Chapter Ten
OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD.
What did I do last night?
I feel like I got run over by a bus and then the bus backed up to check if I was okay and ran me over again.
I don’t open my eyes yet—too scared of what I’ll find—so I inventory with touch: sheet, duvet, cool air across bare thighs, the faint floral scent of someone else’s soap.
Flashes come back to me, piece by piece.
Brenden’s arms around me, his mouth on mine.
The way he threw me onto the bed. The way his skin felt against mine.
The warm bed after the shower. But now, no other body in the bed. No heat but mine.
I crack one eye, then the other. I’m in Brenden’s room.
His bed. The massive wall of shadow where his closet door stands and leads to the shower where we took me is ajar.
I lift my head. He isn’t in here, and the darkness of the closet leads me to believe he isn’t here anywhere.
I’m alone. Why does that make me feel sad? I wanted this. That’s what I told him.
A stretch pulls through my hamstrings and lower back; a sweet ache answers low in my body, pulsing with each heartbeat.
My skin still tingles where his beard rasped: neck, breasts, inner thighs.
The pillow smells like him—cedar and soap and something warm, like sun on worn leather—and I bury my face in it for one breath, just one.
I can’t regret any of it. I won’t. Not a single second.
I slip off the mattress, legs wobbly, and pad to the bathroom.
Cool tile. Relief. Water, soap, the soft rasp of a toothbrush he’d set out like he knew I would need it.
I catch my reflection—hair a mess, mouth kiss-swollen, the ghost of last night’s flush still high in my cheeks—and I don’t look away. I look…happy.
I make my way back in the bedroom, looking through his closet as I go.
His closet is a mirror of my own. Black, grey, brown, some white.
But no color. I see if I can find anything that might be closer to my side, but no luck.
Great. Over sized band tee it is. Phone?
I left it in the living room during charades.
I smack myself on accident as I put my hand over my face. Of course I did.
I crack the door. The hallway beyond is bare as a bone—no art, no photos, just clean paint and a practical runner.
It reads like a bachelor pad that never bothered pretending otherwise.
For a second, I imagine frames here, a gallery of lives; then I remember where I am and who owns this place, and the blankness makes sense.
Men who’ve taught themselves not to need anything that can be stolen don’t hang memories on drywall.
Where I have created a small community, a family of sorts, Brenden has avoided that. He stays within what he knows. His brothers. His work. Where he is the rock the storm beats against, I am the waves. Perfect compliment, but also the making of an epic tragedy.
I step out of his room, and begin to pad toward the open room beyond.
Voices carry from the kitchen. Alisha and Samuel stand shoulder to shoulder at the island, digging into plates, both in borrowed clothes.
Selene’s messy bun bobs as she rummages in a cabinet, the too-long sleeves of someone else’s shirt swallowing her hands.
Looking around, it makes me feel better I’m not the only one waking up in clothes that don’t belong to me.
Brenden sits at the far end of the counter, blue eyes on his phone, thumbs moving. The moment my bare feet hit cool tile, his attention snaps up. That grin—shameless, satisfied, a little dangerous—spreads across his mouth like he can still taste me.
“Good morning, Siren,” he rumbles. It’s unfair that a voice alone can stroke my entire nervous system with one simple sentence.
“Good morning. Um… is there coffee?” I can smell it, but I’ve learned not to assume.
He’s already moving, chair legs scraping back as he rounds the counter.
I catch a flash of the space while he pours: industrial-clean lines, matte black hardware, big windows spilling gray Seattle light.
Joshua leans against the frame, jaw working; Corver is missing; Selene hums some upbeat riff under her breath that my brain, jittered by nerves and lack of sleep, tags as Death of Peace of Mind by Bad Omens—because of course my life would cue that right now.
I keep glancing around the room, taking silent inventory of my people. Hazel and Richie are back on the couch just as they were last night. Not sure if they slept there, or if they just migrated there again.
“Where’s June?” I ask as he passes me a mug—heavy, handmade, perfectly imperfect. The glaze is a stormy marble that swirls dark into light. “And where did you get this? Is it handmade? It’s beautiful.”
“She was up and out here earlier, I think she’s in the shower now,” he says, softening. “Doesn’t like the morning-after vibe. Thinks it gives Joshua the wrong idea.” The corner of his mouth ticks. “And yeah—my mom made that. Years ago. It’s my favorite.”
He says mom and something bright and breakable flickers behind his eyes. I don’t know if it’s love or ache; I know better than to pry.
“Juniper? And Josh?” I echo in a whisper, Josh standing so close to us. “Seriously?” I haven’t heard June talk about any man like that. I drift to the fridge and fish out some creamer. “Sugar?”
He’s already holding a ceramic jar out to me when I turn. Of course he is. I doctor the coffee, stir, lift.
The first sip drags a sound out of me I can’t swallow fast enough. I freeze at my own moan of pleasure, embarrassed that I did that in front of this enormous man. I look up into his face slowly, a flush spreading across my skin.
“Damn, girl, that’s almost as good a moan as I got from you last night,” he says, playful, wicked. “Had I known coffee could do that, I’d have added it to the menu.”
I shove his arm, rolling my eyes, smiling despite the scrape of panic rising in my chest. Memory is a traitor.
It offers heat and safety then turns on me with cold hands and whispers what now.
He must see it flicker across my face because he doesn’t crowd me—just steps in slow, the way you move with a skittish horse.
Then his gaze travels down and back, deliberate as a touch.
“I respect you. And I respect your calls,” he says, voice low and even. “But I’m not going anywhere. I’ll prove it. I’m here for whatever you need. You say jump, I ask how high. But you…Surry O’Brien… you are mine.”
“You say—“ I go to argue but he cuts me off.
“And I am yours.”
He closes the space. Left hand resting gently on the back of my neck; right hand settling warm on my hip. His breath is heat against the shell of my ear. “And I’m not letting you walk away from me, Siren. Do you understand?”
Oh. Fuck.
My brain freezes. My body doesn’t. Everything in me leans into him like it’s gravity and I’m just…falling. How dangerous. This feeling of desire. Of happiness. Of hope.
“I—I—”
Then the world rips.
A concussion-punch of air slams the room, the building, my bones.
The sound is a white wall, a roar that eats everything.
Light flares—then the kitchen folds, cabinets shuddering, glass screaming as it explodes.
The floor bucks. Brenden is already on me, a full-body shield, driving me down.
My spine kisses the cabinet. His forearm cages my head; the other covers his own.
I can taste copper and dust. For a moment, there is no time, just heartbeat-heartbeat-heartbeat, a distant siren of someone screaming that I slowly realize is me.
The second wave hits—a rumble that bows the window frames and turns the far wall into a mouth of open air.
Wind slices through. Something whines—rebar flexing, or a pipe.
A hanging beam tilts, a shower of fine, glittering plaster dust turning the gray light into fog.
Sparks spit from a torn electrical run—blue-white, vicious.
The smell comes next, a dirty stack: burned plastic, hot metal, drywall, and the medicinal sting of fresh blood atomized into the air.
Then sound returns in pieces.
Yelling. Alarms. Boots on tile. Over it all, the wet keening that nails my ribs open.
Brenden hauls me up. The room tilts and rights. His hand finds mine and tucks me under his arm like I’m cargo he refuses to lose. My gaze darts, frantic—count them, count them, where is—
Selene.
“I don’t see Selene. Where is she—where—” My voice cracks, small and savage at once.
Alisha appears like she’s conjured, mascara wet tracks down her cheeks. “She’s hurt, Surry, Selene is hurt!” She points, and that’s when I hear the screaming. Not distant. Ours.
The living room is half living room, half catastrophic edge.
Shattered glass glitters like diamonds across the marble floor.
The window—no, the entire eastern wall—has been blown outward, leaving jagged concrete teeth and twisted rebar claws grasping at empty air.
Thirty stories below, ant-sized cars crawl through gridlocked streets while the city's spires pierce a smoke-stained sky that feels close enough to touch.
Joshua stands at the torn opening, his silhouette stark against the burning horizon, scanning the chaos below while barking rapid-fire orders to my father's stone-faced men in black suits posted at the elevator.
Sam, wild-eyed with pupils blown wide in terror, kneels over Selene's crumpled form on the Persian rug now slick with something dark and viscous.
The acrid smoke curls around everything, softening edges and distorting sounds, like a nightmare desperately trying to disguise itself as just a fading memory.
Richie’s got Hazel locked to his chest near the hall, her face buried, his eyes wide and sharp over her head. He catches my gaze, flicks it to the door. I shake my head. No. I’m not leaving her. I’m not leaving any of them.