Home Alone

Liliana Grace Harlan POV

Dad’s call had been short.

“Lock the doors. Don’t open for anyone except me. There’s been a break in the case and the killer is targeting families of cops. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Love you.”

And the line went dead before I could ask a single question.

A cold chill seeped into my bones, settling there as the silence closed in. The house felt different after that, bigger and colder.

I’d been home from college for winter break for weeks now, yet it still didn’t feel like home. Dad barely came back anymore, always on the case, always gone.

Christmas lights twinkled in the living room, fairy lights casting a soft golden glow over the walls. They should’ve felt warm and comforting. Instead, they looked lonely and so was I.

Dad wouldn’t be home until tomorrow, that's if I was lucky.

“Another Christmas without them,” I whispered into the empty room.

My fingers tightened around my phone as I stared at the photo on the screen, the one I’d never replaced.

Little me at fifteen, standing at the county fair, grinning like an idiot between them like the luckiest kid alive. I looked so small beside those four giants who once filled this house with noise and heat and something I hadn’t yet had a name for.

My thumb traced the glass, lingering over each face. They were gone and somehow, I still felt them everywhere.

My thumb paused over Nikolai’s face. Even now, I could still remember exactly how his arm had settled around my shoulders that night, heavy, warm and a little too possessive. The way he’d leaned in, lips brushing my ear, his voice low and smug.

“Smile pretty, princess. This one’s going in the permanent collection.”

He’d given me this phone a year later. I’d been too young then, too flustered to hide how red my cheeks got whenever he was close. He pressed the box into my hands, smirked, and murmured, “Don’t lose it, my little princess.”

And I never did. I never changed that picture either.

I stared at it now, longer than I should have, longer than I ever allowed myself to admit. Something tightened in my chest, sharp and familiar, like a bruise blooming beneath my ribs.

I missed them. God, I missed them in a way that hurt, in a way they had no idea about.

Ever since they stopped coming around, everything has felt… hollow. Like the house had been scooped out from the inside and left standing anyway.

Memories came rushing back, vivid as if they’d happened yesterday. Jaxon’s cold, calculating stare that lingered just a second too long.

Dante’s steady hands brushing dirt from a cut on my knee, his voice soft but firm as he told me I’d be fine.

Elias lifted me onto his shoulders like I weighed nothing, laughing when I clung to his hair and begged him not to drop me.

And Nikolai, crouched behind me, hands lightly correcting my stance as he taught me how to throw a proper punch. His breath was warm against my neck. His grin was wicked as he murmured, “Again.”

I was seventeen then and painfully shy. I could barely look at any of them without my cheeks burning.

I hadn’t seen them since the summer I turned eighteen, as if crossing that line had changed everything. They had simply…disappeared. So no more movie nights. No more unexpected drop-ins. No more four shadows filling the house with smoke, whiskey, and danger.

I am nineteen now. I turned nineteen two months ago and got no birthday text and no surprise visit from them. Not even a cake with four sets of hands lighting the candles while I pretended not to stare.

They never called, never texted, never checked in and Dad never explained why they stopped coming around.

Every time I asked, he gave the same clipped answer.

“They’re busy.”

And when I pushed, he rattled off the list like he’d memorized it: Jaxon is building his empire.

Dante is occupied in hospital shifts.

Elias ran headfirst into burning buildings.

Nikolai was handling “tech business” that somehow required a motorcycle and brass knuckles.

I asked once, twice and a hundred times. The answer never changed and so eventually, I stopped asking. I stopped dating, not that I’d ever really started. I stopped letting anyone else touch me and stopped pretending I wanted anyone else.

No one felt right.

No one was them.

So I just… waited and masturbated to memories I wasn’t supposed to have, stolen glimpses through cracked doors, the low growls and wet sounds drifting next to my room when I was meant to be asleep.

I fantasized about four men who vanished from my life.

I wanted them, all four. More than anything I’d ever wanted in my life.

I let my phone slip from my fingers and fall to the duvet as memories flooded in, uninvited and unstoppable, their voices, low and rough, their hands, always so much bigger than mine, the way their bodies had filled every room, every thought, every dream I’d had since I was old enough to understand wanting.

Every time I pictured it, my body answered like some incurable sickness that only flared hotter the longer they stayed away.

God, I hated how much I wanted them.

I’d thought maybe Christmas would be different. They used to love it here, the lights, the tree, the way the house felt alive but the decorations were still up from last year, dusty and forgotten and the house was still empty.

And I was still burning.

I curled tighter on my bed in nothing but an oversized T-shirt and soft cotton panties, no bra, nipples already tight against the fabric from the chill… or from the thoughts I couldn’t shut off.

Every time I let myself remember them, my body reacted like it had been trained.

The ache in my cunt started immediately, sharp and insistent. This always happens, every fucking time.

I hated it though I loved it.

My thighs pressed together, but the ache only sharpened so I slid one hand down my stomach, slowly, like I was giving myself one last chance to stop.