16. Shay
Shay
My phone lights up. Again.
I lunge for it, almost knocking over the cold brew sweating on the edge of my desk. My thumb is already on the screen before my brain even registers the buzz.
Jude: OPEN THE DOOR
Jude: I know you’re in there
Jude: your scent is leaking under it like a sad little candle
Not Declan.
Of course it’s not Declan.
My stomach still drops like I missed a step in the dark. Then I’m just pissed at myself, because apparently collecting new and exciting humiliations is my hobby now.
I flip the phone facedown on the desk.
Three seconds later, I flip it back over.
No new messages.
“Pathetic,” I tell the phone.
It doesn’t argue.
My room looks exactly the way I left it, which is somehow offensive.
White duvet pulled military-tight. Desk clear except for my laptop, my planner, the cold brew, and a stack of papers I should probably care about.
Graduation is coming up, and I’m supposed to be building a future, not having a full-scale emotional collapse in the room I designed specifically to be un-feel-able.
No clutter. No soft blankets. No stupid green bar towel tucked under my pillow, because I’m not insane.
The towel is in my duffel bag on the floor.
I haven’t unpacked.
I also haven’t thrown it away.
That’s not a data point. That’s nothing.
The whole room smells like detergent, cold coffee, and the vanilla candle Soren gave me for my birthday. I never light it because it’s too sweet. It smells like a hotel room. Like I could just disappear and no one would know I was ever here, which used to be the point.
Now it just smells wrong.
I want cedar. I want clean cotton and aged whiskey and the lemon polish from the bar downstairs. I want Declan’s stupid Henley shoved against my face while he breathes behind me, one heavy arm thrown over my waist like he’s daring me to go anywhere.
The thought catches on the line of his throat, that thick column that flexed any time he swallowed during closing shifts, the tendon standing out when he tried not to laugh at one of my spreadsheets.
I keep imagining the exact texture of it under my tongue, the scrape of stubble, the low rumble that would roll out of him if I sucked hard enough to leave a mark.
My mouth actually waters. I hate how specific it is, how my brain has filed away the exact width of his fingers, the blunt tips of them, the way they’d look spread across my hip bone holding me down while he—
Great. Perfect. Love this for me.
A fist hits my door. Hard.
“Shay,” Jude calls. “Open up before I start narrating your breakdown to the whole group chat.”
“I’m not having a breakdown.”
“You have them constantly. You just put them in business casual.”
I stare at the door.
Another knock. Softer this time.
“Sweetheart?” Milo says. “I brought soup.”
I close my eyes.
That’s so unfair.
Milo’s soup is emotional warfare. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He just shows up with a bowl of something warm, smelling faintly of vanilla and chamomile and home, and looks at you with those huge, sad eyes until you admit you haven’t eaten actual food in a day and a half.
“I’m not hungry,” I call out.
“Okay,” Milo says, gentle as hell. “I still brought it.”
Benji’s voice comes through the wood. “He’s probably running on spite and caffeine. A very sustainable long-term plan.”
“It got you through sophomore year,” I shoot back.
“Yeah, and then I met Knox and got stupid. Your point?”
Soren makes this tiny, strangled sound that might be a laugh.
There’s a pause.
Then Jude says, “I’m counting to five.”
“Don’t.”
“One.”
I scrub both hands over my face.
“Two.”
“This is my room.”
“Three.”
“You can’t stage a coup in my bedroom.”
“Four.”
I stomp across the room and yank the door open.
Jude stands there with both hands on his hips, looking way too pleased with himself.
Rhys must’ve dropped him off and wisely fled before the omega equivalent of a hostile intervention could start.
Milo’s holding a covered pot like it’s a shield.
Soren has a stack of bowls and spoons. Benji leans against the hallway wall with a paper bag, his expression so flat it could be a medical emergency.
All four of them look at me.
I look at all four of them.
“No,” I say.
Jude pushes past me first. “Cute. Move.”
“This violates several tenant agreements.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I literally read the lease.”
“That’s why I brought backup.” He points at Milo. “Soup.”
Milo squeezes by with a sympathetic little smile. “Hi.”
“Don’t ‘hi’ me like I’m a wounded animal.”
“You are a wounded animal.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Adults can have soup, too.”
Soren slips in behind him, shutting the door with his foot. “We can leave if you really want us to.”
His voice is so earnest it feels like a punch to the throat.
Because he means it. Soren would leave. He’d sit outside my door with his bowl and let the soup get cold if that’s what I asked. He’s the only one here who isn’t paired off and glowing with that obnoxious mated contentment that’s infected all my friends like a shared medical condition.
I hate that he looks at me like he gets it anyway.
Benji shuts the door behind him and locks it.
“Wow,” I say. “Kidnapping. Bold.”
“You can still leave through the window.”
“I’m on the second floor.”
“Then you’re staying.”
Milo sets the pot on my desk, moves my cold brew, and starts ladling soup into a bowl like he lives here.
Which, to be fair, he kind of does. We all do.
The apartment runs on whoever needs something most at any given moment.
Milo needs the kitchen. Jude needs an audience.
Benji needs someone to insult. Soren needs quiet corners.
Apparently, I need a full-scale home invasion.
Jude drops onto my desk chair backward, arms folded over the backrest. “Okay. We’re doing this.”
“We are not.”
“You left Declan.”
“I left a situation.”
“You left your mate.”
“Same thing.”
Jude just stares at me. “No, it literally isn’t.”
“Actually, it is. The situation involved an older alpha with money, a business, and a terrifying inability to understand that offering someone access to your bank account isn’t romantic.”
Milo sets the soup in front of me. Steam curls between us, smelling of garlic and tomato and enough butter to soothe a small nation.
“Eat,” he says.
“I’m making a point.”
“You can make it while eating.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Benji reaches over, picks up my spoon, and holds it out. “Don’t make Milo use his mom voice. It’s upsetting for everyone.”
Milo doesn’t even look offended. He just keeps watching me.
I take the spoon.
This isn’t surrender. It’s avoiding a prolonged argument about soup.
The first bite is warm and humiliating. My stomach twists around it like it’s been waiting. Which it has. I hate that, too.
Jude sees it on my face and pounces.
“You’re being an idiot,” he says.
“Wow. I’m cured.”
“No, listen to me.” His voice cuts through mine, all the joking gone. “Letting someone love you isn’t a weakness, you moron. It’s the whole point. You think I’m weaker because I let Rhys take care of me?”
I look away.
“Shay.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to. You’ve been saying it with your whole stupid face since the first time I showed up in Rhys’s hoodie.”
“That hoodie was ugly.”
“It was a shirt. And I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.” Jude leans forward, his eyes bright, furious in that way they get when he loves somebody too much. “Being loved didn’t erase me. It gave me somebody who sees me when I’m being a disaster and doesn’t run.”
I freeze, the spoon halfway to my mouth.
“That’s great for you,” I say finally. “Congratulations on having a healthy, emotionally available grad student who worships the ground you walk on. Really. Put it on a mug.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“I’m not being a dick. I’m being realistic.”
“No. You’re being scared.”
The word hits too close. I put the spoon down before I throw it at him.
“Scared of what, exactly?”
Jude opens his mouth.
“Actually, never mind. Let’s do this.” I sit up straighter on my bed, clutching the bowl in both hands. “Let’s audit everyone’s choices, since apparently we’re pretending fated mates are a flawless business model now.”
“Oh my god,” Milo murmurs.
“Jude fucked his TA.”
“Former TA,” Jude says.
“Still a terrible risk-management decision. Milo got involved with Callum, who has a job where he literally runs into burning buildings. Benji went back to the alpha who ghosted him and has a tattoo of a knife on his throat.”
“It’s a snake,” Benji says.
“Even worse. Soren gets anonymous gifts from a mystery person who may or may not be a serial killer with woodworking skills.”
Soren blinks. “He’s not a serial killer.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I have a feeling.”
“Feelings aren’t evidence.”
“Your whole relationship with Declan is feelings,” Jude says.
I glare at him.
He glares right back.
There was a time I could’ve won this. I could’ve kept talking, made it funny enough, brutal enough, that eventually somebody would laugh. The room would loosen. We’d move on.
But Milo just picks up the soup pot and ladles himself another bowl.
He doesn’t defend Callum.
Doesn’t explain that Callum makes him tea when he’s studying, or checks the windows twice before bed, or lets Milo organize the spice rack even though it was already organized.
He doesn’t have to.
Milo eats a spoonful of soup and says quietly, “Callum doesn’t do things for me because he thinks I can’t do them.”
My fingers tighten on the bowl.
“He does them because he loves me,” Milo adds. “And I do things for him, too. That’s all.”
It’s so simple. So annoying.
“So Declan offering me money was what?” I ask. “A love language?”
Milo’s mouth presses into a line. He looks down at his soup.
Jude starts to say something, but Soren touches his arm.
The room goes quiet except for the low rattle of the ancient AC.
I hate quiet. Quiet leaves too much room for things to crawl out.
“He messed up,” Soren says.
Everybody turns to him.