Chapter 12
Benji
I’m standing outside Knox Rivera’s apartment building like a fucking creep, and the worst part is I know exactly how I got here.
He dropped his cross streets in a DM three days ago—bitching about a neighbor’s dog—and I immediately pulled up the map.
It’s a level of psycho behavior I’d roast anyone else for, but here I am.
Combat boots on the concrete, the claiming bite a warm brand under my collar, staring up at a lit third-floor window, and trying to talk myself into pressing the buzzer.
My official excuse is that I left my jacket at the shop.
My jacket is currently hanging in my closet.
It’s a pathetic excuse, but the alternative is admitting that the drawing on my hip faded into nothing a week ago and I can still feel the ghost of his hands on me.
The alternative is admitting the bullshit "family shit" line he fed me is sitting in my chest like a swallowed stone, and I need to see where he lives.
I need to collect more pieces of the puzzle.
I hit the buzzer.
"Yeah?" he answers on the second ring.
"It's me."
Silence. Then the heavy front door clicks open. He didn't even ask why I'm here. He either trusts me way too much, or he was hoping I'd show up. Both options make me want to turn around and walk home. Both options make me step inside.
The third-floor hallway smells like cheap carpet cleaner, stale cooking oil, and Knox.
His scent leaks through the gap under his door, thick and heavy.
My pulse kicks up a frantic rhythm, my biology zeroing in on my mate.
I grind my teeth together and tell my stupid body to shut the fuck up. We’re investigating, not nesting.
Knox pulls his door open. He’s in a faded t-shirt and grey sweats, barefoot, dark curls damp from the shower.
The cocky swagger is dialed down to maybe a four.
His eyes go soft for a split second before his trademark smirk catches up.
He just looks like a guy in his apartment on a weeknight, and the raw normalcy of it does something dangerous to my chest.
"Lost?" he asks, leaning against the doorframe.
"I think I left my jacket at the shop."
He arches an eyebrow. "You're wearing a jacket."
"I own two jackets. I'm a complex person. Are you letting me in, or are we doing this in the hallway?"
He steps back. I walk in, my designer brain cataloging the space before my boots even stop moving.
It’s a standard shitty one-bedroom, but the walls are completely covered.
Flash designs, custom pieces, sketches tacked up with tape.
There’s a half-finished geometric mandala pinned above the secondhand couch.
Ink stains cover the coffee table, art supplies scattered across every flat surface like someone shook out a toolbox and walked away.
It’s chaotic. It looks exactly like my own workspace, which makes me like him more. Fuck.
There’s a photo stuck to the wall with a thumbtack—a woman with Knox's dark eyes and a tired smile, her arm around a younger Knox. I stare at it for a second too long, then force my gaze away.
"Beer?" Knox asks.
"Sure."
He disappears into the kitchen. I'm alone in the living room, my eyes tracking over the mess as I remove my jacket and place it on a chair. The magazines. The beanie thrown over the couch arm. A coffee mug with a dried ring at the bottom.
Then I see it. A black sketchbook on the coffee table, half-hidden under a tattoo magazine. It's beat to hell, the cover soft from being handled a thousand times.
I pick it up—out of professional curiosity. I expect flash designs. Practice sheets.
The first page is a face.
Sharp jaw. A galaxy of freckles. A nose ring catching the light.
My breath stalls in my throat. The sounds of Knox opening drawers and rummaging around fade away.
I turn the page. A profile. The undercut, the exact shade of electric blue fading to teal at the tips.
The smirk I use when I'm about to verbally destroy someone.
He got the crinkle at the corner of my eye.
I keep turning, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Pages and pages of me. Quick sketches, detailed studies.
My hands holding a coffee cup—something he had to have imagined, because I've never held a coffee cup in front of him.
The bite mark on my shoulder, mapped out with obsessive precision, the bruising shaded perfectly.
Then, halfway through the book, the geometric design from my hip.
He didn't just freehand that. He'd been practicing. He'd been drawing me for months before he ever put that pen to my skin.
My hands start to shake. The lie I’ve been telling myself—that I was just a forgettable hookup, that I meant nothing, that I was easy to walk away from—shatters. I wasn't nothing. The proof is staring right back at me in charcoal and ink.
"Hey, I finally found the opener—"
Knox freezes in the doorway, two bottles of beer in his hands. His eyes drop to the open sketchbook.
The smirk vanishes. Just gone. Like someone cut the power.
His knuckles go white on the glass. I watch him try to formulate a joke, a deflection, anything to put the mask back on.
"I draw everyone," he tries. It’s so weak we both wince.
"How long?" I ask, my voice sounding way too small.
He sets the beers on the counter with a careful clink. He shoves his hands into his sweatpants pockets, pulls them out, rests them on the counter. "Since the week I left."
The week I was scrubbing his number from my phone and redownloading KnotMe out of pure spite, he was doing this.
"Why?"
He stares at the floor. I can see him fighting the urge to package the story into something manageable. He tries, and fails.
"My dad overdosed," he says. The words are flat, shoved through a tight throat.
"Four a.m. I was in your bed, and my phone buzzed.
My mom was just...crying. Saying 'hospital' over and over.
I got dressed, and I left. I didn't wake you because I didn't know what to say, and I thought if I opened my mouth, I’d fall apart. And I don’t do that. Ever."
He paces, running a hand through his damp hair.
"Three days at the hospital. I just handled it. Talked to doctors, filled out forms. Sat in a plastic chair at three in the morning watching monitors beep, thinking about how your sheets smelled like us and knowing I was never going to be in them again." His voice cracks. He ignores it. "That’s what I do. I hold everything together, I don’t talk about it, and I don’t let anyone in.
It’s how I survived that fucking house."
His jaw clenches. "By the time things stabilized, the silence had set. I convinced myself you were better off. That I’d just drag you into my mess." He stops pacing and stares at the ceiling. "This sounds like a fucking excuse."
"It doesn't," I say.
"I started drawing because I couldn't stop," he murmurs, the anger burning out of his voice. "First night back, my hands just kept making your face. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't call you. I just...I know it doesn't fix it. I know I should've texted. I know I fucked it up."
He looks at me. His dark eyes are bright, wet, and he looks pissed about it. He blinks rapidly, his mouth pressed into a hard line.
"I didn't know how to do both. Be there for them, and be anything to you. So I picked the thing I knew." He gives a small, defeated one-shouldered shrug. That shrug hurts more than any of the words.
My anger rears its head. It’s a familiar shield, and I grab it with both hands.
"You could have texted me," I snap, my voice sharp but wavering. "One word. 'Emergency.' 'Family.' Anything. Instead, you let me wake up alone and think I was—"
I bite my tongue. Nothing. The word is right there, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction. I won't let him see exactly how deep the knife went.
But he knows. I see it in the way his face tightens.
"I know," he whispers.
I look down at the sketchbook. At my own face, drawn with a softness I didn't know I possessed.
I snap the book shut and press my palm flat against the cover. My hands are steady now. I don't know how. I consider texting Grandma Ruth—she’d tell me I’m a dumbass and to either forgive him or key his bike.
I don't reach for my phone.
I take a step. Not toward the door, but toward Knox. I’ve never chosen the clean, easy route when the complicated, messy one is standing right in front of me.
"Okay," I say, my voice rough. "So now what?"
Knox’s face does something I’ve never seen. The cocky alpha mask drops completely. Every ounce of swagger evaporates, leaving behind a man who looks utterly terrified, raw, and waiting.
He doesn't answer. But he shifts his weight, leaning just a fraction of an inch closer to me. My arms drop, the book clutched tightly in my right hand. The bite on my neck throbs with heat. I don't know what the fuck we're doing, but I'm not leaving.