21. The Stairs at Midnight
Chapter twenty-one
The Stairs at Midnight
Icouldn't sleep.
The Marcus encounter kept replaying in my head; his smile, his certainty, the way he'd looked at me like he still owned me. And Callum, appearing out of nowhere, putting himself between us like it was instinct.
I gave up on sleep around midnight and went to sit on the stairs.
Jasper was already there.
He was sitting on the landing below mine, looking out at the yard, and he looked up when he heard my footsteps. In the moonlight, his face was all shadows and angles, his dark curls tumbling across his forehead.
"Can't sleep either?" he asked.
"Too much in my head."
"Want company?"
I sat down beside him. Close enough that our shoulders touched. Neither of us moved away.
We sat in silence for a while. The night was warm, full of cricket sounds and the distant rustle of trees. The magnolia tree was a dark shape against the darker sky, and beyond it, the preserve stretched out, mysterious and watchful.
"I heard what happened," Jasper said. "At the bar."
"Callum told you?"
"Callum doesn't tell anyone anything." A small smile. "Lila told Mel, Mel told Dex, Dex told me. Small town."
"Great."
"You handled it well."
"I froze. Callum handled it."
"You didn't freeze." He turned to look at me. In the dim light, his eyes were serious, the teasing charm stripped away. "You held your ground. You didn't let him see how scared you were. That's not nothing, Serena."
I looked back at him. At this man who saw past my defenses, who knew what I was running from, who was still here anyway.
"I'm tired," I said. It came out smaller than I intended. "Of being afraid all the time. Of being on edge, constantly waiting for the next thing. Never knowing when it's going to end."
"I know."
"You don't have to be okay," he whispered. "Not with me."
Something hummed in my chest when he said that—a warmth I couldn’t explain, like a thread being pulled taut between us. I’d felt it before, in quiet moments with each of them. A resonance, like my body recognized something my mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
Something cracked open. Something I'd been holding together for so long that I'd forgotten I was holding it.
I kissed him.
Or he kissed me, I wasn't sure who moved first. One moment we were looking at each other, and the next his mouth was on mine, warm and certain, and I was letting it happen.
No, not letting it happen. Wanting it to happen.
Jasper was playful; teasing, light, making me laugh even as he made me feel things I hadn't felt in years. His hands were everywhere and nowhere, fingertips ghosting along my collarbone, my jaw, the curve of my hip. Every touch a question. Every answer a yes.
"You're thinking too hard," he murmured against my throat, and I felt his smile there.
"I'm not—"
"You are." His teeth grazed my pulse point. "I can practically hear it." Another kiss, lower. "Let me help you stop."
He was good at this, too good, maybe. Confident without being presumptuous, attentive in a way that made me feel seen rather than observed. When he pulled back to look at me, his eyes were warm with something that went beyond wanting.
And then I stopped letting things happen.
I pulled him back down to me, my fingers tangling in his hair, those dark curls that I'd been wanting to touch since the first time I saw him, and the sounds he made; surprised, pleased, undone, went straight through me.
He responded instantly, the teasing lightness giving way to something hungrier.
His weight pressed me into the stairs, and I arched into it, wanting more of him, all of him.
But somewhere in the middle of it, something shifted.
The playfulness cracked open and became something raw, something real, something that caught us both off guard. His hands slowed. His breathing changed. He lifted his head and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.
"Serena," he said, and the way he said my name made me forget everything else.
It wasn't a question. It was a confession.
And then I felt it, that hum in my chest, stronger than ever before. Something warm and ancient and inevitable, like a lock clicking into place.
"Do you feel that?" Jasper whispered, his forehead pressed to mine.
"Yes."
Something vast and vulnerable moved across Jasper's face.
He kissed me again, softer this time, reverently.
I didn't have words for what I was feeling. So I just held him there on the stairs in the moonlight while the night sang around us. A hum settled in my chest, warm and steady like a promise.
* * *
I came down for coffee at six in the morning, wearing Jasper's sweatshirt.
I'd made a decision.
That's what I told myself as I descended the stairs, the worn cotton soft against my skin, still carrying his scent.
Last night had been… well… Last night had been a choice.
Jasper. I was choosing Jasper. Because I couldn't keep doing this, couldn't keep letting myself want all of them.
That wasn't fair to anyone, least of all me.
The sweatshirt felt like a declaration. A line drawn.
It also felt like a betrayal.
My stomach knotted as I reached the bottom of the stairs. Eli would be down there. Eli, who had kissed me in the archive like I was something precious. Eli, who had looked at me with those dark, careful eyes and said it was real for him too.
I was about to walk into a room wearing his brother's clothes, and there was no way to pretend that didn't mean something.
You're a coward, the voice in my head whispered. You should have talked to him first. Explained.
But explained what? That I'd developed feelings for two brothers and had to pick one? That I was sorry for leading him on? God, I hadn't even been leading him on; I'd meant every kiss, every touch, every breathless moment in that basement.
I just couldn't have both. That wasn't how life worked.
Rowena was in the kitchen.
She looked at the sweatshirt. She looked at Jasper, who was making eggs at the stove with an expression of studied innocence. Her lips twitched.
She said absolutely nothing.
"Good morning, Serena," she said. "Coffee's fresh. I made a casserole yesterday. If you want breakfast."
"Thank you," I said, because what else was there to say?
I poured my coffee and tried very hard not to make eye contact with anyone. My hands were trembling slightly. I gripped the mug tighter to hide it.
Callum was at the table, reading the paper. He didn't look up when I came in, but something in his posture shifted, a tension that hadn't been there before. His jaw was tight, his shoulders rigid.
He knows, I thought. Of course, he knew. They all knew. I was wearing the evidence.
And then there was Eli.
He was annotating something in a notebook. I braced myself, for hurt, for coldness, for that careful withdrawal I'd learned to recognize in men who felt rejected.
He glanced at me once, briefly.
And smiled.
Not a forced smile, not a polite mask. A genuine flicker of warmth behind his glasses, soft and unbothered, as if nothing had changed. As if I wasn't standing in his kitchen wearing proof that I'd spent the night with his brother.
"Morning," he said, and went back to his notes.
I stared at him.
That was it? Just... morning?
I'd prepared myself for awkwardness, for tension, for having to navigate the minefield of a rejected man's wounded pride.
I'd expected him to be hurt. I'd wanted him to be hurt, in some small, awful way, because at least that would have made sense.
At least that would have meant what happened between us had mattered to him.
But he looked at me the same way he always did. Warm. Attentive. Present.
Like I hadn't just chosen his brother over him.
I didn't understand.
The domestic normality of it was surreal. Rowena sipping her tea, Callum turning pages, Jasper humming while he cooked, Eli making notes in the margins of his book, and me, standing in the middle of it in a borrowed sweatshirt, completely lost.
I sat down with my coffee and my casserole and let the morning happen around me. Trying desperately not to think too hard about what any of it meant, and failing.
I couldn't stop glancing at Eli, waiting for the mask to slip. Waiting for the coldness to set in.
It never did.
And somehow, that was more confusing than anything else.