15. Declan
Declan
The glass squeaks against the bar towel, a sound that sets my teeth on edge.
I keep wiping anyway.
It’s already clean. There’s nothing on it. I can see the amber bottles reflected behind me, every label lined up, every tap handle straight. Every stupid little thing in Byrne’s is exactly where I left it before the party turned into a success, and then into the worst night of my life.
“Good job, Byrne,” I mutter to myself.
My voice just gets swallowed by the empty room.
The neon sign’s off. The music’s off. Even the refrigerator hum sounds quieter than usual, like the whole building knows to shut the hell up.
I set the glass under the bar and grab another one.
Wipe. Check for lipstick, for chips. Put it away.
Wipe. Check. Put it away.
There’s always something to do in a bar.
That’s why I built my life around one.
But people… fuck.
My fingers tighten around the glass.
Shay’s scent is still clinging to the air in here.
Sandalwood. Dark chocolate. That cool rain smell.
It’s everywhere tonight, sunk deep under the spilled beer and citrus and the greasy salt smell from the kitchen.
His scent worked its way into the bones of this place over the last few weeks, so slowly I barely even noticed it happening.
A brush of his shoulder when he squeezed behind the bar.
His jacket thrown over the end of a booth while he yelled at Jude for filming a video the wrong way.
His wrists on the counter, his throat tilted back when he laughed at something Benji said.
Now it’s all I can smell.
My mate walked out an hour ago. Maybe less. Time’s a little fuzzy when you’re standing in the place you spent years saving, realizing you just lost the only thing that ever made it feel like more than work.
I put the glass down too hard. It clinks sharply against another one.
“Easy,” I say, automatic.
Nobody answers. Of course nobody answers.
The bar looks good. That’s the sickest part.
Shay made it look good.
The numbers are still ugly, but they’re not impossible anymore. The buyout offer is sitting in my office drawer, right where it belongs. Ignored.
Byrne’s is going to make it.
And I don’t give a shit.
I lean both hands on the polished wood and just stare at the empty back booth. Their booth. The one Shay always pretended he didn’t care about, even though he’d get this personally offended look on his face if anyone else sat there before his friends showed up.
He’d always sit at the end, closest to the bar, close enough to see everything, and he’d act like he was only there because everyone else dragged him along.
The first time I really noticed him, he was drinking club soda and glaring at Jude like the guy had committed a felony just by laughing too loud.
I knew his order before I knew his name.
That should’ve told me something right there.
I know his coffee order—oat milk, no sugar, iced even when it’s freezing out. I know he hates maraschino cherries because they look fake. I know he pretends not to like old music but he stood in my kitchen, dead silent, listening while I put a record on.
I know he works himself into the ground because being useful is the closest thing he lets himself feel to being wanted.
And I offered him a bank account.
A key.
I offered him the exact thing he’s terrified of, then stood there like a fucking idiot while he spelled it out for me.
“I was trying to help,” I say to the empty booth.
The words sound pathetic. Not because they aren’t true, but because they’re not enough. Not even close.
The glass in my hand is bone dry. I keep rubbing the towel over it until the cloth snags on my rough knuckles.
Shay had looked at me like I was every single alpha who’d ever promised his mother a soft place to land, right before the floor gave out from under her.
That flinch from earlier hits me again, out of nowhere.
Not when I slammed my hand on the bar. That was bad enough, the way he recoiled from the sound, like the noise had hands. Like I was someone he had to brace for.
No. Worse was after.
When he was tied to me, slick and shaking, and I reached for him—and he flinched.
My throat closes up.
I put the glass down.
“Fuck.”
The word comes out rough, torn.
I grab the spray bottle and start wiping down the counter. The same stretch I already cleaned. The same stretch Shay was bent over earlier tonight, his palms flat on the wood, his voice wrecked.
I stop. The rag hangs from my hand.
There’s a faint smudge near the edge. Could be anything. A drink ring, a streak from a sleeve.
But my brain supplies the memory anyway.
Shay’s fingers curled against the bar.
The smell of his fear.
My own voice, asking if he wanted me to stop.
His answer. And me, taking that answer as permission to forget every other damn thing I should’ve known.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Don’t be nice,” he’d said.
Like kindness was ever the problem. Like I heard anything other than an excuse to stop trying.
I was angry. I was hurt. I wanted him close. I wanted him to stop looking at me like I’d ruined everything, even though I had.
So I used the one thing that always works.
My body. My size. My knot.
I turned the bond between us into a goddamn weapon because I didn't know how to just stand there and say, I’m scared, too.
The spray bottle slips from my hand, thumping onto the rubber mat below.
For a second, I just stand there. Then I bend down, pick it up, and put it back where it goes.
Because that’s what I do. I put things back where they belong.
By the time I’m done, the chairs are upside down on the tables, the till is counted, and the floors are swept. Every lock is checked.
It should feel like relief.
Instead, it feels like sealing up a tomb.
I climb the stairs.
The apartment door isn’t locked. Shay never got the key I offered him. He never got to decide if he even wanted one. The thought is small and brutal.
I push the door open.
The apartment smells wrong. Not empty. Empty would be easier.
It smells like us.
Cedar and whiskey. Sandalwood and dark chocolate. Warm cotton. Skin. The faint tomato smell from the pasta I made him. The apartment soaked him up, and now there’s nowhere I can stand that doesn’t remind me he was here.
On the kitchen counter, his toothbrush is still in the cup next to mine. Blue handle, cheap. He bought it at the drugstore down the street, said he wasn’t putting something that had been in his mouth into a cup with mine without knowing where it had been.
I’d laughed. He’d looked offended. Then he tucked it in beside mine anyway.
My hand goes to it before I can stop myself. I just touch the handle with one finger.
It’s ridiculous how much that hurts. I pull my hand back.
His hoodie is hooked over the back of a kitchen chair. Charcoal gray, soft-looking, sleeves pushed up like he always wears them. He must’ve left without it.
I walk past the couch. The guitar leans in its corner, quiet. The blanket Shay curled up under is folded over the armrest—no, not folded. One end is trailing on the floor, like someone got up too fast and never looked back.
The bedroom door is open.
I can see the bed from the hall.
I can see the nest.
It’s worse than the toothbrush, worse than the hoodie.
At first, it was just a few blankets shoved together, one of my shirts mixed in. He acted like he was just tidying up. I acted like I believed him.
Then it grew. Another blanket. My old hoodie. A pillow from the couch. A shirt I thought I’d lost. The knitted throw Milo brought up, probably because he took one look at Shay and decided he needed more soft things in his life.
It’s all there. A careful little island in the middle of my bed.
No. Not little. Shay doesn’t do anything halfway, even when he’s pretending he isn’t doing it at all. The blankets are layered. My shirts are tucked in where they’ll hold scent. The pillows are placed just so. It’s meticulous. It’s Shay.
He built a home here—the guy who swore up and down he didn’t want one.
I step closer. My knees almost give out when I see what’s tucked into the center.
The bar towel.
Green, faded, frayed at one corner. The one I’ve had for years, way longer than I should’ve kept a damn bar towel, but it’s soft from a million washes and it fits over my shoulder just right.
I’d looked for it after the first night he stayed. Couldn’t find it anywhere.
He stole it.
Not as a joke. Not to annoy me.
For this.
I pick it up. It’s heavy in my hands. The cloth smells like beer foam and lemon polish and old wood.
Underneath all that, it smells like Shay.
His scent has soaked into it, dark chocolate and sandalwood.
It smells like him in my bed. Him in my bar.
Him pressed into my side when he was tired and refused to admit it.
A sound tears out of my throat before I can stop it.
I sit down hard on the edge of the mattress, the towel bunched in my fist.
He was making a home here. With me.
And I saw it. I saw every shirt he stole, every night he stayed, every time he sat at my kitchen counter with his laptop. I knew what it meant. Some part of me had to know.
But I was so fucking scared of losing him that I tried to lock every door.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
The room is quiet. His nest is still here, almost warm, like he just left. I let him leave because I finally understood that making him stay would’ve been the last, unforgivable thing.
My forearm throbs. The mark Shay left is half-hidden by my sleeve, teeth marks healed into something permanent. I rub my thumb over it through the fabric.
He claimed me, too. He chose me. For a while, at least.
God, I don’t know if he still does.
The bond is there, a low, constant ache under my skin. It pulls toward him so hard it feels like I’m standing on a cliff with a rope tied to my ribs. He’s out there somewhere, hurting. Angry. Probably telling himself he did the right thing.
Maybe he did. Maybe letting him go is the first right thing I’ve done in weeks.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I curl forward, elbows on my knees, and just stare at the nest until my vision blurs.
I don’t have a plan. No numbers to run. No shift to cover. No broken pipe or rent check to worry about.
Just a toothbrush by my sink. A hoodie on a chair. A nest in my bed.
And the hollow at the center of it, where he should be.
I lean forward and breathe in the scent still clinging to the blankets until my lungs burn.
And I just sit there in the dark, surrounded by the proof of the home I almost had, with no fucking idea how to earn it back.