Chapter 15 #3
Could I share that? Could I be one part of it and let that be enough?
I don't have the answer. Not yet. The possessiveness is still there, hot and certain, the alpha in me snarling at the thought of Atlas's hands on Max's face. Of Zero standing behind his chair. Of anyone else knowing the sound Max makes when he's held.
But I'm asking the question. And that's more than I walked into this car with.
The estate rises against the sky. Zero pulls into the garage. Kills the engine. Neither of us moves to get out.
The garage is dark except for the dome light. The car ticks as the engine cools. I can see the door to the house from here—the mudroom entrance. Twenty feet away. Neither of us reaches for the handle.
"How?" I ask.
Zero looks at me.
"How do you just... accept it? Sharing him.
" The word tastes wrong. Like I'm talking about splitting a check.
"You stood behind his chair last night and I watched your hands on the wood and your knuckles were white, Zero.
You wanted to touch him so badly you were nearly breaking the furniture.
And now you're sitting here telling me you're fine with—what? Taking turns? Scheduling?"
"I didn't say I was fine with it."
"Then how—"
"I said I was done deciding for him. Those aren't the same thing." He leans back in his seat. Stares at the garage ceiling. His throat moves when he swallows. "You want to know how I got here? I'll tell you how I got here. I thought about what happens if I get what I want."
He's quiet for a second. His fingers tap the steering wheel.
"If Max were mine—just mine—I'd wreck him.
" He says it plainly. "I know what I am, Bane.
I know what I want to do to him. I want to take him apart.
Push him past every line he's ever drawn.
Break him open and see what's inside and put him back together in a shape that fits me.
" His jaw works. "That's not love. That's hunger.
And if I fed it—if he let me—I'd eat him alive.
Six months, a year, and there'd be nothing left of the kid who writes in notebooks and shelves books and calls his mother sweetheart.
I'd consume him. And he'd let me, because part of him wants it.
The part that I put on his knees in the basement and came so hard he cried. "
The words sit between us. Ugly. True.
Rage coils in my gut imagining what he did to Max down there, but I swallow it down.
"He wants me," Zero says. "I know he does. He's terrified of me and he wants me and those two things live in the same room in his head and neither one is going away. But wanting me and surviving me are different things."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying he needs something I can't give him." Zero's voice drops. Not softer—lower. Like he's dragging the words up from somewhere deep. "Steadiness. Safety. The kind of love that doesn't have teeth. I don't have that. I don't know how to want someone gently. I never learned."
I stare at him. My brother. The one I just watched break every bone in a man’s hands. It makes sense. I probably should have seen it myself–his inability to love in a way that’s quiet. Sweet.
"But Atlas does," Zero continues. "Atlas knows how to hold something without crushing it.
And you—" He glances at me. Something flickers behind his eyes.
Not vulnerability—Zero doesn't do vulnerable.
But close. Adjacent. "You held him in that room and didn't bite.
You had every biological imperative screaming at you and you stopped. I couldn't have done that."
"You don't know that."
"Yeah. I do." No self-pity. Just the flat recognition of a man who has measured himself and found the measurement accurate. "So either I figure out how to be one part of something that keeps him whole, or I walk away. And I'm not walking away."
The garage ticks. The dome light dims and goes out. We sit in the dark.
"I used to think about it," I say. "Before Max.
Before any of this. What it would be like to have someone who—" I stop.
Start over. The honest version, not the polished one.
"Every girlfriend I've ever had, I was performing.
The nice Graves brother. The charming one.
The one who opens doors and remembers birthdays and says all the right things.
And the whole time I'm thinking, this isn't it. This isn't what I'm looking for."
"What were you looking for?"
"Someone who needed me." The words come out raw. "Not my name. Not my money. Not the Graves machinery. Me. Someone I could take care of. Come home to. Build something with that was actually mine—not inherited, not assigned, not part of the family portfolio."
I flex my hands on my thighs. The blood cracks in the creases.
"Max walks into this house with a duffel bag and flinches when people raise their voices and makes his bed like he's afraid someone's going to inspect it.
And I look at him and every cell in my body says this one.
Take care of this one. He's yours." I swallow.
"And then I find out he's omega and I'm alpha and my biology confirms what I already knew, and it feels like the universe is telling me I'm right. That he was made for me."
"And then you find out Atlas is also obsessed and I already fucked him in the basement."
"Yeah." I almost laugh. It comes out wrong—half-bitter, half-exhausted. "Then I find that out."
"And you think sharing means giving up the thing you just described."
"Doesn't it?"
Zero is quiet for a long time. Two brothers who've spent their entire lives communicating through violence and silence, trying something new.
"When I was behind his chair last night, taunting you both," Zero says. "Hands on the wood. Not touching him. You know what I was thinking?"
"What?"
"That he came back." Simple. Flat. "He ran, Bane.
Packed a bag and walked out the front door.
And then he came back. To this house. To us.
Three alphas who've done nothing but crowd him and scare him and make his life complicated since the day he showed up.
" A pause. "He's choosing to stay. That means something.
And if we fuck it up by fighting over him like dogs with a bone, we deserve to lose him. "
I sit with that. Turn it over.
"You don't have to give him up," Zero says. "Nobody's asking you to stop wanting to come home to him. To take care of him. To be the one he calls when he's scared." He shifts in his seat. Faces the windshield. "Just stop acting like you're the only one who gets to."
I swallow. Let the words process and take stock of how I’m feeling.
"I don't know if I can do it," I say. Honest. The most honest I've been with Zero in years, maybe ever. "Share him. I don't know if I'm built for it."
"Neither am I." Zero opens his door. The dome light flickers back on.
His face is tired. Blood on his hands, bruises forming on his knuckles, and for the first time tonight he looks like what he is—a twenty-seven-year-old man who's been carrying too much for too long.
"But I'm going to try. For him. Because he deserves people who try. "
He gets out. Shuts the door.
I sit in the car for another minute. Hands on my thighs. Restless energy jittering through me. The engine silent.
He's right.
I hate that he's right, and I hate that the person who made me see it is the same brother who held Max down on a weight bench and left him bleeding on the floor.
People change. Zero changed. Maybe I can too.
I get out. Walk toward the house. The mudroom light is on—Margot leaves it on every night, the kind of thing she does without thinking, a light left burning so her boys can find their way home.
I wash the blood off my hands in the mudroom sink. Watch it circle the drain. Pink, then clear.
Then I go inside.