Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Mia
Through the front window, I see the plumber walking back and forth to his van. He looks competent, which is the only thing keeping me from hyperventilating.
Knox is sprawled in the armchair, one leg hooked over the arm, scrolling through his phone but glancing up at me every thirty seconds like he’s checking I’m still breathing.
Declan has migrated to the kitchen, and Rhys has migrated to the floor, back against the couch near my feet, laptop balanced on his knees.
I’m curled into the corner of their sectional, legs tucked under me, Declan’s hoodie puddled around my knees like a personal tent. The blanket they tossed over me earlier is still draped around my shoulders, like a heavy, warm cocoon. The entire house smells like them. Smells like…pack.
I shouldn’t feel this safe.
My house is literally flooding. Some stranger is cutting into my plumbing with what sounds like a power tool. My editor just met one of my neighbors on Zoom. My dignity is on life support.
And yet. Here, in this living room that still has bare walls and unpacked corners, with cables snaking behind the TV and a whiteboard covered in code leaning against the wall, I feel…held.
Whatever happened with the laundry line feels a million miles away. Looking at them now, I can’t make the image of “creepy panty thief” fit. I just can’t.
Dangerous. Very dangerous.
Declan reappears from the kitchen with a tray balanced on one palm like he’s been waiting tables his whole life. Chips. Cut-up fruit. A bowl of popcorn. And chocolate-covered almonds in a little ceramic dish.
He sets the tray on the coffee table with a flourish. “I didn’t know what you needed, so I just brought…everything. Salty, sweet, crunchy. Pick your poison.”
I hesitate, reaching for a chip.
“The chocolate,” Rhys says from the floor.
I pause.
He doesn’t look up from his laptop, but his voice is low and certain. “You’re shaking, Mia. And your scent has gone sour with exhaustion. Eat the almonds first.”
Declan grins, nudging the little ceramic bowl closer to my hand. “Doctor’s orders.”
Rhys’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t dignify that with a reply. His fingers just keep moving over the keyboard. If I didn’t know he was dealing with code that runs an app used by millions, I’d think he was just answering email.
Knox slides from the armchair and drops onto the floor in front of the coffee table, cross-legged, grabbing a chip like he’s claimed that spot. “Do you think that guy will be able to fix it?” he asks, glancing up at Declan as he takes a bite. “It was pretty bad in there when I went in.”
Declan shrugs. “Should take him about two hours? Maybe ninety minutes if he’s good. It was a pretty bad leak.”
I reach for a chip, fingers brushing the rim of the bowl. “He said something about corroded fittings and ‘wow, that thing was waiting to blow.’”
Declan winces. “Phrasing.”
I throw a chip at him.
He dodges, grinning. “Violence? In my home? Rude.”
“You deserved that,” I say, but the corners of my mouth won’t stay flat. “This is your fault, by the way. All of you. Clearly my house heard your late night drilling and got jealous.”
Knox lifts a brow. “So it decided to get soaking wet just to get us inside?”
Heat flares in my cheeks. “That is not what I said.”
“It’s what we heard,” he winks.
I shake my head, trying not to laugh because if I laugh too much, my body will remember it’s tired and borderline overwhelmed.
“So.” Declan claps his hands once, rubbing them together. “We have, conservatively, an hour and a half before Eli comes back in here with bad news about your drywall. I vote we ignore reality until then.”
“I really should be working,” I protest weakly, patting my laptop like the guilty thing it is.
“Your editor told you to take the rest of the day,” Declan points out. “I was there. I heard her. She said, and I quote, ‘don’t die of stress.’”
“She also told you not to break my concentration,” I remind him.
He grins. “And now you have no concentration to break. Problem solved.”
Rhys huffs under his breath. I can’t tell if it’s amusement or exasperation.
“Don’t you have your own work?” I ask.
“We do,” Knox says, taking another chip. “We’re not doing it.”
“We’re letting the code marinate,” Declan adds. “If you stare at it too long, it breaks. It’s science. Now—”
“Dek,” Rhys says without looking up, “if you start quoting your own TED Talk again, I’m drowning you in the sump pump.”
I blink. “You have a TED Talk?”
Three heads swivel toward me. Knox’s smile goes slow and wicked. “You don’t know who we are, do you?”
“I mean, I know who you are,” I say, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I know you’re Traynor Tech, and you made the app, and Sierra thinks you’re the second coming of Steve Jobs.”
Declan freezes. “Sierra?”
“My best friend. She’s an event planner in the city.”
“Sierra Smith?” Declan asks, brightening instantly.
“That’s the one.”
“Wait,” Knox says, pointing a chip at me. “Your Sierra is Sierra? The one who handled the launch party? The one who threatened to cut Declan’s mic if he didn’t stop trying to bribe the caterers?”
“That sounds like her.” I nod.
Declan laughs. “I love her. She’s terrifying.”
“Yes,” I say. “She also said you tried to bribe her caterer with stock options in exchange for more sliders.”
He points at me. “For the record, that was a good deal.”
“Focus,” Knox says. His gaze fixes on me, sharper now, like he’s genuinely curious. “You don’t know the origin story?”
“I know the app exists,” I hedge. “I’ve written about your category from the outside. ‘Digital tools to strengthen pack communication,’ blah blah.”
Declan claps a hand over his heart. “So you’ve been living next door to geniuses and didn’t even Google us?”
“I was busy dragging your gaming chair off my lawn,” I remind him. “Also, I was trying not to be a creep.”
Knox snorts, reaching for the popcorn. “Trust me, you didn’t miss much. If you’d Googled us, you just would have found a lot of bad headlines and tech speculation.”
“And terrible photos,” Declan adds. “They always use the one where I’m blinking.”
I smile into the hoodie. “So I saved myself the trouble.”
“Exactly,” Declan says, leaning down to sit on the floor at the coffee table next to Knox. “If you don’t know the story, we get to tell it. And we get to control the narrative instead of letting some journalist call us ‘brogrammers who sniff pheromones for a living.’”
“One journalist wrote that,” Rhys says, deadpan. “Two years ago.”
“It lives rent-free in my head,” Declan mutters.
My curiosity perks up. “Okay. Fine. Tell me. But I reserve the right to fact-check later.”
“Fair,” Knox says.
He reaches for his water bottle, takes a long sip, then settles back against the base of the couch so his shoulder brushes my shins through the blanket. Casual. Too casual.
“So,” he says, “picture this: four idiots in a shitty student apartment with bad Wi-Fi and worse dietary habits.”
“Speak for yourself.” Declan sniffs. “I was beta-testing a fully biometric entry system.”
“You coded a bug that interpreted ‘unlock’ as ‘level 5 lockdown,’” Rhys says, still not looking up.
“It was a security feature. The sensitivity was just…too high.”
“It trapped us inside for three days,” Knox reminds him. “We had to pee in the sink and unscrew the hinges with a dime.”
I wince, a laugh bubbling in my chest. “Oh no.”
“Yeah,” Rhys says softly. “Oh no. The fire marshal had to break the door down.”
“What matters,” Declan says louder, “is that it led to us inventing the incident response channel in our app, so technically, I was innovating.”
“You almost innovated us into homelessness,” Knox says.
I pull the blanket tighter around myself, trying to ignore the way my omega is purring at being the center of their collective focus. This is normal neighbor behavior, I tell myself. People help each other during disasters. This is just… neighborly efficiency.
Except neighbors don’t usually make you feel like you’re the only thing in the room that matters.
“How did you even meet?” I ask, because if I’m going to be trapped here until the plumber finishes, I might as well satisfy my burning curiosity. And maybe learn something that will prove they’re not perfect and I can stop spiraling.
The question lands differently than I expected.
Knox’s gaze sharpens, flicking to Rhys, then to Declan. There’s a moment of silent communication I can’t quite read.
“College,” Eli’s voice comes from the doorway.
I jump slightly, looking up to see him stepping back inside, wiping his hands on a rag. He must have finished with the plumber’s initial assessment.
“Plumber says an hour, maybe ninety minutes.” He takes his shoes off near the door. “It’s a clean break, so that’s good. No secondary damage to the foundation. He’ll cap it, replace the section, test the pressure. Your property manager’s sending someone to assess the floor damage tomorrow.”
Relief floods through me. “Thank you. For handling that.”
“You’re welcome.” He crosses to the couch and, without asking, picks up another blanket from the basket near the entertainment center and drapes it over my shoulders. The gesture is so casual, so automatic, that I don’t even think to protest until it’s done.
He settles into the other end of the sectional, close enough that I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. Which I don’t. Obviously.
“College,” he says again, picking up the thread. “MIT. Freshman year.”
“You all went to MIT?” I ask, eyebrows rising.
“Full ride for Eli,” Declan says, a note of pride in his voice. “Beta with a brain that made professors cry. They practically begged him to come.”
“What about the rest of you?” I ask, looking between them.
“Knox and I got in on merit,” Rhys says, finally glancing up from his screen. “Separately. Didn’t know we were twins when we applied.”
I blink. “Wait, what?”