Muse

Chapter 1 Sai

Sai

Three people are talking to me at once.

Celeste wants to know about the fall show, which gallery, which series, and whether I've spoken to the people at Gagosian or if I'm still considering the space on La Brea.

Alistair's assistant is leaning over the shoulder of the man beside me with a tablet angled toward my plate, confirming dates for a campaign shoot I don't remember agreeing to.

Another opportunity I'm supposed to crave.

And across the table, half-hidden behind a centerpiece that someone was paid too much to arrange, a cousin whose name I should know is asking whether I've met the Moreau family yet.

Three questions. Three directions. My brain tries to stack them into an order that makes sense but the order won't hold because each one requires a decision I both want and don't want to make, each choice splitting into paths I both need and dread to follow, and the corridors are multiplying faster than I can walk through them, even as part of me longs to run.

"The Gagosian space is beautiful," Celeste says, "but the lighting is wrong for your work. You'd need to gut the east wall."

"The shoot is the fourteenth," the assistant says. "Or the fifteenth. They're flexible, but they need confirmation by Friday."

"Elias Moreau," the cousin says. "He was at the Whitfield thing last month. You must have seen him."

I pick up my water glass, set it down, then pick it up again because putting it down felt wrong. The placement was off for some reason, and now I'm holding a glass of water I don't want while three people wait for three answers I'm supposed to be able to give without thinking.

"I'm in conversation with Gagosian," I tell Celeste, trying to figure out the right words to say. That’s all anyone wants from me anyway.

"Friday works," I nod toward the assistant.

To the cousin I offer nothing because the queue is empty and my brain is buffering, caught between three open loops it cannot close, and the silence I leave behind is just long enough that I have to fill it with a smile.

The smile works. It always works. The cousin nods and turns away, the loop finally closing and I can breathe again, barely, hating myself for the relief.

Under the table my fingers find the one rhythm that always brings me back to the peace I so desperately crave. Index, middle, ring, pinky. Index, middle, ring, pinky.

Part of me wants to slam my hand on the table, make a scene, and shatter this choreographed performance but I keep tapping.

A pattern no one has ever seen because I learned years ago to keep my hands below the surface, to press the panic into something small and repetitive and contained so that the rest of me can continue being the thing this room requires me to be.

Because Hollis Alphas don’t crack. They’re perfect. They’re molded into whatever the family desires and then they perform.

No exceptions.

My mind starts to wander, taking in the dining room and its low light, twenty-two people arranged around a table long enough to land a plane on.

I counted when I walked in. I always count.

If I know the number, then I know the edges of the room, and if I know the edges of the room then I can calculate how many directions the questions might come from, and the calculation gives me something to hold onto.

Twenty-two is usually manageable. Tonight, though, I want to be anywhere else and nowhere else simultaneously, craving both escape and the approval that keeps me chained here, feeling every single one of them like individual points of heat on a map.

Except, my map is full and the legend has run out of symbols.

I let out a small sigh, keeping my shoulders pulled back as I refocus on another point, the untouched plate sitting before me. The salmon was placed in front of me eleven minutes ago—no, twelve now—and I haven't picked up the fork.

I want to eat. I don't want to eat. I want to leave. I want to stay. I want to be seen. I want to disappear.

Picking up the fork means choosing which bite to take first, and my capacity for choosing is currently being consumed by Celeste and the assistant and the cousin and the gallery and the campaign and the Moreau name that keeps surfacing in my chest like something I swallowed that won't stay down.

I am, to every person at this table, an Alpha in complete command of himself.

The silk shirt is correct. The jaw is clean.

The posture could be architectural. I have been doing this for so long, performing composure at these dinners, at these events, in these rooms full of people who assess each other like portfolios, that the performance has become structural.

If I stopped, even for a moment, even for the length of a breath, the entire building would come down and everyone would see what's underneath it, which is a man whose brain will not stop sorting and stacking and counting and tapping, a man who is drowning in a room full of people who love him and not one of them knows, because I have made absolutely certain that not one of them can tell.

Sometimes I wish they would notice. Sometimes I'm terrified they will.

A small clank against porcelain steals my attention. One of my cousins, Lyric, is across the table, just one seat over, sending me a silent look of disdain without even actually meeting my eyes.

He hasn't spoken to me all evening, which is how I know he's been watching.

I hate him for it. Lyric doesn't do anything without timing it.

He is the most patient person I have ever sat across from, and patience in this family is not a virtue but a weapon, the kind that works by waiting until the other person has shown you everything they have before you move.

I have watched him do this to people who thought they were smarter than him, people who talked too much and revealed too much and walked away from the conversation thinking they'd won, never realizing that Lyric had gotten exactly what he came for without saying more than fifteen words.

Lyric smirks before twisting to the woman toward his right, keeping his voice low enough that I can’t make out what he’s saying.

When she laughs, Lyric smiles with his mouth.

His eyes are cataloguing something else entirely.

I want to call him out on it. I want to learn from it.

I want to be nothing like him. I want to be exactly like him.

Frustration builds in my chest as I try to get the chaos in my head under control.

Index, middle, ring, pinky. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

The conversation around us shifts. Celeste turns to someone new.

The assistant retreats with his tablet. In the gap that opens, Lyric turns to look at me, suddenly demanding my attention.

We’re nearly the same age, Lyric only a few years older than me but the authority he carries within the Hollis family is years beyond me.

"The Moreaus are a good family," he pushes out, raising an eyebrow as if he’s testing my response. "Strong line. You'd do well."

I hold his gaze and give him nothing, waiting for him to decide whether he believes my composure or whether he is going to dig deeper. "I'll keep that in mind.” I punctuate my sentence with a nod, trying to push some ounce of Alpha into my words to support me.

"I'm sure you will."

He turns back to the woman, effectively ending the conversation.

I should have known that it wasn’t really my choice to choose anything tonight.

The Moreau arrangement has been circling the edges of family dinners for months now, never demanded, never directly stated, just mentioned with the calm certainty of weather.

It will rain. You will mate Elias Moreau.

Both are simply things that are going to happen, and the fact that no one has asked me whether I want them to happen is not an oversight. It is the point.

My fingers are still tapping. The salmon is still untouched. I should stay. Leaving now would disappoint Celeste and signal weakness to Lyric. But God, I want to run.

I put my napkin on the table and stand, hesitating just before pushing my chair out before sitting back down. A second later, I stand again, drawing Celeste’s frown.

"Early morning," I state to the room. The smile I give Celeste is the right one, the one I've been giving since I was old enough to understand that a Hollis Alpha does not leave a family dinner looking like he's fleeing.

She pats my arm, while telling me to call about the gallery.

I tell her I will, and immediately want to take it back or say anything that would crack this perfect veneer I've spent years polishing.

Instead I swallow the rebellion and nod.

I manage another second at the table before heading for the entrance, not stopping until I’m entering the café six blocks from my house.

The contrast in cold air from the evening to the warmth of the little shop has me pausing, my gaze walking across each of the tables to find the reason I came here.

Anxiety builds in my chest for every second I don’t see the one cousin who understands me until I find him sitting toward the back, away from everyone else just the way I need.

He's slouched in the corner booth like he was poured into it, one arm across the back of the seat, legs stretched far under the table. There is a black coffee sitting on my side, waiting for me. Some part of me is grateful. The other part is irritated Koda knew I wouldn’t survive at that family function any longer.

I take my seat and pull the coffee toward me.

"You lasted just under two hours. Bad one?"

"Lyric brought up the Moreaus."

"Mm."

He locks his phone and slides it into his jacket before looking at me with that expression, the one that makes people think Koda Hollis has never taken a serious thing seriously in his life. Loose mouth, easy eyes, a permanent suggestion of amusement that sits on his face like it was born there.

I want to hate him for it sometimes. I want to shake him until that mask cracks.

But I've never corrected a single person who's underestimated him, never revealed what lurks beneath that practiced ease.

Is it protection or betrayal? The kindest gift I could give him, or the most selfish thing I do?

Let them see the charm. Let them miss the rest. Let me be the only one who knows.

"There's a new circuit out past the canyon," he starts, filling the silence. "Some guy from Phoenix brought an Evo. Thinks he can hang on the straights."

Relief blooms through my chest as Koda directs the conversation, making it easy to fall in after him. No one is asking me questions. No one needs me to make a decision. "Can he?"

"Not even a little bit."

Koda smirks as he goes into depth about the car, talking with his hands, voice climbing when he gets to the part where the driver mouthed off at a meet. I hate how much I crave these moments, the ones where I don’t have to think.

The ones where I don’t have to be on.

Here, in this little café, across from Koda, I’m just his cousin. We’re just two Alphas having coffee, talking about cars. Well, he’s talking and I’m listening.

I have never been sure whether it’s deliberate, whether he sat down at some point and decided that the way to handle me is to take every choice off the table and fill the space with something simple, or whether this is just how he is built and I am the one who turned it into medicine.

It doesn't matter. When Koda talks, I don't have to sort. I don't have to stack. I resent the relief even as I surrender to it, my fingers eventually going still against the warm ceramic of the mug.

"You look like you haven't slept in a week," he muses, folding it into the middle of a sentence about the Phoenix driver's tires as if it's the same conversation.

"I'm fine."

Koda just shakes his head as he drags a hand through his unruly hair.

“Suit yourself, Sai. But you’re going to die at the rate you’re going.

” He stands and tosses a bill on the table, too much for two coffees, the way he always overtips because money has never been something Koda thinks about.

On the way past me, he squeezes my shoulder.

"Whatever's keeping you up," he whispers, "either fix it or enjoy it. "

I wish it were that simple but my parents require excellence. The whole family does. Except, excellence looks different for each of the Hollis Alphas. For Koda, it’s meeting timelines and collecting payments from unruly packs who’ve decided they don’t want to pay up.

For me?

It’s image. Punctuality. Perfection.

I hate it.

Neither of us is living our truth, but his lie is so much easier to live inside than mine, and I think he knows that. I think it’s why he never pushes, because pushing would mean making me look at the difference between us and he is too kind for that. Or maybe he's too afraid. Maybe we both are.