Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Alex
“I’m meeting with Gavin.” He watches my face. “I don’t know how long it will take or how he will react to our bond.” A pause. “Let’s go and while I’m meeting, go to Red House.”
I grab my coffee before we head to the van. The bonds sharpen as the distance closes — Leo pulling warm and present, Jake tight, Jim reaching. Gray east now instead of west, which I still haven’t gotten used to, the pull of him from the wrong direction every time I stop paying attention.
RJ.
The bruise at my wrist presses harder the closer we get.
Dalton parks and holds the Red House exterior door. I go in first and he peels off toward the administrative building and I’m alone in the corridor.
The smell of it hits before anything else.
Red House.
My house, before everything changed.
I know every door on this stretch of floor.
Leo was always the one coming to me, sneaking into my room. Every time — his footsteps in the corridor, the bond pulling warm the moment he got close. Always him.
I push Leo’s door open and walk in.
He’s on his bed. He looks up and goes completely still.
He gets to his feet and crosses the room and his arms come around me and his face drops into my hair and I feel him breathe me in — long and slow, like something he’s been waiting to do since the van left.
I press into him and hold on and feel the bond blaze warm and real and here.
He pulls back just enough to look at my face. His hands come up to my jaw. He looks at me.
“You okay,” he says.
“Getting there,” I say.
He kisses me — his hands still on my face — and I stop thinking about Gavin and Frosthaven and everything that isn’t this room. When he pulls back I stay close.
“I need Jake and Jim,” I say. “I don’t have long.”
He presses his mouth to my forehead. Then he slips out to get them.
Jake comes in first.
He doesn’t slow down.
He comes straight to me and pulls me into his arms like there was never another option, like the distance between us was a problem he’s been waiting to fix. The impact of it knocks the breath out of me for half a second—solid, real, his arms tight around me, his chest against mine.
“Hey,” he says, low, like it means more than the word should.
I don’t answer.
I’m already there.
Jim moves in a second later.
Not separate. Not waiting.
He steps in close and wraps his arms around both of us, one hand braced warm and steady at my back, the other settling across Jake’s shoulder like this is one shape now, not three people trying to figure it out.
The bond doesn’t spike.
It locks.
Full. Immediate. Right.
I shift without thinking, turning into the contact, my hands finding Jake’s shirt, Jim’s arm, holding onto both of them at once like my body already knows how this fits.
For a second—
that’s all there is.
Jake’s grip. Jim’s steadiness. The pull of both of them holding me exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Leo doesn’t interrupt it.
He moves in quieter, slower, giving us the space to finish the moment before he claims his place.
The room gets smaller.
Not crowded. Just full.
Leo’s hand slides once along my side, slow and grounding.
No one says anything.
They don’t have to.
The bonds do it for us — Leo’s warmth, Jake’s restraint, Jim’s reaching quiet. Layered under everything, steady and real and here. For one minute I can almost pretend this is enough. That the room is complete because the people in it are real and solid.
I breathe in and it catches halfway.
Not because of who is here.
Because of who isn’t.
It moves through the room without being named. Jake’s arms tighten. Leo’s thumb presses once at my side, like he felt the shift and didn’t need to ask. Jim holds on.
No one says RJ.
They don’t have to. We all sit on the bed.
I look at Jim.
“Is it still Jim,” I say. “Or are you working on something else.”
He’s quiet. Jake goes still beside me.
“David is who I was before the mountain,” Jim says. Careful. “Jim is who I came back as. When there was nothing left except that.” He looks at his hands. “I don’t think I have to lose one to keep the other.”
“You don’t,” I say.
“Jake thinks I should go back to David,” he says. “Full reset.”
“Jake can say what he thinks,” I say.
Jake looks at me sideways. “He should have his name back. The one before all of it.”
“It’s his either way,” I say. “He decides when.”
Jim watches this with something loosening slightly in his face. “I’m not in a hurry,” he says.
“Good,” I say.
Leo is quiet beside me — present without filling the room, which is new, which is its own thing. He catches me looking and tips his head slightly.
I lean into him more fully. He pulls me closer and I close my eyes and feel the four of us.
RJ’s name sitting in the room. Unspoken. Loud.
“I’m working on coming back,” I say. “All the way.”
Jake’s hand closes around mine and stays there.
“I know,” Leo says quietly.
Jim doesn’t say anything, but something in his bond reaches warmer.
I let myself have this.
The room. The heat. The weight of Leo’s hand at my waist. Jake’s shoulder against mine. Jim’s quiet gaze when I open my eyes. The particular peace of being held in multiple directions at once by people who already know the worst things about me and are still here.
Leo shifts beside me and his hand slides from my waist to the side of my neck.
“You smell different,” he says.
I glance up at him. “That a complaint.”
“Not even a little.” His mouth pulls. “Just true.”
“Different good or different suspicious.”
“Different mine,” he says.
Jake makes a sound beside me that might be a laugh.
I look at him. “You’ve got something to add.”
“You came back in black jeans and boots like you’re about to ruin somebody’s life,” Jake says. “I’m adjusting.”
Jim’s mouth twitches.
Leo looks down at me. “He’s not wrong.”
“I wore clothes,” I say.
“You wore a warning,” Leo says.
Jake’s fingers tighten once around mine, amused now instead of careful. “And if you think we didn’t all feel it through the bond the second you walked back in here, you’re out of your mind.”
I look between them.
Jim finally says, “You feel… sharper.”
The room goes quiet again, but easier this time.
Sharper.
Leo’s thumb drags once, slow, at the side of my neck. “You do.”
“I ‘m not sure how long Dalton will be meeting with Gavin.”
Leo tips my head his direction and presses his lips to mine, softly.
“Stone takes RJ outside in the mornings,” he says. Low. “Early. Before the yard fills up.”
I quickly kiss Jim and Jake and walk to the door.
I hold Leo’s gaze one beat.
Then I go.