Finally, Jalen breaks the silence.
“We can’t just let her go.”
“Jalen…” Malik releases a breath.
Jalen leans forward, intensity radiating off him. “We spent a week with her. We took care of her through her heat. We built a nest together. We... we became something. You all felt it. I know you did.”
“Of course we felt it,” Dax says roughly. “But that doesn’t mean?—”
“What? That it was real? That it matters? Because it felt pretty fucking real to me.”
“To all of us,” I add quietly. “It felt real to all of us.”
Malik is quiet for a long moment, his jaw working. “She has a life in Sweetwater. A business. Friends. We can’t just expect her to upend all of that because we spent a week together during a storm.”
“I’m not saying we expect anything,” Jalen argues. “I’m saying we should at least try. Ask her if this could be something. If we could be something.”
“And if she says no?” Malik asks. “If she wants to keep things professional? Go back to being competitors?”
The thought makes my chest hurt.
“Then at least we’ll know,” Jalen says. “At least we won’t spend the rest of our lives wondering what if.”
Silence falls again. I stare out the window, watching thecoastline give way to inland roads, familiar territory that feels foreign now. Everything feels different after the week we just had.
“I want to try,” I say finally. “I want to ask her. See if she feels what we feel.”
“Me too,” Jalen says immediately.
“Fuck,” Dax mutters. Then, louder: “Me too. Obviously me too.”
All eyes turn to Malik.
He’s quiet for so long, I think he might say no. Might be the voice of reason that brings us back to reality, reminds us this is crazy, that we barely know her despite the intensity of the week.
Then he sighs.
“We’d have to do this right,” he says. “We have one shot at this.”
“Agreed,” Jalen says.
“And if she needs time, we give her time. If she says no, we respect that.”
“Of course.”
We all face forward, watching Sierra’s little car before us, and a slow smile spreads on my face.
Because we’re going to try.
And we may actually have a shot at this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sierra
The highway stretches ahead of me, familiar and strange all at once.
My hands know this drive; the muscle memory of every curve is ingrained. But the world outside the windshield feels like a movie playing on mute. My car smells of stale air conditioning and forgotten coffee, a sterile, lonely scent after a week of being steeped in cinnamon and burned caramel, toasted marshmallow and vanilla. The silence is the worst part. It’s a hollow ache where the low rumble of four different voices should be.
