I’d left open on the comforter. My latest drawing was a half-finished self-portrait, but it didn’t look like me; it looked like someone who didn’t care what happened next. I tossed the book across the room and buried my face in the pillows.
My wolf had nothing to offer. She was curled up in the corner of my brain, licking her wounds. “You’re trouble, Maverick,” Gunner had said, voice so low and final it vibrated right down to my bones.
For a split second, I hated him. Then, as the minutes crawled past, the hate slipped into a sticky sort of longing, so familiar it made me want to cry.
He was probably already back at his barn, tossing hay and pretending he’d never even set foot in this house.
I wondered if his hands were still shaking. Mine were.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to pretend this was all a bad TV show, and that next week I’d be a whole new Brie—one who never got nervous, never let a man make her feel like this.
But I’d seen enough to know that even the best pilots got canceled before the season ended. I was already on reruns.
I should have felt angry, but all I could manage was tired.
I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the warm, stinging wetness on my wrist. Not the pretty, cinematic tears you dab away with a monogrammed handkerchief, but the ugly kind; snuffling, hiccupy, making the skin under your nose raw.
I swiped at my face with the sleeve of my favorite cardigan, blue and gold, the one Luc had always said made me look “très chic.”
I wanted to throw it out the window.
The worst part was, for a second in that kitchen, I’d really believed Gunner was going to fuck me.
Not just because I wanted it, but because it would prove I wasn’t just a broken toy—prove that I could make him lose control.
I’d almost kissed him first, and the fact that he beat me to it, and then stopped, made the humiliation burn hotter.
I wasn’t even good enough for a quick lay. Not for him.
I remembered the first time I ever made a man look at me like I was the last glass of water in the desert.
It was at a high school party back in Houston, where I’d borrowed my sister’s lipstick and wore a dress that showed off my young curves.
I was sixteen, and I knew I was hot, and I’d made a varsity quarterback trip over his own feet.
It was stupid, but for five minutes I’d felt untouchable.
I’d spent the last seven years chasing that feeling, and every year it got a little harder to catch.
Luc Renault had seen right through me. He’d called me a “little rabbit,” but the way he said it had made me feel elegant, fragile, impossible to catch.
He’d treated me like a secret, something precious, but I knew now that I’d only ever been a tool to him.
A disposable one. It’s hard to trust yourself when you allowed a man to use you; whose goal it was to traffic you.
Gunner was the first man to see every crack and still want to break me down further. He didn’t lie, didn’t even try. That scared me more than anything.
I wanted to text Harper, or even Parker, and tell them what an absolute asshole Gunner was. But I didn’t. I didn’t want them to see how much it hurt.
My phone buzzed on the bedside table—a notification from some art account I followed, nothing important. I left it unread.
The tears had mostly dried by the time I heard the sound of tires crunching the gravel outside. My mother’s car. She was home early, probably to make some casserole or reorganize the pantry or, God forbid, check on me.
I scrambled to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, then studied myself in the mirror. The skin under my eyes was puffy, but I could fix that with makeup. I could always fix it. I ran the flat iron through the front two chunks of my hair, slicked on some concealer, and practiced a smile.
It looked wrong.
I locked my bedroom door and tried to ignore the sound of her heels on the hardwood, the cheerful “Brie? Darling? Are you home?” echoing down the hall. She’d come looking if I didn’t answer. I tucked myself under the covers, pretending to sleep.
It only took two minutes for her to knock. Three sharp raps, just like when I was a kid, and she wanted to quiz me on state capitals or what fork went with the fish course.
“Brie?” The knob rattled. “Are you alright?”
I willed her to go away, but she was nothing if not persistent.
“Brie, I made us some tea. Why don’t you come join me in the kitchen?”
She always made it sound like an invitation, never an order. But it was an order.
Nanette was a dead ringer for a lady on a cruise commercial—pearl earrings, hair just-so, and an apron as if she’d ever dirtied herself baking.
She stood at the stove, arranging two mugs on a tray with thin, perfect lemon slices balanced on the rim, like she expected Martha Stewart to rate her form.
Her movements were so deliberate I almost laughed, but my throat was sandpaper.
I hovered in the doorway, damp with humiliation and wanting to retreat, but that would mean losing the only neutral zone in this house.
She didn’t turn around. “I hope you don’t mind chamomile. The black tea keeps me up.” The way she said it, you’d think sleep was a leisure activity, not an Olympic event. Then, as she set the sugar bowl just so: “Rough night?”
My lip started to tremble, and I bit down on the inside so hard I tasted iron.
I tried to play it off. “You could say that.” I gripped the edge of the counter, fingers pressed so hard to the cool stone they turned white.
The silence in the kitchen was louder than the whirr of the fridge, the tick of the clock, louder than every accusation I’d leveled at myself in the last hour.
Nanette finally faced me, and her eyes were clinical—first scanning my hair, then my smudged eyeliner, then the cut-off shorts I’d worn two days running. “Sit,” she said, voice gentle but absolute, the way only women raised in the South can pull off.
I slid onto the stool at the counter, hands in my lap. She poured tea, her hands steady even when she set the cup in front of me. Then she just looked at me, that calm, implacable stare.
I broke first. “He hates me.”
Nanette blinked, and if she’d been anyone else, I might have detected a smirk. But this was my mother: if she found my drama entertaining, she’d never let on. “Is that so?”
“I know it,” I said, the words spilling out, ugly and wet. “You should have heard what he called me. Spoiled, a brat, not ready for anything. That I act like everything is a game and I don’t know how to be a grown-up.”
She folded her hands, interlaced them, and rested her chin on the nest of knuckles. “Is any of that… wrong?”
It felt like a slap, but not the cruel kind. The kind you need to reset your vision. I blinked, tears threatening to tip over, but I didn’t want to cry in front of her. “It’s all wrong. Or it’s all true. I don’t know. He thinks I can’t handle myself, that I’m just… I don’t know, a project.”