Gabe
EIGHTEEN
Dinner should’ve settled me. That was the plan.
We invited Willow here, gave her something structured, familiar enough to lower her guard, and handed the evening a shape that didn’t force any of us to address the more volatile reality sitting just beneath it.
It was a sound plan. A measured one. We had food, conversation, a topic she could engage with on her own terms, and in return she gave us more than I’d expected.
So, now I have a lot on my mind.
She sat at our table and turned the room into warmth.
Less curated, more dangerous. She teased me about the kitchen with that dry, unimpressed delivery of hers and somehow made me enjoy being mocked in my own house.
She challenged our rollout plans, dismantled weaknesses in our strategy within minutes, and made it sound effortless.
She looked more relaxed as the evening went on, and every time that happened, every time the tension left her shoulders a little more, every instinct I possess honed around it.
Because relaxed Willow is somehow more affecting than defensive Willow.
Defensive Willow keeps distance. Relaxed Willow forgets to.
I stand at the kitchen island with my sleeves still rolled, stacking plates that don’t need to be stacked yet because no one has actually finished moving away from the table.
Across the room, Julian is stretched back in his chair because he’s been designed specifically to look at ease in moments other people struggle through.
He has one ankle hooked over the opposite knee, a whiskey glass loose in one hand, and that expression on his face that always means he’s about thirty seconds away from either making a situation better or making it significantly worse.
Willow is sitting sideways in her chair now, skirt fitted on her hips just right, one elbow on the table, head tilted as she listens to him talk.
Her hair has loosened a little over the course of the evening.
A few dark strands have slipped free around her face, softening the edges of her expression. She’s smiling without realizing it.
I notice because I notice everything.
Xander notices because he hasn’t stopped with her.
He’s at the far end of the room, leaning against the cabinet beneath the windows, drink in hand, saying very little. To anyone else he would probably look calm. Detached, maybe. Resting in that familiar, hard-edged stillness he wears when he wants the world to leave him alone.
I know better. He’s too quiet.
Willow glances his way for half a second and then back to Julian, and the air in the room shifts so subtly I’m not sure anyone but me catches it. Xander says nothing. He doesn’t have to. He’s always had a gift for imposing tension without movement.
And still, despite the fact that I can map the emotional pressure points in this room with humiliating accuracy, I’m not immune to any of them.
Particularly not her.
I collect the glasses next, because that follows the plates. Because it’s the correct sequence. Because if I remain occupied, then I can continue pretending there’s order in the room.
“There he goes,” Willow says.
I glance up. “What?”
She nods toward the glasses in my hand. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
Julian snorts. “You absolutely do.”
She points, infuriatingly pleased with herself. “You’re clearing in categories.”
“That’s how clearing works.”
“That’s how you work,” she corrects.
I set one glass down on the island with more care than necessary. “There are four of us. We’ve finished eating. The table should be cleared. This isn’t a pathology.”
“It’s a little bit a pathology,” Julian says.
“Thank you for your expertise.”
“You’re welcome.”
Willow’s smile kicks a little wider. “If I mixed the cutlery drawer up, would you have to lie down?”
I look at her.
She’s openly baiting me now. Comfortable enough to do it without caution.
That should concern me. It does concern me.
It also makes me want to kiss her again.
I let the pause sit just long enough to make Julian interested, then I say, “No. But I would fix it while maintaining eye contact.”
She laughs.
Julian points at me. “That was flirtatious.”
“It was accurate.”
“It was a threat,” Willow says.
“It was a promise,” I correct.
“I think what Gabe wants,” Julian continues with a smirk, “is to play spin the bottle.”
Julian’s mouth curves around the suggestion as a dare, lips still pressed to the rim of the whiskey glass.
I stare him down. “I haven’t played spin the bottle since ninth grade, thank you.”
Willow laughs. “Plus, I’m the only woman here.”
Julian meets her eyes. “And you’re the only one we want to kiss.”
Willow evaluates this. The smile changes; her eyes go darker, curious, suddenly predatory. She doesn’t look away first.
If I cared about being the boldest man in the room, I’d assert myself here. But the truth is, I like watching her weigh these things. I enjoy not knowing if she’s about to laugh or set something on fire.
Instead, I finish stacking the glasses, stacking the silent tension right along with them, until the urge to fill the space or clear the table becomes too mutually exclusive, and I have to make a choice.
“I think,” Willow says, dragging her fingers along the edge of the table, “you’re all so used to getting what you want, you’ve forgotten the fun of not being sure you will.”
I’m about to retort, but Julian beats me to it. “It’s possible to want something and not expect it.”
“Okay,” she agrees. “So, what about spin the bottle, but whoever the bottle lands on gets seven minutes in heaven?”
Is she serious?
My heart damn near stops beating.
Julian sounds delighted. “That’s a classic escalation. Respect.”
Willow gives him a salute.
I catch Xander’s face across the room, trying to gauge how serious any of this is. His mouth is a line, but there’s a fire behind his eyes, heat drifting up as old ice goes subglacial.
He’s considering it. He always considers it.
I remember how it was the first time I met him, a dangerous sense of patience, a predator that would rather wait until you threw yourself on the knife.
The question is: who’s the knife tonight?
“We’d have to find a bottle,” I say.
My voice comes out light. Too light. I’m trying to land on the right stripe of camaraderie for this to be a harmless joke, but the words taste of something else in my mouth.
Julian leans back, graceful as sin. “Any glass with a neck will do.”
Willow picks up the bottle she’s been drinking from and twirls it between her hands, the green glass catching light in reptilian flashes as it spins.
“We could use this.” She places it in the center of the table and looks down at it, then up at us, challenging. “I’ll spin it.”
Julian raises an eyebrow and gestures gallantly for her to proceed, the wicked delight in his mouth now spreading to his eyes. I’m not sure if it’s admiration or amusement, but it pulses in him as a dare. I look at Xander, half expecting him to scoff or shut it down, but he merely watches, stoic.
Willow leans forward, one hand bracing the neck, and sets it spinning with a flick that leaves her wrist, almost caressing, on the glass.
The bottle whirls, catching the fracture of all four of us in its blur, and I realize there’s an uncomfortable vulnerability in being chosen this way.
Even if this is all a ploy. Even if it’s a joke. Even if she’s about to pull the rug at the last second and remind us all that there are only so many layers between desire and farce.
The bottle slows, its dance narrowing, friction biting into the game. Willow’s eyes are fixed, not on its path, but on the shadow it throws across the white oak table.
I imagine the mathematics roiling behind her careful blankness, the private slips of hope or dread.
Is she hoping for me? Or for the safer, more calculated danger of Julian? The cold purity of Xander, who would never break unless the situation demanded it?
It lands on me.
Technically, it stops two degrees short of me, but there’s no ambiguity in the hesitation of its neck, the way Willow’s glance locks on mine, green glass catching the reflection of silent expectation.
A murmur from Julian. Xander’s expression twitches, but not in a way I can read. My own pulse kicks up.
Willow holds the gaze for a one, two, three count, then shrugs. “Rules are rules.”
I clear my throat. “So, that’s supposed to mean we go somewhere?”
“Anywhere,” Julian stage whispers, “where you can be alone.”
I try to sound unbothered, but I feel the ridiculous heat crawling up my neck. “You want me to take the study or the guest bedroom?”
I look at Willow. She looks right back, no sign that she wants to let this die on the vine.
“Study,” she says. “You have a better couch.”
“Do you want a timekeeper?” Julian asks with a smirk.
“We don’t need a timekeeper,” Willow shoots back. “But do whatever you want.”
I nod and pick up my drink, because my hands are incapable of playing nice with empty space. Willow stands, the movement controlled enough to pass for casual, but I catch the faintest tremor of anticipation in her.
Or maybe it’s just mine, mirrored back at me.
We walk down the hallway together, her steps in time with mine, no accidental brush of shoulders or hands.
The house feels suddenly larger and the study farther away than I remember. With every step, the silence between us grows, cultivates its own gravity, until I’m not sure if I want to arrive or turn and take refuge in the kitchen’s fluorescent safety. I stop at the study door, push it open for her.
She stands in the threshold, then crosses inside.
It’s the only room in the house that’s a proper room.
Messy, functional, raw in a way the rest of the house isn’t allowed to be.
I shut the door behind us and the latch clicks loudly, the sound stretching across the bookshelves and half-organized piles of notes, nervous and precise as the rest of me.
Willow stands by the window, silhouette cut against the navy dusk beyond, arms folded, but not defensively. She’s holding herself together so she doesn’t break the frame too quickly.