He didn’t. “You’re coming home,” he repeated, and for the first time I saw the crack in his armor—the panic under the anger.
I shook my head, hard. “I’m staying.”
The next words out of his mouth were pure McKenzie: “You’re making a mistake.”
“I’ve made plenty,” I said. “Might as well go for the hat trick.”
He shoved me, not hard, but enough to make me stumble. The old muscle memory kicked in, the urge to swing back, to take the first shot and worry about the consequences later.
But then Jo was there, in the doorway, and the room shrank by half. He didn’t say anything, just looked from me to Knox,then back. His eyes were dark, unreadable, but his hands were steady as ever.
Knox glared at him. “You think you can keep him? You think this is what he needs?”
Jo shrugged, all calm menace. “He’s a grown man. He stays if he wants.”
My brother scoffed. “You think you know better than family?”
Jo smiled, slow and cold. “In this case? Yeah.”
Knox moved like he was going to close the distance, but Jo didn’t budge. The air between them was a loaded gun, safety off.
Then Jo said, “Enough.”
It wasn’t loud, but it froze the room. Even Knox paused, like his brain was trying to catch up.
Jo turned to me, voice gone quiet. “Go upstairs. Wait for me there.”
I should have fought it. Should have said “fuck you” and stormed out, or at least made a show of slamming a door. Instead, I just… went. Like he’d rewired the circuits in my brain, and all I could do was obey.
Knox watched me go, eyes wide with shock. I caught the look, the way his mouth curled down, and for a second I thought he might break. Instead, he just shook his head and let his arms fall to his sides, defeated.
I climbed the stairs two at a time, not caring how much it hurt. Upstairs, I sat on the edge of the bed, every muscle in my body vibrating with the aftershocks of the fight. Not the yelling kind—the kind where nobody threw punches, but you still walked away with something broken.
The shop was quiet now, but every thud from below made my heart climb into my throat. I could hear Jo’s voice, a low, steady rumble through the floor, punctuated by Knox’s sharper replies.
I strained to make out words, but the insulation muffled everything except the tone—command, protest, the scrape of two men used to getting their way.
“…he’s staying here with me,” Jo said, his voice clear as a bell, no room for argument.
Something in my chest did a slow, tight flip. I waited for Knox to fire back, but instead there was just a grunt, then the heavy tread of boots on concrete.
The shop door slammed, and then, through the window, I saw the old truck’s lights blink on. The engine coughed to life and idled for a long minute, like Knox was hoping someone would come out and change his mind. Then it backed up and peeled down the drive, gravel pinging off the siding.
I sat there for a while, staring at nothing, until I realized my hands were shaking. I didn’t know what to feel. Relief? Guilt?
Mostly, I just felt tired.
And maybe a little sick at how easy it had been to obey Jo—how all he had to do was say the word, and I’d dropped every defense and gone up the stairs like a kid sent to his room.
I buried my face in my hands, groaned, and tried to decide if I wanted to puke or jerk off. Both, probably. My brain wouldn’t stop replaying the last ten minutes: the way Jo had looked at me, like I was his, like nothing else mattered.
And the way I’d felt about it.
I stood, paced the length of the room, then stopped at the window. The world outside was pure winter—trees rimed with frost, the river flat and gray, snow dusting the roofs like powdered sugar on a crime scene.
I leaned my forehead against the glass, watched my breath fog the pane, and wondered what came next. Was I supposed to just… wait? Would Jo come up here and fuck me into the mattress, or would he ignore me, leave me to stew in my own anxiety until I lost my nerve and bolted?
I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
