Chapter Twenty-Eight
Delilah
Jett went to get dinner.
That’s… not what I expected.
He’s supposed to bolt. That’s the script. He runs, I go full Tasmanian devil with a crush. He runs faster, I throw something flammable and sparkly. Our love language is felony-adjacent domestic terrorism and glitter crime scene cleanup fees.
But instead he asked me what I wanted as if he didn’t just growl “mine” with his teeth in my throat like a confused, emotionally repressed werewolf in heat.
I told him burgers and fries because that’s the one thing he can’t get delivered to this crusty little motel and I needed time.
Time to breathe. Time to spiral Time to scream into a pillow, throw my bra on the ceiling fan, maybe climb into the ice machine out back and live there now.
Just me, a frostbitten cryptid, hiding from the terrifying possibility of emotional connection.
Will he come back? Or will he leave me here like a sad, cum-sticky gremlin squatter left sobbing in crime scene sheets with the scent of his dick still haunting my soul like a horny ghost?
This isn’t like Benji. He’s emotionally literate. He drinks water. He asked if I’d eaten vegetables today and meant it. Terrifying in a whole different kind of way.
But Jett?
Jett feels like me.
Which is its own kind of horror.
Because if he’s like me, if he’s the one with a dented attachment style and a chokehold kink masquerading as intimacy, then someone has to be the stable one, and guess what, it’s not fucking me.
So obviously I do the sane, healthy thing: stare at Rhys’s contact photo like I’m trying to psychically summon a therapist through my phone.
This is an emergency.
Right?
Because if Jett actually has feelings for me, and I’m not having some post-orgasmic fever hallucination, I could break it. Break him. Break me.
I could fuck it up.
Or worse…
Fuck him up.
My brain’s doing donuts in a Walmart parking lot at 3am, and every single thought is wearing a crop top and screaming self-sabotage is hot, babe, try it!
I thumb out a message:
Me: I need advice right now before I hurt someone. Please respond.
Rhys: Is this a true emergency? Do you have someone at gunpoint?
Me: Metaphorically.
I can feel his sigh vibrating through the text thread. He’s probably pinching the bridge of his nose with the same fingers that could make me forget my name and briefly believe in reincarnation if he ever stopped being so frustratingly boundaried.
Rhys: What’s happened?
Me: Jett fucked me.
Rhys: That is not an emergency. Unless you’re texting from the ER.
Me: There were feelings, Rhys. I saw them.
It was extremely distressing. He said mine with his teeth in my neck and then went to go get me food.
What does that mean?? Who says mine with their mouth full of neck and then goes to buy fries like we didn’t just trauma-bond through orgasm? ? Is that normal? Is that courtship?
Rhys: What do you need from me?
Me: I broke into his locker at work. Also stole from his bike. That was before the sex. Do I tell him about Benji and you?
Rhys: There is nothing to tell about me.
Me: Yet. But what about Benji? Is now when we talk about those things?
Or do I wait for him to run? He will run, right?
That’s what men do. Except Benji. But Benji’s an angel in Carhartts.
Jett’s… he’s… feral. He growls. He broods.
He doesn’t know how to door. God, Rhys. Can I love two men and have them both love me back without triggering a cosmic glitch in the monogamy matrix?
Rhys: Do you want to build something with Jett?
Me: I don’t build. I scorch-earth demolish. But he’s getting me extra ketchup. Extra ketchup. That’s love. That’s foreplay. That’s a binding verbal contract in Jett-speak. So maybe yes. Maybe I want him.
Rhys: Honesty is always best if you want something real.
Typing bubbles.
Still typing.
Jesus, he’s writing the Ten Commandments of Boundaries. I can feel it drafting itself directly onto my ovaries.
Rhys: Are you in a safe location? Jett has temper issues.
Me: Jett won’t hurt me. Don’t be absurd. I’m trying not to hurt him.
And I mean it.
God help me.
That’s the scariest part.
I feel the rumble of Jett’s bike.
Seconds later he walks in with an armload of food like some kind of broody chaos deity and drops the bags beside me on the bed.
“Didn’t know what to get,” he says, jaw tight. “Got it all.”
Shit. Shit. Fuck.
I thought he’d bolt. That’s the pattern.
Men disappear, I spiral, resume the regularly scheduled program of obsessive stalking and trauma-based foreplay.
But instead… he brought me dinner. A peace offering.
Or a declaration of war. Or maybe both, because he’s setting out a burger and fries with that grim focus.
Then he dumps a small bag in front of me and it explodes with ketchup packets. Easily fifty. A sacrificial dowry in Heinz form.
My heart lurches.
This man really saw me and instead of running, he came back with enough ketchup to baptize a sinner. He’s doing the try thing. He’s doing it for me.
I can’t find the voice that usually dances around the scary part. The one that makes a joke or sticks out her tongue or grinds on the problem until it moans.
I’m afraid if I speak too soon, I’ll scream instead.
Because this means something. He brought me food like a wolf brings meat to the den. He’s courting me with french fries and rage. Like some fucked-up fairytale beast who doesn’t know how to speak love without his hands.
I want to cry.
I want to kiss him.
I want to say thank you, I love you, you terrifying, ketchup-bearing, emotionally stunted feral raccoon in manflesh.
But first I have to tell him the thing.
The thing that will ruin it.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” I whisper, fingers stroking the back of his hand like that’ll soften the blade I’m about to twist. “There are others. Two. Maybe three if you count Hank, which I don’t anymore, since he filed a court order explicitly banning me from sharing my love or my body or my proximity within one hundred yards. ”
He freezes.
I push through it. Like an idiot. Like I believe in honesty even when it tastes like blood.
“Benji already knows. I told him I was stalking you and Rhys, and he said I had taste in men and questionable ethics. Rhys doesn’t know yet but he might get there.
I’m not making you share me, Jett. I’m giving myself to each of you.
I have the time and energy to aggressively show you how much I care.
Separately, fully. Or together if that’s your kink.
That could be fun. But I won’t pretend. I won’t lie. I don’t want to lie to you.”
He steps back like I slapped him.
“I didn’t realize I was auditioning,” he says.
I flinch. “It’s not like that.”
“You fucked me,” he growls, voice low and terrifyingly even, “and now you wanna talk about other guys?”
He’s not yelling. He doesn’t need to. Jett’s rage is cold. Weaponized. And right now it’s pointed directly at me.
“Do I look like I’m wired for other men touching what’s mine and fucking brunch dates?” His fist slams into the wall beside him, hard enough to crack the drywall.
I flinch again, instinctive and ugly.
He sees it.
And that might be the thing that undoes him.
His gaze drops to the pile of ketchup he brought for me, and he reaches down, grabs one, and crushes it in his fist. Red splatters across his palm and drips down his wrist like blood.
Another packet follows, then another, until he’s throwing them, one after another across the room.
They burst against the walls, the dresser, the floor.
Smears of red staining everything they touch.
My breath sticks in my chest.
He’s unraveling.
My mouth goes dry. My heart goes feral. “Jett.”
He doesn’t stop. He whips the rest of the ketchup packets across the room. They hit the wall like soft bullets, red smears blooming like bloodstains.
“You think I do casual?” His laugh is low, bitter, hollow. “I let you in.”
His hand gestures vaguely at the room, at the bed, at me, ruined and still open from what we did an hour ago.
My throat tightens. I want to reach for him, want to explain that he’s not a piece in a rotation, that he’s Jett, and Jett is more than a part, he’s wild and dangerous and beautiful just the way he is.
But he doesn’t give me the chance.
“I brought you food,” he says, like it’s the last thread holding him together. “I brought you fucking ketchup, Delilah. And you sat there smiling with my come still on your thighs and told me you belong to other men.”
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
“Should’ve known better,” he says, voice shredded. “You’re not mine.” He looks at me like I already left. “You’re nobody’s, Delilah. Not even your own.”
Then he turns.
And leaves me with the fries going cold.
And the ketchup bleeding down the walls.
And the ache of something precious cracking open in my chest.