Chapter 4
Cal
After Nia left, the silence didn’t just settle over the house—it crowded it. I dropped onto the couch, the leather cool against my back, while Brookie immediately climbed up beside me. She rested her heavy, warm head against my thigh, a grounding weight in a room that suddenly felt too large.
The house always felt different after Nia left. Not empty, exactly, but lacking a specific kinetic energy she carried with her. I grabbed my phone, thumb hovering over her name, debating whether or not to text her. Hey, you make it back safe? or Already miss the attitude.
I locked the screen and tossed it face down.
Deciding against it was safer. That was the fragile boundary of whatever this was.
Too much deliberate effort ruined the illusion of spontaneity we’d both built as a shield.
A few months ago, after one too many nights where the lines blurred entirely, I’d broken the rule.
I’d asked her, right there in the dark, what if we stopped pretending this was casual?
The memory still tasted like a mistake. The second the words left my mouth, the air in the room had shifted, freezing solid.
Nia had gone entirely quiet, her expression locking down behind a guarded, impenetrable wall.
By the next morning, we were both nodding along to the lie that it was time to stop altogether.
That expiration date lasted exactly two months. Until last night.
I leaned my head back against the cushion, listening to Brookie’s soft, rhythmic snores.
The truth was a heavy thing to carry alone: I liked Nia.
More than I should, and far more than I ever planned to.
But we had an unspoken rule born out of self-preservation, and neither of us knew how to cross it without breaking the foundation beneath us.
And ruining Nia—or losing her entirely—wasn't something I could live with.
Needing a buffer, I dialed Mars instead.
The line rang twice before picking up, and before my sister could even greet me, a sound cut through the speaker that made my chest tighten. Nia’s laugh. Rich, unbothered, and entirely vibrant. My mood plummeted into something restless and hyper-focused.
"Hello brother," Mars answered.
“What y’all doing?” I asked, leaning forward, the quiet of my living room suddenly feeling stifling.
“Cake tasting.”
I sat up straighter, the phantom taste of sugar hitting my tongue. “Wow. So I couldn’t get an invite to the preview?”
Mars laughed, a sharp, knowing sound. “I didn’t think cake tasting was your thing, Caleb.”
“What? A man can’t appreciate high-end frosting?”
“Nah,” Nia’s voice sliced through the speaker, closer to the microphone now. “You’re just thirsty.”
A grin broke across my face before I could stop it, the irritation melting at the sheer friction of her voice. “Hush, Cinderella.”
That caught her off guard, drawing out another genuine laugh.
God, that laugh. Mars joined in, though the joke wasn't hers to understand.
The nickname belonged strictly to us—a private jab at how Nia always vanished before the sun came up, every single time, as if staying until breakfast made the reality of us too heavy to carry.
“You guys want to hang tonight?” I asked, trying to keep the hook casual, though the desperation to just be in the same room as her felt entirely transparent.
“Nia?” Mars asked on her end.
“I can’t,” Nia replied, her tone shifting back to that professional, unavailable rhythm. “I’m meeting up with some old teammates after we leave here.”
I sucked my teeth, the sound sharp against the quiet kitchen. “Whatever.”
“You are so irritating,” Nia muttered, though the fondness was there, buried under the exasperation.
“You love me.”
"Goodbye, Cal.”
“Love you too, Cinderella.”
The line went dead, Mars’s lingering laughter cutting off abruptly.
I stared down at the black screen for a long moment before dropping the phone onto the cushion.
Brookie blinked up at me, her dark eyes slow and judging.
“What?” I muttered.
She just sighed, shifting her weight.
“Exactly.”
I needed a distraction before I started pacing.
Moving to the kitchen island, I flipped open my laptop, pulling up the rough edits for a segment covering J5’s highly anticipated return game later that week. The sports world had been dissecting his comeback for months—a player of his caliber returning from a devastating knee injury was pure gold.
A chime interrupted the timeline.
An email from a colleague with the subject line: **Raw B-Roll - Athletic Center.**
I clicked it absentmindedly, the video expanding to fill the screen, and my breath caught in my throat.
Nia.
She was outside on the practice blacktop, her wild curls catching the wind, framing a face full of intense focus.
She was wearing fitted workout shorts and a cropped athletic top that mapped out every long, toned line of her body.
I leaned back, the metal stool scraping against the floor, watching the clip on a loop.
She was guiding J5 through a lateral agility drill.
I watched her hands reach out, her fingers catching his shoulder to correct his stance, her palms shifting down to guide his knee alignment with total authority.
She looked incredible doing anything, but seeing her like this—in her element, commanding respect, entirely brilliant at her job—did something fierce to my chest. It was a suffocating mix of intense pride and a sudden, sharp spike of possessiveness that I had no right to feel.
On screen, J5 said something that made her break into a wide, brilliant smile.
She jogged backward across the court, stretching her long legs effortlessly while continuing to call out instructions.
My eyes tracked the movement, dropping lower automatically, tracing the curve of her hip, the memory of how she felt under my hands last night rushing back with vivid, agonizing clarity.
“Damn,” I muttered, a low growl in the empty kitchen.
I bit my lip, catching myself, and slammed the laptop shut. The crack of plastic echoed too loudly in the quiet.
I needed to clear my head, immediately. Looking at her, thinking about her, was only feeding a fire I was supposed to be putting out.
Upstairs, I stripped down and stepped beneath the shower, cranking the handle until the water ran ice-cold.
The freezing spray hit my skin hard enough to force a sharp breath from my lungs, but it did nothing to numb the ache.
I braced my hands against the subway tile, closing my eyes, but the darkness inside my eyelids only replayed the footage.
The way she’d laughed at whatever the hell he’d said. The easy, unbothered happiness on her face.
What was wrong with me?
For years, I’d had every opportunity to lay my cards on the table, to tell her exactly what she was to me.
I’d chosen the safety of the unspoken rule instead.
Now, watching another man occupy her time, watching her exist in a world where I was just a late-night secret, the irony felt like a physical blow.
By the time I pulled on a clean shirt, the cold water hadn't washed away a single thought.
The mirror showed a man entirely wound up by a woman who wasn't even there. All I could see was Nia—the way she owned any room she walked into, the way she rolled her eyes when I pushed her buttons, the way she argued with me just because she knew I loved the friction of it. She moved through the world completely unaware of the wreckage she left in her wake inside my head. Or maybe she knew. Maybe she’d always known.
I grabbed my keys off the dresser, the metal clinking sharply. I couldn't stay in this house for another minute. A drive, the gym, a diner—it didn't matter. I just needed a crowd, a noise, anything loud enough to drown out the one name that kept echoing in the silence.