I slide the box onto the coffee table just as Carson wanders in, two mugs in hand.
He pauses, tilting his head at me. “You okay, peaches?”
I offer a smile. Tight. Not quite a lie. “Yeah.”
Carson nods toward the box without looking directly at it. “From him?”
I don’t answer right away. My fingers still ache from holding the paper too tightly.
“Yeah,” I say finally.
He sets one of the mugs in front of me. It’s hot chocolate, not the coffee he was making. Then he lowers himself ontothe couch beside me, careful, like he doesn’t want to spook me.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks, not pushing. Just there.
I shake my head, but then lean into him anyway. His arm goes around me without hesitation.
“He’s…obsessed,” I murmur. “But it doesn’t feel scary. Not with him.”
Carson hums low in his chest. “That’s the part that is scary.”
I close my eyes, the scent of cocoa from my cup and Carson’s musk wrapping around me and making me feel safe. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t have to know right now.” His voice is warm, steady. “You just have to breathe.”
And so I do.
But even as I sip the hot chocolate and feel Carson’s thumb stroke slow circles against my shoulder, my gaze drifts back to the box. To the message tucked inside it.
To the man who watches me from across the street—and makes me feel like I’m his whole world.
I’m not sure Graham or Hunter would welcome him into…whatever this is. A pack? I think that’s where we are.
After last night—that was not a one-night stand. I’d kinda have to have my head buried in the sand to pretend otherwise. And I want it to be more. I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with all three of them.
Finn complicates things.
I’m not a cheater. Hell, Landon kissing another girl nearly destroyed me. I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. My heart still remembers the way it cracked open that night, the way everything inside me screamed that something had been stolen. So I won’t do that to them—to my pack. If anything happenswith Finn, it won’t be a secret. All three of them will know. They’ll be part of that choice.
They’ll have to be…accepting.
I snort under my breath. Right. Accepting.
These are the same three alphas who were literally hired to keep him away from me.
Sure, Carson has softened a little. Okay—a lot. But Carson’s always been the most easygoing of the three. He’s the charming one, the playful one, the one who made me breakfast after he wrecked me in the best way possible.
But Graham? Hunter?
That’s going to be a battle.
Because I know what they see when they look at Finn. A risk. A threat. An obsession that doesn’t play by their rules. They haven’t looked him in the eyes the way I have. Haven’t seen the vulnerability hiding beneath the sharp edges. The ache behind his cocky grin.
Maybe I’m delusional. But there’s something real in Finn’s obsession. Something raw. As if he was born to watch me. As if I was carved out of the dark for him to find.
The idea should scare me. But it doesn’t.
It makes my skin flush and my heart beat faster. It makes me want things I probably shouldn’t.
