LOGINMarcus’s POVA month after Dominic left, I threw out the schedule.Not dramatically. I didn’t make an announcement or call a meeting about it. I just looked at the shared calendar one morning — the color-coded blocks, the assigned days, the structure we’d built at the warehouse table with a notepad and good intentions and I archived it. Deleted my copy. Texted Lucian: *I think we’re done with the schedule.*He replied within minutes: *Agreed. Past due.*Chloe’s response came twenty minutes later, which meant she’d been thinking about it before she answered: *Thank God.*The schedule had made sense when there were four of us. It had been the only way to make sure everyone had defined time, defined space, something that felt equitable and organized. Without Dominic, it was a structure built for a house that had fewer rooms now, and trying to live in it felt like wearing a coat that was the wrong size.What replaced it was messier and more honest.Some nights all three of us were home. S
Chloe’s POVThe first week was horrible in the specific way of things that are supposed to hurt and do.I cried on Monday because Monday had been Dominic-adjacent in my week and now it wasn’t. I cried on Tuesday morning when I made my own coffee and the apartment was quiet in a new way. I cried on Thursday evening for no specific reason, or maybe every reason at once, it was hard to tell.Marcus went to the gym every day that week. Sometimes twice. He came home quieter than usual and ate dinner and didn’t push for conversation, which I understood was his version of grief — burning through it physically, keeping his hands and body busy so his mind couldn’t sit still long enough to feel the full weight.Lucian worked. He always worked, but this week he picked up extra shifts, and when he was home he read, and he was present but in a contained way, the way he sometimes went when something was processing itself in the deep background and he needed quiet around it.We were all grieving. Ju
I lowered my mouth to her neck, kissing a slow path down to her collarbone, then lower. Her skin was warm, tasted faintly of salt and the coconut lotion she always used. She gasped when I reached her breast, my tongue circling the sensitive peak before taking it gently into my mouth.Her back arched off the bed, a soft moan escaping her lips. Her hands tangled in my hair, not pulling, just holding, like she needed something to anchor herself."Don't stop," she whispered. "Please don't stop."I didn't. I moved from one breast to the other, giving each the same slow, worshipful attention. Her moans grew louder, more urgent, her hips starting to move beneath me, seeking friction.My hand slid down her stomach, over the soft curve of her hip, down to the waistband of her panties — tiny things, wine lace, the kind she knew drove me crazy. I hooked my fingers into the elastic and pulled them down, and she lifted her hips to help me, and then she was completely bare beneath me."Look at me,"
Dominic’s POVThey’d moved into the old firehouse six weeks before I decided to leave.My idea, originally — the space was right, the location was good, and there was something that had felt right about all four of us choosing a place that wasn’t already anyone’s. Neutral ground that we made into something together. I’d been the one who’d called the landlord. I’d been the one who’d measured the studio space on the top floor and decided it was perfect.Now I was packing boxes in that same studio, and the light was still perfect, and I was doing my best not to think too hard about that.The last dinner was Chloe’s doing. She’d cooked, actually cooked, which she was better at than she gave herself credit for and she’d set the table with the good plates we’d found at the market two months ago, and she’d lit candles, and the whole thing looked like something from a life that was almost, almost the right shape.We sat down. The four of us. Last time.Marcus was quiet in the way he got when
Lucian’s POVChloe called me at nine-thirty on a Tuesday night.I was still at the hospital — finishing notes, the kind of administrative tail-end of a shift that always took longer than it should. I saw her name and stepped into the hallway before answering.“Hey,” I said. “Everything okay?”A pause. The specific kind that meant no but she was deciding how to say it.“Dominic’s leaving,” she said.I stood in the hospital corridor with the fluorescent lights humming above me and the distant sound of monitors and carts and the constant low-level noise of a building that never fully stopped, and I waited for my reaction to arrive.The first thing I felt was relief.It came before I could stop it or dress it up — clean and immediate, like putting down something I’d been carrying at an awkward angle for months. The relief of knowing the hardest variable was resolving itself. The relief of not having to watch Dominic hold that pain anymore, and not having to watch it come out sideways, and
Dominic’s POVThe month after the honest conversation was the hardest one.I’d thought naming it would make it easier to carry. That was how it worked with the things I painted — you put the feeling on the canvas, you give it shape, and it becomes something external instead of something internal. Something you can look at instead of something looking at you.It didn’t work that way with this.Naming it had just made it more visible. Every Tuesday morning, every Thursday morning, every time I caught myself watching the door after she left…it was all still there, but now I had no excuse not to see it.I threw myself into work. Took on three new commissions I didn’t need the money for. Repainted the back wall of the studio. Reorganized everything twice. Stayed up until three, four, sometimes five in the morning because sleeping at a normal hour meant lying in the dark thinking about things I didn’t want to think about.The snap happened on a Saturday.We were at Marcus’s warehouse for th
Ronan's POV I crossed the room in three strides, and she met me halfway, throwing herself into my arms with such force we nearly fell. I caught her, held her tight, felt her shaking against me like she might fall apart completely.“I’ve got you,” I murmured into her hair. “I’m here. You’re safe.”
Alina’s POVIt was day three in my glass prison, and I had lost track of time. Each hour felt the same, filled with meals I didn’t touch, words I didn’t say, and the heavy weight of my father’s control, wrapping around me like invisible chains.My phone sat on the nightstand, a constant reminder of
Ronan’s POVChloe arrived at the compound three days after Alina left, looking like a ghost—pale, shaking, jumping at every sound. She’d taken an Uber, paid in cash, and spent the entire ride convinced she was being followed.“She told me to come here,” Chloe said when we brought her into the war r
Alina's POVI was out of bed and at the door in seconds, fumbling with the lock. When it finally opened, Chloe stood there in clothes I didn’t recognize—too big for her, borrowed maybe—looking pale and exhausted but alive. Blessedly, wonderfully alive.“Oh my God.” I pulled her into a hug so tight







