Chapter 5
Chapter Five
MARLOWE
We didn’t go to the spa.
Neve didn’t ask why, and I didn’t offer an excuse.
I can tell from her worried expression she knows I’m going through something and getting a manicure and wax isn’t going to fix it.
Now we’re tucked into a dark corner of the Rum and Room, the air thick with music and memory.
It’s early afternoon, too early for crowds, but the bar still hums with the low sounds of ice clinking in glasses and quiet laughter.
This is where I met him. I know it’s only been three months, but after those first few nights, it feels like a lifetime ago.
Neve sits across from me, stirring her sangria with a straw, her expression careful but open. She’s watching me like she’s trying to figure out how far I’ve unraveled. I don’t know what she sees, but I feel thin around the edges.
I fold my hands on the table to keep them from shaking. “There was a message on his phone,” I blurt out, before I can overthink it. “I saw it when I was getting dressed this morning, while he was still asleep.”
Neve fishes an apple slice from her drink, pops it into her mouth, and nearly chokes on it. Her eyebrows shoot up. “You sneaky little whore. Tell me you didn’t actually go through his phone.”
“I didn’t touch it. I just... saw it. From someone named Reese. It said something like ‘Don’t worry, she won’t find out.’” The words taste sour. Saying them out loud makes them feel like cotton in my mouth.
She leans forward, elbows on the table. “And you think it’s something bad? Like the she that won’t find out is you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I answer, voice low. “But he made you come here, gave us that spa gift card, told us to take the weekend. No warning, no explanation. Just go. Away all weekend.”
“And you think that’s not just... a gift?”
I shake my head. “Damian gives me flowers sometimes. He doesn’t do gifts. He doesn’t do sweet. He doesn’t do anything without a reason. And if I was in the way of something, this was his way of moving me.”
Neve doesn’t look surprised. She presses her lips together like she’s trying to decide whether or not to say something more.
“I keep going back to that message,” I say. “She won’t find out. What does that even mean? Was it sex? With this woman Reese? And I won’t find out?”
Neve shifts in her seat. I catch the flicker of something in her eyes, but she hides it fast.
I press my palms flat to the table. “I feel like I don’t know what’s happening anymore. And I don’t know how to ask. I don’t even know if I have the right.” My throat tightens. “I don’t know if we’re anything real.”
The silence between us stretches, and Neve looks down at her glass like she’s bracing for something, too.
I stare past her, at the empty space across the bar. The one where he stood the first night he looked at me like he saw through everything. The space where it started. I don’t say it out loud, but I already feel it. Something’s ending. And I don’t know if I’m ready.
Neve swirls the ice in her drink, her gaze lowered, the sound quiet between us. “I don’t know what he’s doing,” she says finally. “But I know what it feels like to love one of them and get nothing back.”
I look at her. She’s not talking about Damian. “It’s Bridger,” I say, watching her closely.
She flinches as I say his name. Her eyes flick up to mine, and her voice comes out quiet, brittle. “Please don’t say anything to him. It’s humiliating enough that he still sees me as some kid.”
I study her face for a moment, the way her shoulders are pulled tight, her fingers restless against the glass.
“How old are you?” I ask.
She hesitates. “Twenty-five,” she says. Then she looks away.
“Okay,” I say, keeping my tone steady. “But how old are you really?”
She exhales through her nose, a short breath full of weight, and her shoulders drop. “Twenty-one.”
I purse my lips. “And how about now?”
“Nineteen,” she says, puffing out her breath. “But I’ll be twenty in a few days, I swear.”
It hangs between us. The truth. She straightens her back again, like she’s bracing for judgment.
I don’t give her any. “I didn’t ask because I care about the number,” I say. “I asked because you look like you’ve lived through some shit.”
Her expression shifts, softens, but she doesn’t respond. She just nods once, grateful and exhausted.
I look down at the table. The wood is scratched and worn, the edges chipped, like something used too hard for too long.
I can relate. “We’re both in love with Cross brothers.
” The words slip out before I can stop them.
I’m in love with a Cross brother. I’ve never said that out loud, not even to myself.
The sentence hovers, quiet and trembling.
My chest tightens. “I love a Cross brother.” I blink once, slow. I just said it. Out loud. Twice.
Neve laughs softly, almost kindly. “Why do you look surprised?”
I shake my head, my voice barely a whisper. “I’ve never said it before. That I love him.”
Her face goes soft, the way people do when they’re about to explain something slowly, like you’re a child or tragically stupid. “You guys don’t talk about it?” she asks. “Because... he looks at you like you’re the only woman left on Earth who still matters.”
I want to believe that. I want to hold on to it. But it doesn’t make sense. I shake my head again. “No. We don’t talk. Not about that. Not about anything real.”
Neve doesn’t speak. She just listens.
Heat burns at my cheeks. “You know, I didn’t even know he owned a custom motorcycle shop until a few weeks ago.”
Neve’s eyes narrow. “He didn’t tell you?”
“He doesn’t tell me anything, Neve. Literally nothing.
” I take a breath, then another, steadying myself on the truth that’s been building for weeks.
“It’s mostly sex,” I say. “All we do is fuck. And it’s—God—it’s amazing.
It’s insane. It’s the kind of thing that ruins all other men for me.
I don’t want it to stop. It’s something crazy and new each time.
” I press my hand to my chest like it might quiet the ache there.
“But sometimes I think... maybe that’s all it is.
For him. Just sex. Just control. Just something he knows how to do. ”
“Oh, Lo,” she sighs sadly.
“I feel stupid for wanting more. For thinking maybe there was more.” The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s heavy with the kind of grief that only comes from needing something and not knowing if you’re allowed to ask for it.
Neve stares into her drink like it might give her strength. Then she says, quietly, “I know exactly how you feel.”
I look at her, my voice catching somewhere in my chest. “How do you deal with it? Not being able to be with him. Wanting him so much.”
Her mouth presses into a tight line. Then it relaxes.
Her voice is low but steady. “It hurts,” she says.
“More than I ever thought it could. Sometimes I think I’ve got it under control, but then I’ll see him with someone.
It doesn’t happen often. The Cross brothers aren’t exactly social.
Bridger keeps to himself. Damian, too. It’s really only Cody who’s out chasing everything that breathes.
” She pauses, her thumb brushing condensation from her glass.
“But when I do see Bridger with someone, it kills me. Completely. And the worst part isn’t watching him touch someone else.
It’s watching him not see me. Like I’m invisible. Like I never even had a chance.”
Her voice doesn’t shake, but I can hear the crack beneath it. A wound she’s never let scab over. “Unrequited love is bleeding for someone who doesn’t even notice the wound.”
That’s dark.
“It’s the cruelest kind of silence,” she continues. “Not the kind between fights or in the space between words. The silence of never being seen at all.”
I can feel my pulse in my throat. Her words settle deep and don’t move. “What do you do?” I ask. “How do you live with it?” I need to know, I think, for when Damian finally leaves.
She shrugs. “I work,” she says. “I stay busy. I keep moving so I don’t drown in it.
” She drains the rest of her drink and sets the empty glass down without flinching.
“And when that doesn’t work, I fuck him out of my head with someone else’s dick.
I try to feel something for someone new.
Try to convince myself I can catch feelings for anyone who looks at me twice.
” She meets my eyes. “But so far? It’s never worked. ”
There’s nothing to say after that. Nothing that wouldn’t sound small next to everything she just gave me. So I just nod. And sit in the quiet with her.
Two women, in love with men who don’t know how to love us back.
Neve traces the rim of her glass, then looks up at me with something unreadable in her eyes. “He did follow you, though,” she says. “All the way from Vegas to New Jersey.”
I let out a laugh that doesn’t sound like a laugh.
“Yeah, and he still has his place in Vegas. Still pays the rent on it like he’s just on some extended vacation from his real life.
” Oh, those words taste bitter on my tongue.
“I think Cody’s running the bike shop,” I add.
“And honestly? Every time I try to talk to Damian about any of it, about what we’re doing or where this is going, we end up naked.
And his hands and mouth are everywhere. And we’re breathless.
And then nothing gets said unless he’s telling me how to come. ”
Neve nods without judgment. I can tell she understands the spiral. The way a body can be a distraction from every truth you’re too afraid to speak.