“Get in, loser, we’re going drinking,” Tristan calls, a real grin lighting up his face for the first time all night.
I hesitate for only a second before sliding into the car beside them.
“The Anchor?” I ask, unable to keep the smile from my face.
“The Anchor,” Diego confirms, his own smile warm and genuine. “Where we can be the idiots you apparently prefer.”
“I never said I preferred idiots,” I protest, settling in between him and Tristan. “I just prefer you. The real you.”
“Fair enough,” Rett says, his expression softening into something real, something unguarded. “We can do that.”
“Good,” I say, looking at each of them in turn. “Because that’s the only deal I’m interested in.”
Dane catches my eye from across the small space, and for the first time all night, he smiles. A small, private thing, just for me.
“Noted,” he says quietly.
As the car pulls away from the curb, I feel something settle inside me. A certainty that wasn’t there before. This. This messy, unscripted, authentic chaos is what I want. These four men, with all their flaws and quirks and complications.
They are a mess. All of them. And my life, since meeting them, has become a mess.
A slow smile touches my lips.
Maybe I like the mess.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Zoe
“No, no, no, you’re holding it all wrong.”
I look up from the massive, graffiti-style painting we’re all trying to hang in the main living area. Tristan is standing with his hands on his hips, a look of profound artistic suffering on his face as he critiques Dane’s technique.
“It’s a hammer, Tristan,” Dane says, his voice a low, patient rumble. “Not a Fabergé egg. You hit the nail with the metal part.”
“But you’re lacking finesse!” Tristan insists. “Your swing is all brute force.”
“It’s a nail,” Dane repeats, his expression unchanging.
From my spot on the floor, where I’m trying to direct this chaotic operation, I can’t help but laugh. This has been my life for the past two weeks. This loud, chaotic, and surprisingly wonderful madness.
The disastrous date at Solitude feels like a lifetime ago. Since our do-over at The Anchor, the formal, stilted performances are gone, replaced by... this. By real, messy, everyday life.
We don’t do “dates” anymore. We do... hardware store runsthat turn into intense debates over the merits of different types of drywall anchors. We do late-night arguments over which movie to watch that are more entertaining than the movie itself. We do mornings filled with the comfortable, overlapping scents of Dane’s precise coffee and Diego’s soulful cooking.
“Zoe’s right,” Diego says, siding with Tristan for once. “You need to feel the spirit of the nail, Dane.”
Dane just looks at the two of them, then at me, a silent, deadpan plea for sanity in his pale blue eyes.
I just grin back at him. “Sorry, big guy. You’re on your own with this one.”
He sighs, a long-suffering sound, and turns back to the wall, hammer in hand. The familiar, comfortable bickering washes over me, and I realize with a jolt that this chaotic, insane penthouse is starting to feel more like a home than any place I’ve ever lived.
And that is a terrifying, thrilling, and completely undeniable truth.
But… The alphas are still in pain.
I can see it in the tight lines around their eyes when they think I’m not looking, in the way they sometimes press their fingers to their temples when a wave of static hits particularly hard. But they’re coping.
