"They’ll try," Juno cut in. "But I have the data. And more importantly, I wrote the strategy that just took down Mitchell King on live television. Let them argue that biology determinescompetence." He gestured to the laptop. "The work is the argument."
He looked at me. "Rowan? Can we sell it?"
I looked at him. He was bruised, exhausted, and still smelled faintly of burnt sugar and distress. But his eyes were blazing. He wasn't hiding anymore.
I found myself grinning. It was a feral, sharp thing.
"We don't just sell it," I said. "We make it the only product on the shelf."
Before we could plan any further the heat spiked again and we became a mass of writhing bodies on the bed. Time slipped away once more.
The second night was quieter. The storm inside Juno had finally ebbed into a deep, comatose sleep.
Mateo had carried him back to the bedroom hours ago after we'd mistakenly thought he had a lull in the waves of his heat. He was buried under a pile of blankets that were drenched with the scent of sex. He was chemically exhausted but stable, which was the important part.
I sat in the main room of the cabin. The fire in the woodstove had burned down to embers, casting a dull, orange glow over the dusty floorboards.
I held my phone to my ear. The volume was turned down low as I played the voice note I'd downloaded just after the interview with King. I'd known Zia and Riot Theory would have something to say about the situation, they always did, even if I wasn't their manager anymore.
"Hey, Rowan. It's Zia. I saw the interview. I know you're probably in a bunker somewhere—"a pause, the sound of a guitar strumming in the background"—but I just wanted to say... you were right. About the riders. About everything. We're getting the tattoo. The whole band. 'Anchor.' On the wrist. Just thought you should know. You aren't swimming alone."
I lowered the phone. I didn't cry. I didn't think I had any hydration left for tears. But something in my chest, some tight, calcified knot that had been there since the stadium, finally loosened.
I put the phone face-down on the table.
Stephen and Mateo were sitting across from me. They had been watching me listen, respecting the silence, but their eyes were heavy with a question they hadn't asked.
"How long?" I asked.
Stephen looked up from his glass of whiskey. "How long for what?"
"How long have you known?" I gestured to the closed bedroom door. "That you were in love with him."
Stephen didn't flinch. He didn't look at Mateo. He swirled the amber liquid in his glass.
"Six years. Six months," Stephen said. Precision. Always precision.
Mateo just nodded. A slow, heavy movement in the shadows.
"Why haven't you ever said anything?" I asked. "I watched you these last two days. You aren't colleagues. You're... you're gravity to his orbit. Why haven't you made it clear what he means to you?"
"Because he was building this new life for himself," Mateo rumbled. "He needed to be the rebel continuously. He needed to be the the one in control."
"If we had claimed him," Stephen added softly, "if we had made the three of us an official Pack... he would have felt protected, yes. But he would have felt managed. He needed to prove he could survive on his own terms before he could accept safety. We loved him enough to let him be lonely."
The tenderness of it struck me. It was a patient, agonizing kind of love. It was the kind of love that waited in the dark for years, just in case.
"So what changed?" I asked.
Mateo looked at me. His gaze was steady, dark, and terrifyingly direct. "You," he said.
I blinked. "Me?"
"You broke the equilibrium," Stephen explained. He set his glass down. "You came into the house with your spreadsheets and your hole punch, and you looked at the chaos we live in, and you tried to label it, literally in some instances. You forced us to define the terms."
"It's complicated," Mateo grunted before taking a sip of his drink. "Bringing a fourth into a dynamic that was already unspoken... it’s tricky."
"Tricky…" I murmured as I considered their words.
