Chapter 24 Nova
Nova
I’m halfway home when the crow lands on my shoulder.
“Ow — what the—”
Talons. Through my shirt. Digging in just enough to hold on. The crow shuffles its wings and settles like it’s been doing this its whole life.
“No.” I stop walking. Turn my head to look at it. It’s right there. Inches from my face. Dark eyes. Black feathers that catch the light in a way that’s almost iridescent. “No. We can’t do this. This is not happening.”
It squawks. Quiet. Almost conversational.
“I’m serious. You can’t just sit on me. I’m a person.”
It tilts its head.
“Get off.”
Nothing.
“Please?”
It ruffles its feathers. Shifts its weight. And hops to the porch railing of the nearest house like that’s a reasonable compromise.
I stare at it. It stares back.
“Fine,” I say. “Stay there.”
The fox is trotting along behind me. I’ve stopped pretending I don’t notice.
I head up the street toward the house. The blue door is open, which means someone’s home. I’m expecting the usual — Trey messing with the fireplace, Kyron reading, someone on the porch.
Instead I walk in and find Beckett standing in the upstairs hallway with his hands flat on the wall, knocking.
Not knocking like a door. Knocking like he’s testing it. Listening. He’s got a pencil behind his ear and there’s dust in his hair and he’s clearly been doing this for a while because his sleeves are rolled up and there’s drywall residue on his forearms and—
I’m staring at his forearms. Stop it.
“What are you doing?”
He freezes. Turns around. The expression on his face is the closest thing to guilty I’ve ever seen on Beckett Rowe.
“Nothing.”
“You’re knocking on the wall.”
“I’m checking something.”
“Checking what?”
“…structural integrity.”
“Of the wall.”
“Yes.”
“The wall, like the other things you all have been secretly doing things to for a week.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. The pencil falls from behind his ear and he doesn’t pick it up.
“Beckett.”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“You’ll like this one.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know you.”
That stops me. Not because it’s untrue but because of the way he says it. Quiet. Certain. The same way he said “we know what you meant” to Rane that first day at the house.
“You can’t just ask me to trust you when you’re all acting like this,” I say. “Disappearing every day. Coming back covered in sawdust. Scraping wallpaper at midnight—”
“That was Trey.”
“I don’t care who it was! Something is going on and everyone knows except me and I’m—”
I stop because my voice is doing that thing where it gets too loud and too thin at the same time and I hate it.
Beckett watches me. He doesn’t step forward or try to close the distance. Just waits.
“I know,” he says. “I know it’s hard to trust it. Especially after everything.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Be understanding. I’m trying to be mad at you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“I’m a little sorry.” He leans against the wall he was just testing. “This is something we want to do for you. All of us. And I know you don’t know what to do with that because nobody’s ever—”
He stops himself. Like he knows he’s about to cross a line.
“Nobody’s ever what?” I say.
He looks at me. Those dark eyes with the sharp cheekbones and the tattoos peeking out of his collar and the dust in his hair. He looks like someone who’s been building something with his hands all day for a woman who doesn’t know how to accept it.
It’s me. I’m the woman.
“Nobody’s ever just done something for you,” he says. “Without wanting something back.”
My chest does something awful. The kind of awful that makes my eyes burn and my throat close and I don’t want to cry in this hallway, I don’t, but he just said the truest thing anyone’s ever said about me and I wasn’t ready for it.
“That’s not—” I start.
“It is. And it’s okay. We’re not going anywhere.”
I stare at him. He stares back. The hallway is narrow and the light is coming through the window at the end and he’s leaning against a wall with dust on his arms and I’m standing three feet away trying to figure out what to do with the fact that six men are secretly building something for me because they want to and I have never in my life had someone do that.
I don’t know what to do with it.
I take a breath trying to sort out my thoughts, but they just keep spinning and it’s getting hotter. It’s hotter in here and I don’t know.. I didn’t think…
Fuck it.
I close the distance and grab the front of his shirt and kiss him.
He goes still. Just for a second. His hands hover at his sides like he’s afraid to touch me.
Then his hands find my waist and he kisses me back and the hallway disappears.