"But Atlas does," Zero continues. "Atlas knows how to hold something without crushing it. And you—" He glances at me. Something flickers behind his eyes. Not vulnerability—Zero doesn't do vulnerable. But close. Adjacent. "You held him in that room and didn't bite. You had every biological imperative screaming at you and you stopped. I couldn't have done that."
"You don't know that."
"Yeah. I do." No self-pity. Just the flat recognition of a man who has measured himself and found the measurement accurate. "So either I figure out how to be one part of something that keeps him whole, or I walk away. And I'm not walking away."
The garage ticks. The dome light dims and goes out. We sit in the dark.
"I used to think about it," I say. "Before Max. Before any of this. What it would be like to have someone who—" I stop. Start over. The honest version, not the polished one. "Every girlfriend I've ever had, I was performing. TheniceGraves brother. The charming one. The one who opens doorsand remembers birthdays and says all the right things. And the whole time I'm thinking, this isn't it. This isn't what I'm looking for."
"What were you looking for?"
"Someone who needed me." The words come out raw. "Not my name. Not my money. Not the Graves machinery. Me. Someone I could take care of. Come home to. Build something with that was actually mine—not inherited, not assigned, not part of the family portfolio."
I flex my hands on my thighs. The blood cracks in the creases.
"Max walks into this house with a duffel bag and flinches when people raise their voices and makes his bed like he's afraid someone's going to inspect it. And I look at him and every cell in my body saysthis one. Take care of this one. He's yours." I swallow. "And then I find out he's omega and I'm alpha and my biology confirms what I already knew, and it feels like the universe is telling me I'm right. That he was made for me."
"And then you find out Atlas is also obsessed and I already fucked him in the basement."
"Yeah." I almost laugh. It comes out wrong—half-bitter, half-exhausted. "Then I find that out."
"And you think sharing means giving up the thing you just described."
"Doesn't it?"
Zero is quiet for a long time. Two brothers who've spent their entire lives communicating through violence and silence, trying something new.
"When I was behind his chair last night, taunting you both," Zero says. "Hands on the wood. Not touching him. You know what I was thinking?"
"What?"
"That he came back." Simple. Flat. "He ran, Bane. Packed a bag and walked out the front door. And then he came back. To this house. To us. Three alphas who've done nothing but crowd him and scare him and make his life complicated since the day he showed up." A pause. "He's choosing to stay. That means something. And if we fuck it up by fighting over him like dogs with a bone, we deserve to lose him."
I sit with that. Turn it over.
"You don't have to give him up," Zero says. "Nobody's asking you to stop wanting to come home to him. To take care of him. To be the one he calls when he's scared." He shifts in his seat. Faces the windshield. "Just stop acting like you're the only one who gets to."
I swallow. Let the words process and take stock of how I’m feeling.
"I don't know if I can do it," I say. Honest. The most honest I've been with Zero in years, maybe ever. "Share him. I don't know if I'm built for it."
"Neither am I." Zero opens his door. The dome light flickers back on. His face is tired. Blood on his hands, bruises forming on his knuckles, and for the first time tonight he looks like what he is—a twenty-seven-year-old man who's been carrying too much for too long. "But I'm going to try. For him. Because he deserves people who try."
He gets out. Shuts the door.
I sit in the car for another minute. Hands on my thighs. Restless energy jittering through me. The engine silent.
He's right.
Ihatethat he's right, and I hate that the person who made me see it is the same brother who held Max down on a weight bench and left him bleeding on the floor.
People change. Zero changed. Maybe I can too.
I get out. Walk toward the house. The mudroom light is on—Margot leaves it on every night, the kind of thing she does without thinking, a light left burning so her boys can find their way home.
I wash the blood off my hands in the mudroom sink. Watch it circle the drain. Pink, then clear.
Then I go inside.
