65. Holden
SIXTY-FIVE
HOLDEN
Ilove you guys.
Four words, mumbled half into Knox’s chest, and she’s already asleep before any of us can figure out what to do with them.
I stare at the ceiling.
Around me, the others are quiet in the way men get when something lands that they weren’t braced for. Not a bad landing. Just the kind that knocks the air out of you and leaves you taking inventory—checking whether anything moved, whether the ground is still where you left it.
It is. It’s just different ground than it was this morning.
I love you guys.
I’ve had women say that to me before. After sex, mostly, riding the hormone crash, meaning something in the moment that evaporated by morning. I’ve said it back when I shouldn’t have, twice, and learned from both. I know the difference between something said and something meant.
Sage meant it.
I breathe through it. File it somewhere that isn’t the part of me that makes reckless decisions.
Then I look at her in the center of a five-man pile.
She’s a mess. A beautiful, obliterated mess.
Hair stuck to her face, skin flushed, breathing in the shallow, exhausted way of someone who has absolutely nothing left.
She’s going to be sore in the morning. She’s going to need water and something for the ache and probably twelve hours of sleep.
I know she’s tired now, but we can’t leave her to sleep in the middle of what we all just did. That’s not love.
I sit up.
“All right.” I keep my voice low. “Everybody off.”
Milo lifts his head and groans. “We just got comfortable.”
“She needs a shower. It’s our job to take care of her. Now, off.”
Nobody argues. They peel back one by one, and I reach for Sage before the cold air can wake her fully, sliding an arm under her knees and one behind her back. She makes a small sound and tips her face toward my chest.
“Holden?”
“Still me. I’ve got you.”
“Mm.” She doesn’t open her eyes. Trusts me enough not to.
That does something to me I’m not going to examine right now.
I look back at the others over my shoulder—Milo still horizontal, Knox sitting at the edge of the bed, Micah and Eli upright and watching. “New sheets. Clean clothes for her. Water and whatever they’ve got for pain. Go.”
Milo rolls to his feet with more speed than a very naked man in a room full of naked men has any right to, and they all scatter, carrying out each task.
I carry her to the bathroom and kick the door shut behind us.
She wakes up properly when the warm water hits her—gasps, grabs my arm, then registers where she is and sags back against me.
“Holden.” My name is a whisper and I lean down slightly and kiss her, soft and slow.
“I’m just getting you cleaned up, wildcat.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.”
“I can stand.”
“You don’t have to.” I adjust my grip and allow the water to sluice over her body and mine, hands supporting her as I rinse the sweat and salt and the mess of all five of us from her skin.
She’s heavy and limp in my arms, that rare kind of trust people don’t even know they’re giving away.
It would be easier to rest her against the wall, but I don’t.
I lift my knee and place my foot on the shower ledge, balancing her on my thigh while I hold her and gently wash her hair, fingers massaging her scalp until she makes a sound like she’s sinking underwater.
She barely moves except to tilt her head back when I tell her to, eyes closed and mouth parted, letting me take care of her like it’s a fact of physics.
I shampoo her hair twice and soap every inch of her body with methodical care—checking her wrists and knees for new bruises, scanning for any mark that should be treated or iced or coddled.
Even after everything we’ve done, there’s still a weird reverence to the process.
My hands move slower than they need to. She lets me touch all of her, no flinch, no second thought, just the easy, dreamy surrender of someone who knows they’re safe.
After a while, she opens her eyes, lashes starred with little clumps of water, and watches me for a long time with a look that is so pure and simple it makes my stomach ache.
“You’re really gentle,” she says, voice almost slurred. I rinse her hair one more time.
“You earned it.”
“And strong. How are you cradling me like this?”
“You’re tiny, Sage. You could live in Knox’s pockets.”
She laughs, but it’s a soft, slurred thing.
When the water runs clear and her skin is pink from the heat, I shut off the spray and let her stand while I towel her down, using a second towel to blot her hair before scooping her up again.
“You can put me down,” she protests, but it’s automatic, a habit of independence that runs out of steam by the time I cradle her to my chest and nudge the bathroom door open with my foot.
Back in the bedroom, the sheets are already changed with tight corners—Knox’s work, I can tell by the hospital folds.
I set her on the edge of the bed. Micah moves in and holds out some Advil and a glass of water. “These’ll help with any pain.”
“Thanks, Micah,” she whispers as she takes them, washing them down without prompting.
“Here, little savage.” Eli crouches in front of her with a pair of sleep shorts at the ready and she steps into them, steadying herself with one hand on his shoulder.
He pulls them up without making it into anything.
Then he picks up a sleep shirt and drops it over her head, her arms guided through the sleeves.
“Thank you,” she whispers again, and he leans down to press a light kiss on the end of her nose.
“Of course.”
Milo taps her shoulder and holds up a hairbrush. “I’ve been dying to do this.”
She grins and turns. Then he gathers her damp hair and starts working through it, section by section, gentle and unhurried. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this focused or quiet. Sage’s eyes get heavy almost immediately.
“Where did you learn to braid?” she asks.
“Sister. I was a very popular sleepover guest.”
She huffs a small laugh. He keeps going. Simple plait down her back, nothing fancy, just enough to keep the tangles out by morning. He ties it off and pats her shoulder. “Done. Beautiful.”
Knox appears at the side of the bed. He doesn’t make a production of it—just pulls the blanket back and scoops her up.
When he sets her back down, she scoots under without protest, and he tucks the covers around her with those enormous careful hands, the same hands that had held her steady an hour ago, and the juxtaposition of it is enough to make me look away for a second.
“Good?” Knox asks.
“Perfect,” she says. Then she looks around at all of us, her eyes raking over each of us in our various stages of undress. “You’re all staying, right?”
“Obviously,” Milo says, already moving to claim his side.
They arrange themselves around her—Milo on the left edge, Micah beside him, Eli at her back with his arm over her waist. Knox settles at the foot of the bed like a large and entirely comfortable doorstop. I take the right side, and she immediately migrates toward me, her breathing already slowing.
The lamp goes off. The room goes dark.
Somewhere outside, the city keeps doing what cities do. In here, everything has gone still.
I listen to her breathing even out. Feel the exact moment she tips over into sleep—the small release in her muscles, the way her weight shifts. It takes four minutes. I count them.
“Hey, guys?” Milo’s voice is a whisper in the dark. “Did you hear her before? She loves us.”
“Yeah, Milo,” I say, since nobody else is picking up the cue. “She loves us.” The word is still foreign in my mouth, but it’s not unwelcome. There’s a charge in the silence—a thing you can’t un-say, can’t un-hear.
I can’t see faces in the dark, but I can feel the presence of each man in the room.
Sage’s leg presses against mine, her toes curled under the blanket and bumping my thigh.
Every muscle in her body is loose, spent, and it shouldn’t be possible to radiate so much heat from such a small surface area, but somehow she’s got the entire bed at ninety degrees.
“She loves us,” Milo repeats, softer this time. “Wild.”
Knox grunts, and the sound carries more weight than some people’s entire vocabularies. “In that case, she’s gonna need to get a bigger bed.”
Eli is the first to laugh—a quiet exhale in the dark, the kind that sounds surprised out of him. Then Micah, low and warm. Then me. Even Knox makes a sound in his chest that counts.
Milo shifts deeper into the pillow. “Knox is onto something. I’m thinking ultra-king size, minimum. Custom build. I’ll measure the room.”
“Go to sleep, Milo,” Eli says.
“I’m just saying. As a practical matter—”
“Milo.”
He’s quiet a beat. Then, “Goodnight, my cum brothers.”
The laughter ratchets up again then fades out slow. And in the quiet after it, something settles that I don’t have a clean word for. Not happiness exactly. Something sturdier than that.
I stare at the ceiling in the dark and let it be what it is.
In that case, she’s gonna need a bigger bed.
Yeah. She is.