2 | Underwear Breakfast
I woke the next morning with a faint headache and the lingering memory of Leo’s tongue against my ankle.
The headache was probably from the weed. The ankle problem was entirely his fault.
I stayed in bed for several minutes, staring at the pale wooden ceiling while the lodge slowly brightened around me.
Snow reflected through the windows, turning the room almost painfully white.
Beyond the glass, the mountain looked untouched and peaceful, as if three difficult musicians and one increasingly questionable manager had not been dropped into the middle of it.
I reached for my phone.
There were two emails from the label, one message from my father, and a calendar reminder for the meeting I had scheduled at ten. I read the emails first. Both said variations of the same thing: give the band space, encourage collaboration, and provide an update once I had assessed their progress.
They had no progress.
We had arrived, smoked on the terrace, and established that Leo had an ankle fixation or a highly specific method of irritating women. Neither development belonged in an executive report.
My father’s message was shorter.
Settled in? Call if you need anything.
My father could solve most professional problems with one phone call, which was precisely why I could not let him solve any of mine.
The label already knew whose daughter I was.
The band knew. Every person who had watched me receive this assignment knew.
Asking him for help would confirm the version of my career they had constructed before I ever entered the room.
I typed that everything was going well, deleted it because it sounded suspicious, then sent a simple thumbs-up.
That felt equally suspicious, but at least it was brief.
I climbed out of bed and changed into black leggings, a sports bra, and a loose gray sweatshirt. Working out before the meeting would clear my head. Afterward, I would shower, eat something, and establish a schedule that did not involve anyone licking anyone else before noon.
The hallway was quiet when I stepped outside my room.
A door stood partly open near the staircase, revealing a pile of clothing on the floor.
I couldn’t tell whose room it was. The men had apparently divided the upstairs without murdering one another, which gave us a better first-night survival rate than they had predicted.
Music played below. Something older and heavy, with a bass line strong enough to travel through the floorboards.
The smell of coffee reached me halfway down the stairs.
I followed it toward the kitchen, already thinking about what I needed to cover in the morning meeting.
Their existing songs. What had been recorded.
What still needed lyrics. Whether they could agree on a producer without turning the discussion into a referendum on every grievance they had collected since forming the band.
Then I entered the kitchen and forgot all of it.
The men were in their underwear.
All three of them.
Kadir stood at the stove in black boxer briefs, cooking eggs in a cast-iron pan.
He was shirtless, broad-backed, and built with the kind of quiet excess that made clothing seem less like a necessity and more like a public service.
Tattoos covered one shoulder and continued down his arm, dark ink shifting over muscle as he moved the spatula.
Wesley was beside the coffee machine in dark green briefs, pouring milk into a mug. His back was toward me, which gave me an unobstructed view of his shoulders, the shallow line of his spine, and a small tattoo high on one thigh that appeared to be some kind of bird.
Leo sat on the kitchen island wearing red briefs and nothing else.
Great.
His long curls were messy in an unfortunately hot way. One knee was raised, his foot resting on a cabinet handle as he ate toast and contributed absolutely nothing to breakfast. Tattoos followed his ribs and disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear.
He noticed me first.
His eyes moved slowly from my face to my sweatshirt, down my leggings, and back up again.
I stopped in the doorway.
“No.”
Wesley turned with the milk still in his hand. “Morning.”
“No. We’re not doing this.”
Kadir glanced over his shoulder, then looked down at the pan as if checking whether the eggs had somehow offended me.
Leo took another bite of toast. “Doing what?”
I gestured at the kitchen, but the movement included too much bare skin to be useful.
“This. Whatever this is. The communal underwear breakfast.”
Wesley looked down at himself. He seemed genuinely surprised to discover he wasn’t wearing pants.
Kadir returned his attention to the stove. “I’m cooking.”
“You can cook in clothing.”
“I usually do.”
“Excellent. Let’s return to that tradition.”
Leo watched the conversation with the relaxed interest of someone who had already identified how to make it worse. Morning light came through the windows behind him, outlining the narrow shape of his body and turning the silver hoop in his ear bright.
I kept my eyes on his face. Mostly.
“What’s wrong with underwear?” he asked.
“We’re sharing a house for six weeks.”
Wesley set down the milk. “Is it making you uncomfortable?”
The sincerity of the question softened my irritation by a fraction. “It’s weird.”
“We’re all wearing more than we would at a pool,” Leo said.
“A pool has an established social agreement.”
He raised his eyebrows. “About thighs?”
Kadir made a small sound near the stove. It might have been a laugh, but he kept his face turned away.
I folded my arms. “How would you feel if I walked around the house in my underwear?”
The words left my mouth before my common sense could stop them.
All three men looked at me.
Leo’s expression changed first. His gaze dropped again, slower this time, lingering at my hips before returning to my face.
“You’re welcome to test that theory.”
Heat crawled up my neck.
Wesley pressed his lips together, apparently trying not to smile. Kadir’s shoulders shifted once.
I pointed at Leo. “I already feel strange walking around without shoes in front of you,” I said. “I’m not adding underwear to the situation.”
Wesley’s eyes dropped to my feet.
I was wearing sneakers.
“That explains last night,” he said.
“I went outside without planning to stay.”
“You stayed long enough to smoke.”
I looked at him. “You are very close to losing your status as the least irritating person here.”
That only made him smile.
He turned back toward the counter and picked up a pair of sweatpants that had been thrown over one of the stools. “All right. You’re right. Shared space. I’ll put pants on.”
The compliance came so easily that I briefly suspected a trap.
Kadir turned off the burner. He had left gray sweatpants on the floor near the pantry. He stepped into them without argument, balancing on one foot and then the other before pulling them over his hips.
I looked away at the exact moment the waistband slid into place. Professionalism deserved recognition even when it arrived late.
“She’s right,” Kadir said. “We’re not alone.”
His tone was calm, almost indifferent, but the statement landed more heavily because he had barely spoken since I entered the room.
Wesley tied the drawstring on his pants. “There. Workplace appropriate.”
“Thank you.”
Leo looked between them. His amusement faded. It was subtle at first. His shoulders tightened. He set the toast down beside him and lowered his foot from the cabinet.
“Really?”
Wesley glanced over. “She asked us to wear pants.”
“In the house.”
“In the kitchen,” I corrected.
Leo ignored me. “You both just decided she’s in charge of what we wear?”
He slid off the island. The movement brought him closer, though the counter remained between us.
My attention dipped despite myself.
Leo noticed.
The argument had stopped being entertaining to him, but he still looked pleased whenever I betrayed an awareness of his body.
He stood with one hand braced against the counter, lean and tattooed and unfairly beautiful, using his refusal to wear pants as though it were a principled stand against corporate oppression.
“I don’t care what you wear in your room,” I said. “I’m asking for basic consideration in the shared areas.”
“You’re making rules because you got embarrassed last night.”
Kadir looked over at him. Wesley’s smile disappeared.
I kept my voice even. “This has nothing to do with last night.”
“It clearly does. You kicked me, Dasha.”
“Because you called me a bitch.”
The memory of his hand around my ankle returned with embarrassing precision. His thumb moving against my skin. His mouth above the edge of my sock. The brief touch of his tongue.
Leo watched my face and knew exactly where my mind had gone. I hated how quickly he could drag a conversation away from anything useful.
“We have a meeting at ten,” I said. “Wear whatever you want until then. I’m going to the gym.”
He laughed once, without humor. “Once again."
I stopped before turning away. “Once again what?”
“The schedule. The rules. The meetings.” He picked up his coffee, though he didn’t drink it. “We’re here to make music. We don’t need someone turning the house into label headquarters.”
“I didn’t bring the label here. The label sent all of us.”
“They sent you.”
The distinction sat between us.
Wesley looked at the floor. Kadir leaned one hip against the counter, his expression unreadable.
I knew what Leo meant. He hadn’t mentioned my father, but the implication was close enough to touch.
The label had sent me because I represented them.
Because my last name opened doors. Because assigning me to Midnight Theory allowed my father to keep an eye on an expensive problem without appearing personally involved.
I had spent the entire morning trying not to think about that.
“Then you should probably make my job easier,” I said. “Unless you’d prefer they send someone else.”