18. Shay
Shay
The phone screen is dark, but I can still see Declan’s name burning a hole in the glass. It’s been twenty minutes of me sitting on the floor, staring at it, with a half-packed duffel bag at my feet and a stolen bar towel folded in my lap.
It’s pathetic. This is a new personal best in the Pathetic Olympics.
My room smells like nothing—just the clean, sterile scent of my own life.
Cold coffee from this morning, the detergent I use, the vanilla candle Soren likes to burn in the living room.
It’s the opposite of cedar and woodsmoke and old whiskey, the opposite of the clean cotton scent that’s lodged so deep in my lungs that breathing regular air feels thin and wrong.
My teeth ache. That’s how much I miss him. It’s a physical, stupid ache in my jaw.
I unlock the phone again. The message field is still blank.
Hey.
Delete. Too casual. Nothing about this is casual.
We need to talk.
That’s worse. Sounds like I’m about to fire him from a group project.
I’m sorry.
My throat seizes. Just typing it puts me back in his apartment, wrapped in that nest, his hand covering the bite on my neck while he murmured things into my hair.
Puts me back at the bar after the relaunch, spitting the ugliest words I could think of because I was terrified, and I knew exactly how to make him hurt.
I delete the words. Type them again. Hover over send, then delete one more time.
Downstairs, the front door opens and shuts.
Jude’s laugh echoes up the stairwell, sharp and loud.
I catch Milo’s softer voice, then a deadpan mumble that can only be Benji.
The sounds of my friends, all trying to pretend they aren’t waiting for me to shatter into a million pieces.
They spent the better part of the evening letting me pace and rage, and now they’re giving me space to do whatever comes next.
I should go down there. I should eat something. I should finish unpacking the duffel bag, because where the hell am I going to go?
But I just keep staring at Declan’s name, and the one crushing fact I can’t spin or analyze my way out of: he hasn’t called. He hasn’t texted.
Which is fair. Completely fair. A man can only chase you so many times before he gets tired of you setting fires just to see if he’ll show up with a bucket of water. He has a bar to run. He has Tessa, who has probably told him he’s an idiot a dozen times by now.
God, Tessa. I think I’d rather face another one of my mother’s ex-boyfriends than her.
My fingers tighten on the towel, worn soft from a thousand washes, from being slung over Declan’s shoulder while he worked.
I don’t know if he gets that. I don’t know if I’ll even get a chance to explain it.
The screen goes dark again.
Then, a knock on the apartment door.
My entire body goes rigid.
“I got it!” Jude yells from the living room.
A man’s voice answers, too low for me to make out the words, but my body hears it anyway.
Oh.
My heart gives a single, painful thud against my ribs.
A moment later, the scent finds me, slipping under my bedroom door like it has a key. Cedar and clean cotton and the deep, warm note of aged whiskey—Declan.
I’m on my feet before I’ve made a decision to stand. The towel slips to the floor. My phone lands silently on the rug. I just stare at my bedroom door, waiting for an instruction manual that doesn’t exist.
A quiet knock, right on the wood in front of me.
Not the front door this time. My door.
“Shay?”
His voice cracks right through me.
I cross the room, trip over the strap of my duffel bag, and pull the door open.
Declan fills the hallway. He looks like hell.
Not bad—the man could never look bad—but he’s exhausted.
There are shadows under his eyes that weren’t there before, and his beard is less neat, more worried-at.
He looks like he’s been dragging his hands through his hair for days.
His scent washes over me, and my body sags with a relief so total it’s dizzying.
Home, some traitorous part of my brain whispers.
His eyes find my face, then drop to the mark just visible over the collar of my shirt. His jaw tightens.
“Hey,” he says. Just that.
My throat is useless. “Hey,” I manage.
We stand there, staring. Over his shoulder, the rest of the squad is pretending not to be a tactical surveillance unit at the bottom of the stairs.
Jude has Rhys pulled against his side. Milo is covering Soren’s mouth, probably to muffle a sympathetic sob.
Benji is just leaning against the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, face a perfect mask of indifference.
“You all need hobbies,” I say, my voice raw.
Benji’s mouth twitches. “This is my hobby.”
“Shay,” Declan says, soft and low, and my attention snaps back to him. Everything in me just… orients toward him. I hate how easy it is.
He’s holding a slim black folder. Not flowers, not a grand gesture. A folder. The sight of it is so practical, so Declan, that it almost makes me want to cry.
“Can I come in?” he asks.
I nod, stepping back. He moves past me into the room, careful, as if he’s worried he might not be allowed to take up space here.
He is too much for this room. Too broad, too solid.
His presence makes my neat, sterile space feel small.
His eyes land on the open duffel bag, then on the green bar towel lying next to it on the floor.
I snatch the towel up before he can say a word, clutching it in my fist. He doesn’t comment. Thank God.
I sit on the edge of my bed because my knees feel like they might give out.
Declan takes my desk chair, looks at it for a second, then sets the folder on the small table between us instead of sitting down.
He stands there, his hands resting on his thighs, and I have the wildly unhelpful thought that I could climb him like a tree and bury my face in his neck until this whole week rewinds itself.
“I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me,” he says quietly.
I look down at the towel. “I was trying to text you.”
His head comes up. “Yeah?” There’s a crack in his voice, hope or maybe just exhaustion.
“Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re looking at me like I just confessed a deep emotional vulnerability.”
A tiny, exhausted smile touches his mouth. “You kind of did.”
My answering laugh is a broken, watery sound. Great. Now I’m crying. Fantastic. I scrub at my eye with the heel of my hand. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
He finally sits, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “I came here because I needed to say things where you could see my face. And to give you this.” He slides the folder across the table.
My name is on the label.
Under it: BYRNE’S & THOMPSON. PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT.
I just stare at it. The words don’t connect.
“Byrne’s and Thompson.?” I ask, my voice thin.
“Yeah.”
“What is this?”
“It means the legal-clinic lawyer Rhys found us drafted a new structure this morning.” He scrapes a hand over his jaw, a nervous gesture I’ve seen a hundred times. “It means the business is becoming an LLC. With two managing partners.”
My stomach feels like it’s full of ice. I don’t touch the folder. I can smell the anxiety coming off him now, a sharp edge to his scent that cuts right through me.
“Open it,” he says.
My fingers are shaking. The first page is a wall of legal text. Sections are highlighted in yellow. Ownership percentages. Profit distribution. My brain snags on one number and just stops cold.
Fifty percent.
I look up so fast my neck cracks. “Declan.”
“I know what it says.”
“No. You don’t get to do this. You don’t hand someone half your life’s work because you feel guilty.”
“I’m not,” he says, his voice gone rough.
“And yeah, I feel guilty. I feel sick about what I said to you. I used the one thing you’re most afraid of to try and make you stay.
I know that.” He doesn’t look away. “But this isn’t about that.
I should have done this the day you walked in with that binder.
You saw what this place could be. You didn’t just save the bar for me, Shay. You saved it with me.”
My name, right there, next to his. Not an employee. A partner. The word blurs behind a sting of tears.
“You’re offering me half your bar,” I whisper.
“I’m offering you half of our bar.”
That’s it. My chest just collapses. “I don’t have the money to buy in,” I say, the practical objection falling out of my mouth automatically. It’s what I do. I bring a spreadsheet to an emotional crisis.
“You don’t need it. Your buy-in is the work you’ve already done. Your strategy, your time. It’s all in there.”
“You can’t just decide I’m worth half a business.”
“I can decide you’re worth more than that.
” His eyes are so damn earnest it hurts to look at him.
“I don’t want you working for me. I don’t want you living in my apartment.
I don’t want you to ever feel like you have to earn your place in my life.
” His gaze drops to the towel I’m strangling in my fist. “I want you there because you choose to be. I want you arguing with me about inventory. I want you changing the playlist when my back is turned. I want you.”
A sob breaks out of me, tangled with a laugh.
Declan’s eyes go glassy. He nods once, like he’s bracing himself.
“I love you,” he says.
The words don’t land. They detonate. They go straight through every wall I’ve ever built and find the kid who watched a dozen different men walk out the door and decided no one would ever get the chance to do that to him again.
Declan’s voice cracks. “I love you. And I want you to be my partner. In everything.”
The last wall crumbles. I don’t think, I just move. I’m up, stumbling over the corner of the table, and I launch myself at him.
He’s halfway out of his chair when I grab his face in my hands and kiss him.
It’s a mess. My mouth is wet from tears, his beard scratches my face, and I’m making a choked, broken sound against his lips. He groans, a rough noise deep in his chest, and his hands find my waist, holding me steady but not pulling me closer. Waiting. He’s always waiting for me to make the choice.
So I do. I climb into his lap.
His arms wrap around me then, strong and sure, holding me like I’m something precious. I turn my face into his neck and just breathe. Cedar. Whiskey. Cotton. Home.
I feel the muscles in his throat work as he swallows. A low rumble starts in his chest, that sound that’s somewhere between comfort and possession.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against his skin. “I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I turned you into one of them.”
His grip tightens. “I’m not them,” he says, his voice wrecked. “But I gave you a reason to be scared, and I’m sorry for that.”
I pull back just enough to see his face. “You gave me one reason. And I built a whole goddamn fortress out of it because that’s what I do.”
His thumb gently wipes a tear from under my eye. “You’re allowed to be scared.”
“I know,” I say, my breath shuddering. “I’m just tired of letting it make all the decisions.”
His eyes close for a second. When they open, they’re impossibly green. “You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
I look at the folder on the table. Then at my phone, still face-down on the rug where I dropped it.
“Yes, I do.”
I slide off his lap and pick up my phone. My hands are steady now. The KnotMe icon is there, pink and black, a symbol of the escape hatch I’ve kept open for years. The part of me that always knew how to leave first.
I hold the phone so he can see the screen. His expression softens.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says.
“I know.”
And because he’s not asking, because he’s not demanding proof, I give it to him freely.
I press my thumb to the icon until the menu pops up. My finger hovers over Remove App. For a second, I think of the person who downloaded it, the one who was so sure he’d never need anyone. He kept me safe for a long time. But safe has started to feel a lot like lonely.
I hit delete.
The app vanishes.
I set the phone down and meet Declan’s gaze. He’s looking at me like I just hung the moon.
“I don’t need it anymore,” I tell him.
His face just breaks. He lets out a shaky breath and presses his forehead to mine, his hands finding my hips like they belong there.
“You’ve got me,” he says into the space between us.
I put my hand flat against his chest, over his heart. “And you’ve got me.”
The partnership agreement is still on the table, my name right next to his.
For the first time in my life, I look at the fine print and I’m not searching for the exit clause.