Breathe, Becker. Don’t Do Anything Stupid.
Breathe, Becker. Don’t Do Anything Stupid.
Cohen
There’s a part of my brain—the evolved part, the one that learned how to read and write and not fling poop at my rivals—that knows I need to stay calm.
Sloane told me it’s over. That it’s a closed chapter.
And I want to believe her. I need to believe her, because I don’t want to be an asshole. I don’t want to turn into some controlling, toxic idiot.
But then there’s the other part.
The part screaming and rattling the bars of my rib cage.
The caveman.
The one who sees the way Joe looks at her—with that greasy familiarity, like he knows her secrets, like he knows exactly which button breaks her—and all he wants to do is storm across the room and rip his head clean off.
Why the hell won’t she tell me about him?
Why is she guarding that story with so much silence?
If he’s just an ex, just say it.
Yeah, he’s my ex. He was a jerk. The end.
But no.
There’s fear in her eyes.
A kind of insecurity that doesn’t fit her at all.
And I don’t hate Joe just because he touched her—
I hate him because he left marks I can’t see but somehow still feel.
Because he made her believe she was less than she is.
“Becker, if you stare at that screwdriver any harder, it’s going to spontaneously combust.”
Sloane’s voice snaps me back into the Main Hall.
We’re surrounded by stacks of heavy, flat cardboard boxes. The space has been transformed into a logistical nightmare. Each couple has a designated area outlined with pink glitter tape. In the center of every zone sits a massive box stamped with some unpronounceable Swedish logo.
Aunt Tina stands on a step ladder (why?), dressed as a Sexy Construction Foreman, complete with a glitter-covered yellow hard hat.
“Welcome to the trial by fire!” she bellows through a megaphone. “The Domestic Harmony Challenge!
They say assembling Swedish furniture together is the number one cause of divorce in the Western world. Today, we find out who survives!”
She pauses for effect.
“Rule number one: No instructions. We burned them in the Heart-Shaped Bonfire. You must rely on instinct!
Rule number two: You have forty-five minutes.
Rule number three: If the furniture collapses when I touch it, you lose fifty points!”
I look at our box.
It shows a vanity table with a mirror and a stool.
“Fantastic,” I mutter. “A thousand microscopic pieces and glass. A massacre waiting to happen.”
“Stop whining and grab the box cutter,” Sloane orders.
Her hair is pulled into a high ponytail, and there’s that battle-commander focus in her eyes.
It’s insanely sexy.
“GO!”
Tina’s whistle shrieks, unleashing instant chaos.
I rip open the box. Sawdust and screws explode everywhere.
“Okay,” I say, grabbing two random boards. “This looks like a leg. This looks like the top. Let’s just screw everything together and pray for the best.”
“Freeze those giant hands!”
Sloane grabs my wrist. Her skin is cool against mine.
“That’s not how this works. We need to sort the pieces. Long screws here, short screws there. Wood dowels on this side.”
“Angel, it’s a table, not open-heart surgery. It just has to stand.”
“If you build it, it’ll stand for three minutes and then spontaneously implode. Organization, Becker. It’s the key.”
She bends down to separate the screws. Her black leggings stretch over her thighs and ass.
I bite my tongue to keep from groaning.
The caveman part of my brain stops thinking entirely and starts chanting:
Take her. Now. On top of the boxes and the scattered parts.
I shake my head, trying to clear the image.
I crouch beside her.
“Yes, ma’am. You sort, I screw. But if there’s a leftover piece, we shove it under the rug.”
She shoots me an amused look. “Deal.”
As we work, I glance around.
It’s a glorious disaster.
The Fit-Fluencers—Chad and Kiki—are testing the boards like gym equipment. They haven’t assembled a single thing.
Tiffany and Brent are fighting. Or rather, Tiffany is shrieking at Brent because she chipped a nail opening the box, while he’s trying to install the mirror backward.
And then there’s Joe and Sarah.
I glance at their station.
Pathetic.
Sarah bends forward in the most unnatural way possible, giving the cameras a panoramic view of her cleavage every time she picks up a screw.
“Oh, Joeee, it’s sooo haaaarrrd,” she whines, holding the screwdriver like lipstick. “I can’t do it!”
Joe is sweating. His poster-boy smile is gone. He’s forcing two pieces together that clearly don’t match, like he’s personally offended by the wood.
“Give it to me,” he snaps, yanking the piece from her hand.
“Hey! Careful! You’re ruining my shot!”
She smiles for the cameras, but I catch the vein pulsing in Joe’s neck.
They’re fake.
They’re performing.
And they’re failing.
It’s pure bliss.
Then I look over at Lucy and Lars.
Holy hell.
Lars isn’t even using the screwdriver. He’s twisting the bolts in with his bare hands. He’s already built the entire frame. Lucy passes him parts like he’s forging Excalibur, staring at him with heart eyes while his biceps flex beneath his flannel.
“Okay,” I mutter to Sloane. “Lars wins. That man is a machine.”
“He’s an artist,” she corrects, handing me a side panel. “Hold this. Don’t move.”
We’re close now.
I’m holding the heavy mirror steady while she kneels between my legs to secure the base.
Her face is right at my pelvis.
My breath stops.
She looks up.
She realizes the position we’re in.
And she realizes exactly what I’m staring at—the neckline of her sweater, which has slipped just enough to be illegal in seventeen states.
Color floods her cheeks.
“Becker… focus on the screw,” she whispers, her voice rougher than before.
“I’m focusing on a lot of things,” I murmur. “And the screw is dead last on the list.”
She bites her lip, and the jolt that shoots straight to my groin nearly knocks me out.
And instead of moving away, she leans in even farther to reach a stubborn dowel.
Her chest grazes the inside of my thigh.
I swear I see stars.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I growl.
“I’m just… working,” she pants—but she doesn’t move an inch.
We finish assembling the mirror in a silence so charged it might as well be static electricity.
Every time our hands brush, it’s a spark.
Every time we pass a tool, our fingers linger a second too long.
We laugh when I mess up a joint and curse in three different languages.
She teases me about my complete lack of organizational skills; I mock her militant devotion to screw-sorting.
We’re a team.
A team that desperately wants to tear each other’s clothes off—but a team nonetheless.
I try not to think about what this kind of domestic synergy might look like… in real life.
Across the room, a loud crash makes everyone turn.
Daisy has attempted to “help” by using wood glue in a place it absolutely does not belong.
Silas’s vanity now resembles a sticky, crooked piece of modern art.
He drops to the floor, head in his hands.
“Why?” he asks the heavens. “Why?”
Daisy giggles nervously.
Right then, Pedro the myna bird swoops down from the rafters.
He ignores everyone else and lands squarely on Silas’s shoulder.
“Courage! Courage! Bonus!” the bird squawks, then gently pecks the vet’s ear.
Tina blasts her whistle through the megaphone.
“TIME OUT! Pedro has spoken! The Wild Card has been awarded! Twenty bonus points to Dr. Reed for patience and cross-species bonding!”
Silas looks at the bird.
“Thanks, buddy. You’re the only one who understands me.”
“STOP! HANDS OFF THE TOOLS!”
Tina’s whistle slices through the air, making us both jump. My hand—which had been accidentally brushing Sloane’s waist for the hundredth time under the excuse of steadying the mirror—freezes midair.
“Hands up! Step away from the particle board!”
I drop the screwdriver with a sigh that’s half relief, half sexual frustration.
Our vanity is standing.
It’s solid.
The mirror is mostly straight.
And we don’t have any leftover pieces to smuggle into our pockets.
Sloane pushes to her feet and wipes her hands on her leggings—a move so stupidly sexy in its simplicity I have to fight the urge to dirty her all over again.
“We did it,” she says, sounding almost surprised.
“Told you I’ve got great hands,” I murmur, stepping close enough to feel the heat rolling off her after all that effort.
I brush my thumb over her cheek, wiping away a smudge.
She closes her eyes at the touch, leaning—just barely—into my palm.
For a moment, the chaos of the room fades.
The cameras don’t exist.
“Nice work, partner,” I murmur.
“And now… THE JUDGMENT!” Tina bellows, climbing down the ladder. “Remember: this is only the first round. Today’s points will be averaged with the rest of this week’s Domestic Harmony challenges—but my personal approval?”
She grins. “That’s earned right now.”
Tina begins her inspection lap, Pedro swooping from perch to perch behind her, squawking verdicts like a feathered executioner.
First stop: Bernie and Esther.
It’s both adorable and catastrophic.
Their vanity looks nothing like the picture on the box—they’ve mounted the mirror horizontally and are using it as a candy tray for butterscotch.
Bernie confidently explains that it’s a Cubist interpretation of Scandinavian design.
Tina fights a laugh, shakes her head fondly, and mutters something about creativity triumphing over technique.
A few feet over, the vibe is much less artistic.
At the Fit-Fluencers’ station, Chad is literally holding the vanity upright with one hand while flexing his bicep for the camera. The moment Tina points out that the whole thing will collapse the second he lets go, he launches into a defense involving “active muscular support.”
Her expression turns arctic.
Failed.
Beyond appeal.
The tour moves on to Roxanne and Dave.
Their vanity is perfectly assembled—solid as a rock—but one detail is… concerning.
A screwdriver is stabbed into the wood like a crime scene prop.
“Dave told me to shut up,” Roxanne says casually, filing her nails while Tina examines the evidence.
“Dave nearly died,” he mutters.
Tina taps something into her tablet—probably high points for structural integrity, low points for workplace safety.
Then comes the moment the rest of us dread.
Tina stops in front of Lucy and Lars.
Holy hell.
The vanity isn’t just assembled.
It’s improved.
I have no idea how he did it in forty-five minutes, but that giant of a man has carved tiny flowers into the table legs. Lucy looks at him like he’s Thor incarnate, and honestly? Even I feel a flicker of masculine jealousy.
Tina sighs in bliss, stroking the wood like silk.
“National treasure,” she declares.
The temperature drops several degrees when she reaches the Perfect Pair.
Brenda and Steve finished ten minutes ago, swept up every speck of sawdust, and polished the mirror to a sterile shine—but they’re arguing in low, venomous voices about a microscopic scratch.
Tina drags a finger across the tabletop, unimpressed by their clinical perfection, and moves on without a single compliment.
It goes even worse for Tiffany.
She’s perched on the only piece she successfully assembled—the stool—while the rest of the vanity lies scattered around her like a pile of defeated hopes. Brent is on the phone with his broker.
Tina doesn’t even slow down. She flicks her hand in a gesture that clearly means:
Zero points.
Absolute disaster.
Silas’s piece of furniture is a sticky, lopsided, glitter-covered modern-art tragedy.
The veterinarian is sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, looking like a man utterly defeated by life.
But when he glances up at the mynah bird with a resigned half-smile, half the women in the room sigh—including Sloane, which I notice with irritation.
I tense as Tina approaches station number eight.
Joe and Sarah.
I want them to fail. I need them to fail.
Sarah is posed like a mannequin on the stool, while Joe stands beside the vanity—sweaty, forcing a smile that never reaches his eyes.
“Here it is!” he announces with far too much enthusiasm.
Tina taps the mirror with one finger.
The whole thing wobbles dangerously.
“Hmmm,” she murmurs, tilting her head. “Shaky. Unstable. And is that… tape holding the back leg together? Covered with foundation?”
Sarah goes pale.
Joe’s smile collapses.
“We were missing a screw!” he protests, his voice cracking.
“Honey, love doesn’t hold together with tape,” Tina says flatly. “And neither does Swedish furniture. Poor workmanship. All show, no substance.”
Ecstasy.
I’m ecstatic.
I have never enjoyed anything as much as watching him crumble.
Joe shoots me a poisonous look.
I answer with a full, bright, thirty-two-tooth smile and bask in his humiliation.
Finally, Tina reaches us.
Sloane and I are standing close. My hand is still on her back—a subconscious claim I can’t seem to release.
Tina gives our vanity a shake.
Solid as a rock.
(Thank you, biceps—and Sloane’s organizational neurosis.)
Then she studies us.
Her sharp gaze tracks from Sloane’s rumpled hair to the dust on my shirt, then to the way our bodies angle toward each other—like magnets that physically refuse to separate.
Her eyes dip to Sloane’s neckline… then to my crotch (Christ, I hope I adjusted)… then back to our faces.
She smiles.
“Well, well, well,” she says into the mic, in that auntie tone of someone who knows far too much. “The furniture is perfect. But the atmosphere here is… sizzling.”
She steps right into Sloane’s space.
“Sweetheart, your cheeks are on fire. You sure you two were only tightening screws?”
Sloane lifts her chin—bold again, cool again. “We worked hard, Tina.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Tina snorts, fanning herself dramatically. “I’m awarding the DIVA BONUS: FIRE & FLAMES!”
She turns to the main camera.
“Because I swear, if I hadn’t called time, these two would’ve used that table for anything but makeup. And then we really would’ve tested its stability…”
The room erupts in cheers and whistles.
Sloane hides her face against my shoulder for a second, laughing in embarrassment—then looks up at me.
In that look, there’s a promise that wipes out the rest of the world.
I grin, proud as hell, and pull her closer.
“Did you hear that?” I murmur against her ear. “Fire and flames.”
“Don’t let it go to your head, Becker,” she whispers back, even as her fingers curl into my shirt.
“Too late.”
Tina marches back to the center of the hall.
“Alright! Partial scores are in—but don’t get comfortable! This was just the appetizer. Tomorrow we move to the kitchen, and today’s points will count toward your averages. Now go rest… if you can!”
Joe sulks in a corner, furious.
We’re at the top—or close enough (damn you, Lars).
But as we leave the Hall, Sloane’s arm hooked through mine, I feel an urgency rising inside me that has nothing to do with points or competition.