Chapter Two
Rowen
There’s a particular kind of chaos that follows when you finally stop pretending—and it’s not the destructive kind. It’s the kind that settles into place like a long-stuck door finally swinging open.
“Okay, but did you see her face?” Ronan cackles, throwing himself backward onto my bed with enough drama to shake the mattress. His laughter is wild and bright—the kind that only shows up when he’s buzzing on pure adrenaline. “She looked like someone told her the world was ending and puppies had just been outlawed.”
Emerson smirks from where he’s leaning against my desk, one shoulder propped in a relaxed half-shrug. “She panicked,” he says, voice smooth but undeniably amused. “Classic Berk. Fight or flight. And she went full-blown flight mode. Olympic level. Pretty sure she set a new world record.”
His laugh—low, deep, rare—escapes before he can reel it back, and the sound loosens something knotted inside my chest. He hasn’t laughed like that in a long time. Not since his life veered hard into territory none of us fully understand.
We all know the reason. His father.
Ours is bad enough. Lately he’s been obsessed with “preparing us” to step up and start training for the family business, whatever that even means. But Emerson? His father started molding him years ago—quietly, intensely, under a shadow that never seems to lift. A couple of weeks ago, when we were all complaining about it, he casually mentioned he’d already been training. For years. But he wasn’t allowed to talk about it.
“They’ll know if I do,” he’d said. No explanation. Nothing more.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
“Honestly,” I say, sinking into the armchair by the window and running my fingers through my hair, “I don’t blame her.”
Silence settles over us—not heavy, not awkward. Just still. Warm. With three shared smiles, all of us were a little shocked, a little relieved, and a whole lot holy-hell-did-that-seriously-just-happen?
The air hums with a new kind of energy—part disbelief, part exhilaration, part quiet freedom.
It feels like someone cracked open a window in a room we hadn’t realized was suffocating us.
Like we’ve been holding our breath for months—maybe years—and suddenly remembered what it feels like to exhale.
Berk knows now.
It’s out there. Finally.
No more hiding. No more weird silences or pretending our hearts didn’t stretch wider than the lake we practically grew up on. No more pretending we weren’t already bound together by something far deeper than friendship.
For the first time in what feels like forever, we’re not tiptoeing around the truth or tripping over each other trying to bury it. We’re not competing. We’re not denying what has been sitting in front of us this entire time, waiting for us to finally acknowledge it.
“We’re gonna have to ease into it,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck as reality settles beneath the adrenaline. “Let her get used to the idea of... us. All of us.”
Ronan pushes himself upright, the playful grin fading into something sincere—a version of him that shows up only when it matters. “She’s been hiding it too. You could see it all over her face. She just didn’t know how to put it into words.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Emerson murmurs, voice rough but grounded. “We already know. We’ve known for a long time.”
He’s right. We have known. Even if we never spoke it aloud, even if we joked our way around it or chalked it up to coincidence, the signs were everywhere.
The way her eyes lingered on us a heartbeat longer than necessary.
The way her hand brushed ours like something she couldn’t help.
Her laugh softened when she looked at Ronan.
Her breath caught whenever Emerson leaned in too close.
And when she rested her head on my shoulder, it felt like she was settling somewhere safe.
And every single moment—every glance, every touch—wasn’t directed at just one of us.
It was all of us.
