Wren leans back in her chair. Crosses her arms over Bane's oversized sweatshirt. Processes slowly—absorbing, categorizing, filing it in whatever internal system keeps her upright.
"Okay," she says. "And you want...?"
I bite the inside of my cheek. Sip the coffee. Internally cringe at what I’m about to say and how insane it is.
"All of them." The admission comes out smaller than I mean it to. "Which is—I know how it sounds."
"It sounds like the truth." Simple. No judgment.
Something in my chest unclenches. This is why I keep coming back to this kitchen table. This ugly couch. This apartment that smells like cinnamon and lavender and new beginnings. Wren doesn't perform reactions. Doesn't gasp or flinch or tell me I'm wrong. She receives information the way the ground receives rain—openly, without commentary. I've never had a friend like that. I've never had a friend, period, if I'm being honest. Just Margot. Just survival.
Wren makes things easy. Makes me feel like I’m not crazy. Or maybe I am and she’s just crazy enough to flow with it.
"Two of them have..." I trail off. She raises an eyebrow. "Bane was first. In the facility—when they took my suppressants away and the heat came back, he was there. He volunteered to be there." I trace the rim of my mug. "It was... tender. Even in that place. Even with zip ties on his wrists. He was gentle with me in a way I didn't know I needed."
Wren's quiet. Listening with her whole body the way she does.
"And Atlas—recently. He bit me." My hand drifts to my neck without thinking. The mark is still there, under the collar of my shirt. Healed enough to be a scar now, not a wound. But I feel it constantly—a low hum beneath the skin, Atlas's steady presence tethered to me like a second heartbeat. "We're bonded. Permanently. It's—" I search for the word. "It's like having someone standing right behind you all the time. Not crowding. Just there. Solid."
"That sounds nice," Wren says softly.
"It is." And I mean it. "But Zero—"
I stop. Pick up my coffee. Set it back down without drinking.
"Zero's different," I say. "He's the one who crossed a line first. Before any of them. Before I even understood what was happening to me." I don't give her details. Don't tell her aboutthe weight bench or the basement or the way he saidclean yourself upand walked away like I was nothing. But my voice tightens and Wren hears it—hears the shape of what I'm not saying. "It was... intense. The kind of intense that scares you afterward. Not just because he hurt me, exactly, but because of what it woke up inside me. The part of me that wanted it. That wanted him even when I shouldn't have. Even when it was wrong."
I drag my thumbnail across the placemat.
"And that's what terrifies me. Not Zero—I'm not afraid of him anymore. Not the way I used to be. I'm afraid of what I become around him. The version of me that doesn't want gentle. That wants to be taken apart." I swallow. "Linda spent years telling me that part of me was disgusting. Broken. And Zero is the only person who's ever looked at that part and wanted more."
Wren's fingers curl tighter around her mug.
"But then he stopped. Something in him shifted. He told me he wouldn't touch me again. Not until I came to him. Put the whole thing in my hands." I press my thumbnail harder into the placemat. "And he's kept that promise. For weeks. He’s given me space. Been present but the not-touching is louder than anything he's ever done with his hands." My voice cracks. "He's completely different. Like something rewired him from the inside out."
"He's waiting for you," Wren says. Not a question.
"For weeks. And I have Atlas's bond humming in my chest and Bane's arms around me every night and it's not enough. Because there's this hole where Zero should be and I keep pretending it's not there." I press my palms flat on the table. "Every time I try to go to him, something locks up. My body remembers the old version and won't let me walk forward. But I can't—" I shake my head. "I can't keep pretending I don'tthink about him. That I don't want him just as badly as the other two. That the thing he wakes up in me isn't also the thing that makes me feel the most alive."
"So what's stopping you?"
"The foster kid math." My voice comes out small. "Want plus hope equals loss. Every time I've wanted something this much, it disappears."
“The other two didn’t.”
Wren reaches across the table. Her hand covers mine. Small. Warm. The fingernails bitten to the quick—a habit she's been working on.
"Can I tell you something?" she says.
"Yeah."
"The first night in this apartment—the night you helped me move in—I stood in the kitchen for twenty minutes staring at the fridge."
I wait.
"Not because it was fancy or anything. It's a normal fridge. But it was full. Bane's people stocked it before I got here. Eggs, milk, fruit, cheese. Things I hadn't had in months. And I stood there with the door open, cold air on my face, and I kept thinking: this is a trick. Someone is going to come take this away. I shouldn't eat any of it because then I'll know what it tastes like and when it's gone, I'll miss it."
Her grip tightens on my hand.
