42. Sage
FORTY-TWO
SAGE
I’m on my second cup of coffee when there’s a knock at the door.
No key in the lock or someone letting themselves in like they own the place. An actual knock. Which means it’s either a stranger who got through the building entrance without buzzing up, or one of the guys being uncharacteristically polite.
I check the peephole. Holden.
He’s leaning against the guardrail wearing a white T-shirt and dark jeans that fit him in a way that should probably be illegal. He looks like he just stepped out of a cologne ad. The kind where the guy is brooding on a rooftop, and you’re not sure if he’s about to kiss someone or push them off.
The last time he stood at this door, he kissed me like he wanted to ruin me, then turned around and left without a word. Two days of silence and now here he is. Knocking. Like a gentleman. Like my mouth doesn’t still remember the exact weight of his.
I open the door. “Since when do any of you knock now that you have keys?”
“Since I’m trying to be a gentleman.” He holds up a tablet. “Can I come in? I need to talk to you about something.”
The serious tone catches me off guard. Holden doesn’t do serious.
He does charm and deflection and that lazy grin that makes you forget he’s probably the most dangerous person in the room.
But right now, the grin is absent. His jaw is set, his eyes are steady, and there’s something in his posture that says this matters.
“Sure.” I step back. “Coffee?”
“Please.”
I pour him a cup while he sits at the kitchen table, setting a tablet face-down like he’s not ready to show me yet. He takes the coffee, sips it, nods appreciatively.
“Black,” he says. “No bullshit. I like it.”
“What’s going on, Holden?”
He sets the cup down. Looks at me, a tight indent forming in the center of his brow.
“I’m going to tell you something, and you’re probably gonna be pissed,” he says. “You have every right to be. I’m here because you deserve the whole truth, not a version of it. Whatever you do with that truth after I hand it over is yours.”
My stomach drops. “Okay.”
He turns the tablet over and slides it across the table.
The screen shows a grid of four camera feeds—my front door, my hallway, my living room, my kitchen.
All live. All showing my apartment from angles I’ve never seen before.
I can even see us sitting at the kitchen table, me looking at the tablet, looking at myself.
For a moment, I don’t understand what I’m seeing.
Then I do.
Shit.
“Milo installed security cameras when he swapped your lock last week,” Holden says.
His voice is level, factual, giving me space to process.
“Four of them. Common areas only—no bathroom, no bedroom. Motion-activated, cloud-stored. He didn’t tell you.
He didn’t ask.” His eyes stay steady on mine.
“He did it because in his head, it was the smart play for your safety. His intent doesn’t undo what it is. ”
I stare at the feeds. Kitchen. Living room. The couch where I sat with Milo and watched movies. The couch where I’ve done more than just sit and watch TV recently.
Oh god.
“The footage,” I say, and my voice sounds far away. “From the living room. Did he—”
“He saw you and Micah in the living room. Not the bedroom. There’s no camera in the bedroom.” Holden doesn’t look away. “He saw enough to know what happened. He also caught Amy here. And me, at your door, kissing you. I turned the tablet over before the others saw that part, but it existed.”
I should be furious. And I am—there’s a hot, bright thread of anger pulling tight in my chest, the kind that comes from being watched without knowing, from having your privacy peeled back by someone who was supposed to be safe.
But underneath the anger is something more complicated.
Because Milo is safe. Milo is chaos and pasta and terrible jokes and the man who listened to all my troubles and watched Bridgerton and Lord of the Rings with me.
Who gave me something and didn’t take for himself.
He’s not malicious. I genuinely believe that.
Still . . .
“The others?” I ask. “How did they react?”
“Eli nearly put him through a wall. Micah went ice cold. Knox went even quieter. And I took the tablet and came here.” He pauses. “The cloud backup has been deleted. I’m here to remove the physical cameras. But only if you want them gone.”
“Why wouldn’t I want them gone?”
“Milo thinks Tyler is a problem and having eyes on your apartment when none of us are here isn’t the worst idea in the world.” He says it without agenda, just laying out the option. “But that’s your call. Not mine. Not Milo’s. Yours.”
I sit with that for a moment. The anger is still there, but it’s rearranging itself into something I can use instead of something that uses me.
I think about Tyler’s sharp eyes and pointed questions.
I think about the nights when none of them are here and the apartment feels too quiet and every creak sounds like a footstep.
But then I think about someone else having access to these feeds besides me and Amy, and my decision is made.
“Take them down,” I say. “If I want cameras in my own home, I’ll install them myself.”
Holden nods. No argument, no negotiation. Just acceptance. “I’ll have them out in ten minutes.”
“Wait.” I catch Holden’s arm before he can reach the first one. “Where exactly are they?”
We use the tablet to figure out their locations. One above the front door, one in the hallway light fitting, one on the bookshelf in the living room, one mounted under the kitchen cabinet.
I cross to the camera on the bookshelf—the little black eye aimed at the couch, at the exact cushion where I fell asleep on Milo’s shoulder while hobbits trudged toward a volcano. I lean in until I know my face fills the whole frame.
“Milo.” It comes out steadier than I feel. “I know you’re watching. Holden said the backup’s gone, but you’ve still got the live feed up, because God forbid you miss anything.”
I let it sit. Somewhere across town, I picture him going very still.
“Here’s the part that makes this so spectacularly shitty: I trusted you.
You were the one who listened to all my garbage and sat on this couch watching TV with me, and you turned my home into something you could pull up whenever you got anxious.
The couch. The kitchen. Me, at my most private.
Amy, without ever knowing. And you told yourself that was love.
” My throat tightens. I shove through it.
“It’s not. Watching someone isn’t keeping them safe.
I have spent my whole life with people deciding what’s good for me from somewhere I couldn’t see them, and I will not take invisible control from someone I actually let in. ”
The anger’s burning clean now. Useful.
“So you’re going to take this one on the chin. You don’t get to deflect or crack a joke. You’re going to sit in it. You’re going to give me space. And when I’m ready, we’ll talk, and you are going to listen to every single word. Understand?”
The camera says nothing, obviously. But I know him, and I know he heard me.
“Okay.” I straighten and turn to Holden, who’s watching me with an expression that isn’t quite a smile but wants to be. “Now they can go.”
I watch him work, standing on chairs and reaching into corners, his movements efficient and careful. He dismantles each one, placing the tiny devices on the kitchen counter in a neat row like evidence at a crime scene.
They’ve been here an entire week. Put here by a man who couldn’t tell the difference between keeping someone safe and keeping them catalogued. I hate that I didn’t know about it.
I hate that maybe I understand.
“I’ll talk to him properly,” I say, watching Holden take apart the last one. “When I’ve cooled off. Cooling off doesn’t mean forgiving him. It just means I want to choose my words, not throw them.”
“That wasn’t cooled off?”
“That was the trailer.”
His mouth twitches. “Then he’s in for it.” He pops the battery and sets the final camera on the counter with the others, then checks the tablet. One by one, the feeds blink out into dead gray squares. No hallway. No kitchen. No couch. No live window into my life.
“For what it’s worth,” Holden adds. “Every single one of us told him he was wrong. And he gets that he fucked up. But hearing it from us isn’t the same as hearing it from you.”
“No. It’s not.”
He looks at me, and something in his expression shifts—the serious Holden receding, replaced by something warmer. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I let out a breath. “Yeah, I think so. I’m pissed. Unsettled. Not forgiving him yet. But I’m not . . . shattered by it. Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense.” He leans against the counter, arms crossed, watching me with those ocean-blue eyes. “You’re tougher than anyone gives you credit for, wildcat.”
There it is. That word. The one he pinned me to a wall with, the one that made my pulse jump and something low in my belly catch fire. Micah’s baby girl is tender. Milo’s kitten is playful. Holden’s wildcat is a dare.
“Thank you,” I say. “For being straight with me.”
“Always.”
I turn to tidy up, needing something to do with my hands.
But when I reach for the clean glasses on the drying rack, my fingers are clumsy, and the glass slips.
I grab for it too fast, and it shatters against the edge of the sink, a shard slicing across the pad of my index finger when I stupidly try to catch it.
“Shit—”
Blood. Bright red, immediate, wells up from the cut and drips onto the stainless steel. It’s not deep but it’s bleeding freely, and the sight of it against the clean sink makes my vision narrow for a second.
“Let me see.” Holden is beside me before I’ve finished cursing, his hand catching mine, turning it over to examine the cut. His fingers are warm and firm around my wrist, holding me steady, and I watch his face as he looks at the blood.
Something changes.
It’s subtle. A shift in his breathing, a dilation of his pupils, a tension that wasn’t there before. He’s staring at the cut, at the red line of blood running down my finger, and his jaw tightens in a way that has nothing to do with concern.
He lifts my hand.
Slowly. Deliberately. Watching my face the whole time, giving me every opportunity to pull away. I don’t.
He brings my finger to his mouth and his tongue traces the cut. A slow, warm stroke that collects the blood and sends a shock of sensation straight through my core. Then his lips close around my fingertip and he sucks, gently, his eyes locked on mine, and the sound I make is not pain.
He releases my finger. His lips are stained faintly red.
“That’s not first aid,” I whisper.
“No,” he agrees. His voice has dropped low and rough. “It’s not.”