CHAPTER 3 — PROFESSIONAL HANDS, DIRTY MEMORIES #3
“You interrupted a session,” Noah replied, regaining his composure fast enough to irritate me, though the flush on his neck still gave away that Mason wasn't entirely wrong.
“Right. Session,” Mason repeated, opening a bag and pulling out containers of Thai food like he owned my kitchen. “Love science. Big advocate for supervised human contact.”
“Spit out the news before I throw you out the window,” I said, because Mason wouldn't cross the city with food in the pouring rain just to be annoying—he absolutely would, no question—but his expression held something beyond amusement.
The shift was subtle, but it was there. Mason set a container on the counter and turned serious, which made Noah close the bag slowly.
The night, already bad, found a way to get worse.
Mason looked at me, then at Noah, as if weighing how much he should say in front of him.
That hesitation alone was enough to put me on edge.
“The east dorm is going to be shut down longer than they said,” Mason said. “It's not just plumbing. There's faulty wiring, the ceiling's collapsing in two hallways, and a desperate residential director using the word weeks instead of days.”
Noah stood motionless near the table. I felt the news land between us, hitting us both for different reasons.
Weeks. The word carried weight—furniture, routine, towels in the bathroom, coffee in the kitchen, keys by the door.
It meant Noah crossing my living room in a gray shirt, Noah opening the fridge, Noah touching me every day because my shoulder had decided to fail right when he came back to Northaven.
It also meant the part of me that was furious I couldn't hate the image as much as I should.
“On top of that,” Mason continued, watching me more carefully now, “Julian called the department. He heard about the fall, heard Noah's here, and wants you to call him back today. Judging by the coordinator's tone, he's not happy about either one.”
My brother's name drained the remaining warmth from the room and left something else in its place: the kind of cold that didn't come from ice, but from boardrooms, contracts, and smiles without affection.
Noah looked away too quickly when he heard Julian, and that reaction hit me like a puzzle piece that didn't fit.
The session, the almost-kiss, the racing pulse under my fingers—all of it stepped back to make room for an older question.
What did Noah know that he still hadn't told me?
And why did my brother's name make his face shut down like that?
Mason noticed something too, because he wasn't as dumb as he liked to pretend.
He stayed quiet, and his silence only made the tension worse.
Noah closed the therapy bag carefully, each buckle snapping into place like he needed to finish the task before he could face anyone.
When he looked up, the calm had returned, but now it looked thrown together.
“Today's evaluation is done,” he said, not looking at Mason.
“You need ice for fifteen minutes, no extra training, no testing your range of motion alone in front of the mirror, and no calling your brother before you eat, because fighting on an empty stomach probably counts as a cardiovascular risk factor.”
I should have hit back with something cruel.
I should have reminded Noah that my family wasn't his business, that my penthouse wasn't a clinic, that my body wasn't territory where he could hand out orders and then retreat when things got hard.
But he was there, in my living room, rain still caught in his hair, the faint mark of my fingers maybe still warm on his wrist, and the shadow of the Blackwood name hanging over us both like an old threat.
“You're getting comfortable too fast, Bennett,” I said, keeping my voice low, because shouting would mean admitting the night had found too many ways to get to me. “Careful you don't confuse guest room with safe place.”
Noah grabbed the bag and walked past me toward the hallway, close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed my good arm.
He paused for just a second, not looking directly at me, and when he spoke his voice was controlled, steady, carrying a weariness that stole some of the satisfaction I should have felt from provoking him.
“I stopped confusing you with a safe place four years ago, Damon.”
He disappeared into the guest room before I could turn the sentence into a fight, leaving Mason silent in the kitchen, the food forgotten on the counter, and the entire penthouse heavy with a presence that no lock could contain.
I stood by the window, feeling my shoulder throb, my wrist still holding the warmth of his skin, my mind slipping into the most dangerous mode of all—the one that didn't want immediate victory, but answers.
Noah Bennett was in my house, in my hallway, in my weeks ahead, and I didn't know what infuriated me more: the fact that he was still hiding something, or the fact that my whole body already wanted to uncover the truth with my hands.