Chapter 16
TESSA
There is a theory that shame has a weight.
I don’t know the exact physics of it—that’s Asher’s department—but as I lie in my own bed, staring at the familiar water stain in the shape of a cloud on my ceiling, I feel heavy. Heavier than I have ever felt in my life. Like someone has sewn lead weights into the lining under my skin.
The room is silent. Usually, my mornings are chaotic—Barnaby meowing for food at a decibel level that defies his size, the garbage truck beeping outside as it struggles with the narrow East Austin streets, me tripping over a stack of library books I keep meaning to return.
But today, the room is perfectly, terrifyingly still.
I turn my head. The pillowcase is cool against my heated cheek.
Asher is asleep beside me.
He is lying on his back, taking up the left side of the bed.
He fits into the space too well. His arm is thrown over his eyes to block the morning sun filtering through my cheap, paper-thin blinds. His chest rises and falls in a steady, slow rhythm, a stark contrast to the frantic rabbit-kick of my own heart.
I look at him, and my chest twists violently.
I slept with him.
I slept with the quiet brother. The one who brought me a brownie when I was starving and hadn’t realized it. The one who arranged the tow truck for my car in a dark parking garage without asking for a thank you.
I slept with him after sleeping with Owen. After Ethan took me on his desk. And I brought him here. Into my sanctuary. Into the one place that was supposed to be safe from the Branson gravity well.
“I am a disaster,” I whisper to the quiet room.
It wasn’t a mistake. I can’t call it a mistake, because I wanted it. I wanted him. I wanted to solve the puzzle of Asher just as much as he wanted to solve the variable of me.
But waking up and seeing his sleek, matte-black smartwatch on my chipped nightstand, sitting next to my half-empty water glass, makes it real.
I’ve completed the trifecta. I have slept with my boss, his brother, and his other brother.
And I cannot handle the fallout.
I sit up, pulling the sheet against my chest. My body aches—a dull, sweet soreness in my thighs that reminds me exactly how thorough he was. How precise.
Asher shifts. His arm drops from his face. His blue eyes open.
There is no grogginess. No confusion. No blinking awake. He goes from asleep to awake in a single second, his gaze locking onto mine with laser focus, as if his internal processor just rebooted.
“Good morning.” His voice is rough with sleep, a low rumble that sounds far too intimate in my small, cluttered bedroom.
“Hi,” I croak.
He reaches out, his hand finding my hip under the sheet. His fingers are warm, grounding.
“Your heart rate is elevated,” he observes.
“I just woke up.”
“You’re panicking,” he corrects gently.
He sits up, the sheet falling to his waist. He is unashamedly naked in my bed, his skin marked with the faint red lines of my sheets.
He looks around the room, his eyes scanning the stack of books on the floor, the peeling paint on the windowsill, the cat sleeping on the rug, the open closet door revealing my chaotic wardrobe.
He’s collecting data. He’s analyzing my life.
“I’m not panicking,” I lie, swinging my legs over the side of the bed to put distance between us. “I’m just… late. I have to go to work. We have the launch prep.”
“Tessa.”
He says my name like a command code.
I freeze, my back to him.
“Do you regret it?” he asks.
I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s the question I was dreading. It’s the question that turns this from a moment of connection into a moral referendum.
Do I regret it?
Do I regret the way he made me feel? No. Do I regret that I have now complicated an already impossible situation to the point of no return?
Yes.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
“I need you to be sure,” Asher says quietly.
I hear the rustle of sheets. He moves across the bed, sliding up behind me. He wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me back against his chest. He buries his face in the curve of my neck, inhaling deeply.
“Do you regret being with me?” he asks, stressing the last word.
I lean into him. I can’t help it. He feels solid. Safe. Which is ironic, considering he is one-third of the reason why my life is about to implode.
“No,” I admit softly. “I don’t regret being with you, Asher. You were… incredible.”
He kisses my shoulder. “Then the rest is just logistics. We can solve logistics.”
“It’s not logistics!” I pull away, standing up and grabbing my robe from the chair.
I wrap it around myself tightly, tying the belt like a tourniquet.
I turn to face him. “It’s feelings, Asher.
It’s loyalty. It’s your brothers. It’s my job.
It’s the fact that I am essentially the Yoko Ono of the Phantom Trio. ”
“They know,” he says.
I stop dead. “What?”
“I texted the group chat last night,” Asher says calmly. “I told them the status quo was unsustainable. I told them we needed to talk.”
“You did what?” My voice rises to a screech. “You told them?”
“I didn’t give them the details,” Asher says, standing up and retrieving his clothes from where he dropped them on the floor last night. He steps into his boxers with maddening calm. “But they know I was with you. Owen knows. Ethan knows.”
“Oh my god.” I press my hands to my face, pacing the small strip of rug between the bed and the door. “I can’t go in there. I can’t walk into that office. Ethan is going to kill me. Or fire me. Or both.”
“You have to,” Asher says, pulling his t-shirt over his head. “The global launch is in forty-eight hours.” It’s the day the app officially goes live to the public. The day everything is supposed to peak.
“I don’t care about the launch! I care about the fact that I have slept with all three of you, and now you’re all talking about it in a group chat like it’s a bug fix!”
Asher stops dressing. He looks at me. His expression softens, the analytical mask slipping just enough to show the man underneath.
“We aren’t talking about it like a bug fix,” he says quietly. “We are talking about it like a crisis. Because that is what you are to us, Tessa. You are a crisis we don’t know how to manage.”
He walks over to me. He reaches out, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. His touch is gentle, reverent.
“I won’t let Ethan fire you,” he says. “And I won’t let Owen pressure you. But you have to face us.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” he says. “You are the strongest variable in this equation. You proved that when you stood up to Ethan in the boardroom. You proved it when you played split-flipper with me.”
He kisses my forehead.
“I’ll leave first,” he says. “I’ll go to the office. I’ll handle them. I’ll stabilize the environment before you arrive.”
I stare at him. He thinks it’s that simple. He thinks because he has calculated the outcome, it will be fine.
He thinks logic can solve this.
But he’s wrong. He thinks he can just write a check and fix it. He offered to pay the bonus for me last night.
But if I take his money, I’m just trading one debt for another. I’m trading Ethan’s trap for Asher’s charity.
Asher finishes dressing. He picks up his keys.
“See you at the office,” he says.
He walks out of my bedroom. I hear the front door click shut.
I am alone.
I sink onto the floor.
I don’t leave immediately. I can’t.
I sit on the floor of my living room, staring at the empty space where my roommate’s couch used to be. The dust bunnies dance in the sunlight and mock me.
The reality of my situation hits me.
I have slept with my bosses. My best friend is in Paris, blissfully unaware that I have betrayed her trust three times over.
And now, thanks to Asher’s honesty, the brothers know.
Ethan knows. Ethan, who threatened to sue me. Ethan, who controls my paycheck. Ethan, who looked at me with cold, dead eyes and backed me into a financial corner.
I look over at the small desk in the corner. I don’t need to open the blue folder to know what the contract says. I memorized it the day I signed it, desperate to replace Daniella’s share of the rent. Fifty thousand dollars. Immediate repayment upon termination.
If I stay, it’s a soap opera that will inevitably blow up in my face. The tension is unsustainable. Harper will find out. The press will find out. The guilt will eat me alive.
But if I walk away, I’m bankrupt. If Ethan sues me, I lose everything. I move back to Ohio. I become the failure my father always worried I’d be.
I can’t take Asher’s money. He offered, but I can’t do it. It makes me a “kept woman.” It validates everything Ethan thinks about me—that I’m just a mess they have to clean up.
I need a third option. I need leverage. I need money that doesn’t come with strings attached to a Branson.
I stand up, my legs shaky but my resolve hardens into something brittle and sharp.
I grab my laptop and pull up LinkedIn.
I dig through my archived messages, scrolling past the generic recruiter spam until I find the notification I hid on Tuesday. The one I swiped away because it felt like treason. It’s from the shark who smells blood.
Markus Vance.
He’s a Vice President at Nebula, Mosaic’s biggest competitor. He’s been blowing up my inbox since the “Be Seen” teaser went viral last week. They are corporate, soulless, and massive.
Markus tried to recruit me right out of college, and he’s been trying again ever since the industry caught wind of the campaign. He was arrogant, pushy, and treated branding like warfare—everything I hated.
But right now, he looks like a lifeline.
I find his number. I stare at it.
Calling him is treason. It is the ultimate betrayal. If I go to Nebula, I will take Mosaic’s DNA with me.
You aren’t broken. You’re just buffering.
I came up with that. That’s mine. If I leave, can I take it? Probably not. But I can take the brain that made it.
“Survival first,” I whisper, echoing Ethan’s own philosophy.
I dial.
It rings twice.