19. Declan
Declan
Shay’s hand is still spread over my chest when somebody knocks once on his bedroom door.
Not opens it. Just knocks.
“Everything alive in there?” Jude calls. “Because I’m giving it thirty seconds before I come in and make this about me.”
Shay’s mouth twitches against mine.
“Don’t,” he says, raising his voice.
“Great,” Benji says from somewhere beyond the door. “They’re alive. Tragically.”
“I heard that,” Shay calls.
“You were meant to.”
I laugh, and it comes out rough enough that Shay looks at me like he’s caught me doing something embarrassing.
Which he has.
I haven’t laughed much this week. Not properly. Not without forcing it out for a regular or tossing something dry at Tessa because that’s what I’m supposed to do. The sound of it surprises me, warm and unfamiliar in my own throat.
Shay’s eyes soften.
Then he looks down at the partnership agreement sitting crooked on the coffee table, and his face goes serious again. Not scared. Not shutting down.
Deciding.
“Do you have a pen?” he asks.
I blink. “Yeah.”
“Good. Get it.”
His friends go quiet outside the door. I can practically hear Jude vibrating with the need to burst in and witness something.
Benji’s probably holding him back by the collar.
Milo is definitely smiling into somebody’s shoulder.
Soren is trying not to listen and failing because there’s no way anyone is not listening right now.
I reach into my back pocket and pull out the pen I brought, because apparently some part of me planned for this even while the rest of me expected to walk out of this apartment with a folder still unsigned and my guts hanging out.
Shay takes it.
He doesn’t rush. He flips to the signature page, scans it once more, then presses the pen to the line beside his name.
Shay Thompson.
His handwriting is clean and sharp. Of course it is. Even his signature looks like it would correct your posture.
He hands me the pen.
“Well?” he says. “You gonna make this official, or are you just here to haunt my bedroom smelling like an expensive lumber aisle?”
My throat closes up.
“Smartass.”
“Emotionally compromised smartass. There’s a difference.”
“There is.”
I sign beside him.
Declan Byrne.
The ink is barely dry before Shay catches the front of my Henley and pulls me into another kiss.
This one isn’t desperate. It isn’t wet with panic or grief or the two of us trying to claw our way back from a place neither of us should’ve let things go.
It’s slow.
His lips are soft. His fingers curl against my chest, right over my heart, and he tastes like cold coffee and the cinnamon gum I know he keeps in his bag. Sandalwood and dark chocolate rise around us, no longer edged with fear. Just Shay. My mate. My partner.
Mine, says the part of me that has never been subtle.
Ours, something quieter answers.
That one nearly brings me to my knees.
A muffled sob comes from the hallway.
“Was that you?” Shay asks against my mouth.
“Absolutely not.”
“Callum?” Jude calls.
“Not me,” Callum says, sounding offended.
“It was Milo,” Benji says.
“It was not,” Milo protests, but he sounds very much like it was.
Shay laughs into my beard, and I’m done for. Completely. There’s no recovering from a sound like that when it belongs in your life.
He pulls back first, cheeks warm, eyes bright. “We should probably let them know before Jude starts picking the lock.”
“I don’t think you have a lock on this door.”
“That has never stopped Jude from acting like a Victorian ghost.”
Shay stands, then reaches for my hand.
That small move gets me worse than the kiss did.
I let him pull me up.
When he opens the door, the whole damn Swipe Squad is crowded in the hallway like they’ve been waiting outside an operating room.
Jude has both hands clasped under his chin.
Rhys is behind him with an expression that says he loves his mate dearly but is prepared to physically remove him from the premises if necessary.
Milo is holding an empty soup bowl. Benji has a napkin covered in black-ink doodles clutched in one hand, Knox’s arm tucked around his waist. Soren hovers near the stairs with his eyes suspiciously shiny.
For half a second, nobody says anything.
Then Jude sees our linked hands.
“Oh my God,” he screams.
Shay winces. “Indoor voice.”
“No. No, absolutely not.” Jude launches himself forward, wraps Shay in a hug, and drags me halfway into it because apparently personal space has died. “You signed it? You’re back? Did he cry? Declan, did you cry?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“He cried,” Shay says.
Traitor.
Jude lets out a noise that could wake the dead.
Rhys catches his elbow before he can throw himself into a full-body celebration. “Easy.”
“I’m being easy,” Jude says, while nearly climbing Shay.
Benji steps in next. He hugs Shay hard, quick, one hand at the back of his neck. Then he turns those sharp eyes on me.
“Don’t fuck this up,” he says.
“I won’t.”
He studies me for a beat, like he’s deciding whether I’m lying.
Then Knox reaches over and claps my shoulder, firm and quiet. “You won’t.”
It shouldn’t matter that much. It does.
Milo comes toward us with that soft, open look of his, Callum standing behind him like a broad wall with a gentle face. “I’m really happy for you,” Milo says to Shay.
Shay’s jaw works once. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Milo smiles. “You deserve somewhere that feels safe.”
Shay looks away fast. “You’re all being disgusting.”
“Deal with it,” Callum says.
Soren hugs Shay next, careful around the mark on his neck even though it’s healed enough now that my thumb has found it a hundred times in my sleep. “I knew you’d figure it out,” he says.
Shay’s expression goes fond in that way he pretends he doesn’t have. “That’s optimistic of you.”
“I’m optimistic. It’s my whole thing.”
“Your whole thing is crying over bird videos.”
“That too.”
“Hey.” Shay catches his sleeve before he can drift toward the stairs. “The apartment’s yours now. Officially. My name comes off the lease next month.”
Soren blinks at him. “You’re really moving out.”
“I’m really moving out.” Something shifts in Shay’s face at how easily Soren takes it—light, unbothered, like he didn’t just become the last one left in an apartment that used to be so loud the neighbors filed complaints.
“Sunday dinners,” Shay says. “Every week. I’m putting it in the group chat. Attendance is mandatory.”
“You hate mandatory.”
“I hate empty apartments more.”
Soren’s eyes go shiny, and he ducks his head before anyone can call him on it. “Okay,” he says, soft. “Sunday dinners.”
The hallway dissolves into noise after that. Jude demands to see the contract. Benji says nobody needs to read a legal document in a hallway. Jude says he wants to make sure Shay got a good deal. Shay tells him he got fifty percent of a bar and a forty-year-old alpha with a terrible sleep schedule.
“I’m thirty-five,” I say.
“Basically forty,” Jude says.
“Jude,” Rhys says.
“What? It’s math.”
“It isn’t.”
It takes another few minutes to get out the door because Shay’s friends apparently need to inspect our faces for signs of emotional damage, but finally Shay has his bag slung over his shoulder and the signed agreement tucked under his arm.
He pauses on the porch.
The evening is warm, that late-spring kind of warm where the street still holds the day in the pavement. His apartment behind us smells like laundry detergent, old coffee, and the life he’d been trying to convince himself was enough. The smell barely touches him now. He’s already turned toward me.
“You ready?” I ask.
His fingers slide between mine.
“Take me home.”
My chest almost splits open.
The walk back to Byrne’s is quiet in the best way. Shay leans into my side when we cross the street. Not because he needs help. He could walk a straight line in a hurricane out of spite.
Because he wants to.
I keep our hands linked. I don’t say anything stupid about it. Don’t point it out. I’ve learned, finally, that care doesn’t have to arrive with a speech and a solution attached. Sometimes it’s just a hand held in the dark.
Byrne’s is closed when we get there, the neon switched off, the front windows black against the sidewalk. My keys make their familiar little clink as I unlock the side door.
For years, that sound meant work. Another open. Another close. Another night where I could prove I still had this place, that it hadn’t slipped through my hands like the first one.
Tonight, Shay steps in beside me, and the bar smells like worn oak, lemon cleaner, old beer sunk into the floorboards, and the faint lingering trace of a hundred people who came here because it was somewhere to be.
Our bar.
Shay stops just inside.
I look over. “What?”
He glances around the empty room, then down at the folder under his arm. “Nothing.”
“Shay.”
His mouth pulls sideways. “It’s just weird.”
“Good weird?”
“Yeah.” He swallows. “Yeah, good weird.”
I squeeze his hand. “Get used to it.”
“Bossy.”
“You like it.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything.” I lead him toward the stairs. “I’m getting you upstairs.”
“Bold claim.”
“Shay.”
He laughs again, low and real, and I spend the climb behind him trying not to stare at the way his jeans fit. I fail. Obviously.
The apartment opens around us when I unlock the door, warm from the afternoon sun and full of us. Cedar, clean cotton, aged whiskey. Sandalwood, dark chocolate, that sharp sweet note I could find in a crowded room with my eyes shut.
The scent of home.
Shay’s bag sits where he left it by the couch.
He stares at it for a moment.
I keep my mouth shut.
That’s becoming a skill. A hard-earned one.
Then Shay walks over, sets the partnership agreement on the coffee table, and unzips the bag.
His toothbrush comes out first.
He looks at it like it’s a loaded weapon.
“You can put it in the bathroom,” I say.
“I know where the bathroom is.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Okay.”