Chapter 101: Reid
When I wake up, the sun’s already low—an orange smear behind the cliffs, bleeding into the water.
For a second, I don’t know what time it is. Everything feels off. Wrong.
I reach for my phone.
5:07 p.m.
Christ.
For someone who hasn’t slept past dawn in a decade, it’s… disorienting.
But I guess my body didn’t give me much of a choice. After last night, it finally crashed.
Now I’m lying here, staring at the ceiling, the dull ache of bruises reminding me of every hit Jake and I threw. And his words—my words—won’t stop replaying in my head.
Sharing.
Sharing her.
It sounds insane. Yesterday I was debating whether I could actually murder my brother for touching her—and now I’m considering letting him?
I drag a hand down my face and let out a low, humorless sound that might be a laugh.
Yeah. That’s where I’m at now.
I’ll admit it: I’m a possessive bastard. Always have been.
And when it comes to Madeline, it’s worse. A lot worse. Something primal kicks in. The kind that doesn’t care about logic or reason or lines.
But Jake wasn’t wrong.
The thought of Finn or Liam even looking at her the way we do makes something inside me twist until it hurts. I’d rather put my fist through a wall—or my own eye—than watch her end up with either of them.
And the idea of her leaving? Of never seeing her again?
That’s something I don't even want to consider.
Jake said maybe she doesn’t want either of us. That maybe we’re imagining this whole damn thing.
But I’m not worried about that.
She’s more comfortable around him—I can see that. He’s easy. Warm. He laughs. He gives her space to breathe.
But with me?
It’s different.
I’ve seen the way she looks at me.
There’s fear there, yeah. Or maybe not fear exactly—something sharper, something that feels like it teeters on the edge of want. A kind of awareness.
When she looks at me, she doesn’t just see me. She feels me.
Her pulse changes.
Her breath catches.
Her eyes—those wide, green eyes—shift, darken.
She holds my stare longer than she should.
And when she does, I can see every war she’s fighting in herself.
I don’t know what’s going through her head when it happens—if she’s curious, terrified, drawn in, all three—but I know what I see.
And I know what I feel.
Whatever this is between us, she feels it too.
She’s trying to fight it, same as me.
And maybe that’s the problem.
Maybe the fight’s the whole damn thing.
I make quick work of showering, scrubbing the last of the dried blood from my skin. My body aches in every direction, ribs sore, knuckles tight, jaw stiff. I throw on a clean shirt, jeans, socks.
When I get downstairs, Jake’s already there, sitting at the counter with his laptop open and a half-empty glass of water beside him.
He looks like hell.
Worse than I do, maybe.
His lip’s split, his jaw darkened with a bruise the size of a thumbprint. The rest of him looks about as wrecked as I feel. Guess after the first few hits, we were smart enough to start aiming away from each other’s faces.
I sit next to him, grab my phone, and send a message to Charlie.
Tomorrow on the boat—Sloane captaining. Finn, Liam, and Madeline with her.
The reply comes in seconds.
Wait—one of you isn’t coming?!
I type back.
No. We trust them to go on their own. Water’s going to be calm.
She sends a quick
okie dokie, I’ll let them know.
Jake shuts his laptop with a sigh and rubs the back of his neck. “Never again,” he mutters.
As if to prove the point, he stretches, and about four joints pop in sequence.
I snort. “Yeah. I agree. When the hell did you learn to punch like that, anyway?”
He just lifts an eyebrow, that small, smug twitch that’s all the answer I need. It makes me huff a quiet laugh despite myself.
“I told Charlie about tomorrow,” I say, scrolling through the rest of the messages. “She’ll tell the team.”
Jake nods once, the movement stiff. His knuckles are still swollen. I can tell he hates this part—the part where we hand the reins to someone else.
I don’t like it either.
Sloane in charge of the vessel. The thought already sets my teeth on edge.
It’s not that we don’t trust her skill. She’s competent, steady at the helm, knows the water like the back of her hand. But lately her mood—her edge—has made things complicated.
Still. For all her bitterness, she’s not careless. Not cruel.
She might hate Madeline for whatever reason she’s decided on this week, but even Sloane wouldn’t endanger her life for it.
Jake must be thinking the same thing, because he finally says, low, “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to.”
He nods again, silent.
For a minute, neither of us speaks. Just two men who nearly killed each other last night, sitting in the same kitchen, pretending the air doesn’t still hum with everything they didn’t say.
At the exact same time, we both mutter, “I’m starving.”
That cracks something—small, but real.
Jake looks up, the corner of his mouth twitching, and I feel mine do the same. It’s not a laugh. Not yet. But it’s close enough to pass for one after the last twenty-four hours.
The air between us is still tense—thick with the kind of silence that doesn’t fade overnight—but it’s ours. That old, familiar current that’s run between us since we were kids.
Brothers. Twins. Bound whether we like it or not.
We’ll figure it out. We always do.
Jake leans back in his chair and says, “Let’s grab something at the diner. To eat here.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What, hiding from civilization now?”
He gives a dry laugh. “Yeah. Pretty much. Last thing I need is someone asking about my face or getting to the very true conclusion that we fought.”
Fair point.
I stand, roll my shoulders once to shake the stiffness out. “Fine,” I say, heading for my coat. “But you’re paying. You started the fight.”
He smirks, pushing off the counter to follow. “Sure. But you hit like an asshole, so it evens out.”
Still bruised, still raw, but moving forward anyway—because that’s what we do.