Chapter 14
SERGIO
Sleep is not happening.
I've been lying in my bed for two hours, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster like they hold the secrets of the universe. Forty-seven cracks. I counted them twice to make sure.
The house is quiet. Nacho went to bed an hour ago. I heard his door close, the lock click. Pedro retreated to his room after the incident in the foyer, probably to brood in that special way he has, staring at medical journals and pretending he's not thinking about her.
Carlos is God knows where, doing God knows what. Probably in his workshop, building something with his hands because that's what he does when he can't process his feelings. He makes things. Creates. While the rest of us just fall apart.
And Jessica is down the hall.
Sleeping in the guest room.
In our house.
Her scent is everywhere.
Peaches and honey, drifting through the ventilation system, seeping under my door, wrapping around my brain like a vine I can't shake loose.
Every breath I take is saturated with her.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her standing in my foyer, wearing Carlos's henley, looking at me like I'd grown a second head.
Because I growled at my pack brother.
At Pedro.
For touching her.
For catching her when she fell.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and groan into the darkness.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I'm the pack leader. The steady one. The one who keeps his head when everyone else is losing theirs.
I've spent thirty-two years cultivating control, building walls, making sure my emotions never get the better of me.
Hockey taught me discipline. The Marines taught me restraint.
Being pack leader taught me how to put everyone else's needs before my own.
And then Jessica Delacroix walks into my house at five in the morning, and I turn into a territorial animal, because I want to claim her so badly, but we need to keep our distance. She’s vulnerable. And needs space.
I throw off the covers and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The hardwood floor is cold under my bare feet, shocking against my skin. Good. I need to shock my system back to sanity.
My room is on the second floor, at the end of the hall. I inherited the antique furniture after my parents died. The king-size bed. The bay window that overlooks the back garden.
I pull on a pair of sweatpants, not bothering with a shirt. It's the middle of the night. No one's going to see me wandering around like some kind of insomniac ghost.
The hallway is dark except for the nightlight Mom insisted we install after Carlos tripped over his own feet, and nearly broke his neck on the stairs. I navigate by memory, passing Pedro's closed door, then Nacho's, then Carlos's.
The stairs creak under my weight. This house is over a hundred years old.
Everything creaks. I've learned to tune it out, the same way I've learned to tune out the constant background noise of pack life.
The arguments over who left the milk out.
The laughter during movie nights. The way my brothers can drive me crazy and keep me sane in equal measure.
Halfway down the stairs, I smell it.
Sugar. Butter. Vanilla. Chocolate.
Someone is baking.
At three in the morning.
I follow my nose to the kitchen and stop dead in the doorway.
Jessica is standing at the counter, her back to me, wearing my mom’s old apron over the henley she borrowed from Carlos.
The apron is faded blue with white polka dots, stained with decades of cooking experiments and holiday disasters.
It ties at the waist, emphasizing the curve of her hips, the dip of her lower back.
Her blonde hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun, loose strands escaping to curl against the nape of her neck, catching the light. Her feet are bare, pale against the dark tile, toes curling against the cold floor.
She's elbow-deep in cookie dough.
And she's crying.
I can tell by the way her shoulders shake. The small, hiccupping sounds she's trying to muffle. The way she keeps wiping her face with the back of her wrist, leaving smears of flour across her cheeks.
Something in my chest cracks open.
"Jess."
She whirls around, eyes wide, cookie dough flying from her fingers. A glob lands on the floor between us.
"Sergio!" Her voice is thick with tears, rough around the edges. "I'm sorry, I couldn't sleep, and I found the flour in the pantry, and I thought maybe if I just kept my hands busy I could stop thinking and I know it's your kitchen and I should have asked but..."
"You don't have to apologize." I step into the kitchen, keeping my movements slow. "This is your home now. You can bake at whatever hour you want."
"It's not my home." She turns back to the counter, shoulders hunching inward like she's trying to make herself smaller. "I should be contributing. Paying rent. Not just taking up space and eating your food and—"
"Stop." I move closer. The kitchen is warm from the preheating oven, overhead light casting everything in soft gold.
The mixer is out on the counter, along with three different bags of chocolate chips and a cookbook that belonged to my grandmother, the pages yellowed and stained. "What are you making?"
"Chocolate chip cookies." She sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Triple chocolate. Regular chips, white chocolate chips, and cocoa powder in the dough. Because apparently regular chocolate isn't aggressive enough for my current emotional state."
"That's a lot of chocolate."
"I'm feeling a lot of feelings."
I lean against the counter beside her. Tear tracks on her cheeks. Redness around her hazel eyes. Her bottom lip is swollen from where she's been biting it, probably for hours.
She's beautiful.
Even now, covered in flour, crying into cookie dough at three in the morning, wearing a borrowed shirt and a vintage apron. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And I'm completely screwed.
"Want to talk about it?" I ask quietly.
"Not particularly."
"Okay."
I don't push. I've learned over the years that Jessica needs space to process. Needs time to find her words. If I push, she'll retreat behind walls I can't break through. If I wait, she'll come to me when she's ready.
So I wait.
She goes back to mixing the dough, folding in chocolate chips with more force than strictly necessary. The bowl rattles against the counter. The wooden spoon scrapes against the sides, and I can hear her breathing, uneven and shaky.
"I keep thinking about the wedding," she says finally, not looking at me. "About climbing out that bathroom window. About driving here in Melissa's car with mascara running down my face and my dress bunched up around my knees."
I don't say anything. Just listen. Let her talk.
"And I keep thinking, what if I made a mistake?" Her voice cracks. "What if Callum wasn't as bad as I thought? What if I overreacted to everything, and now I've ruined my entire life, and I'm living in my ex's best friends' house like some kind of pathetic refugee who can't get her life together?"
"You didn't overreact."
"How do you know?" She finally looks at me, and the pain in her eyes makes my chest ache. "You weren't there. You don't know what it was like."
"Because I know Callum." The words come out harder than I intended, sharper. "I've known him since we were kids. I've watched him charm people. Manipulate them. Make them feel like they're crazy for questioning him."
Jessica's hands still on the dough.
"I've watched him do it to you," I continue, and the admission tastes bitter. “When you started dating him, you became quieter. Smaller. Stopped laughing at Carlos jokes." I take a breath. "Stop being you."
She turns to look at me fully now, cookie dough forgotten. Her eyes are wet, shining in the kitchen light.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Her voice is barely a whisper.
The question hits me like a fist to the gut. Knocks the air from my lungs.
"Because I was a coward." The admission scrapes out of me, raw and painful. "Because you were his girlfriend, and he was my best friend, and I told myself it wasn't my place."
"And how would you have done it?" She sets down the wooden spoon, giving me her full attention.
The air between us shifts. Thickens. Becomes something I can almost taste.
"I would have let you laugh as loud as you wanted." I hold her gaze, let her see the truth. “And never, not once, made you feel like you were too much or too loud or too emotional or too anything."
A tear slides down her cheek, leaving a clean track through the flour.
"Sergio..."
"I'm sorry." The words feel inadequate. Hollow. Not enough for the years of silence. "For not coming after you when you left six years ago, and pretending I didn't..."
I stop myself. Force the words back down where they belong.
"Didn't what?" she whispers, taking a step toward me.
I look at her. At the flour on her cheeks and the tears in her eyes and the vulnerability written across her face. At the way she's looking at me like I might have answers she needs.
I should lie.
"Didn't think about you every single day," I say instead. "Didn't wonder where you were and if you were happy and if Callum was treating you right."
Her breath catches. "Chosen differently?"
"Chosen us instead of him."
“No. Me."
The kitchen is silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the oven timer counting down.
"I thought about you," she says finally, her voice barely audible. "All of you. More than I should have."
"How much is more than you should have?"
"Every night when I fell asleep next to Callum and wished I was somewhere else." She picks up the wooden spoon again, turning it over in her hands, not looking at me. "Every time he touched me and I felt nothing..."