A hollow of scent and fabric and layered presence.
A nest.
The word hits me with a slow, dawning flush of awareness.
I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think about it. I just needed the ache to stop.
My cheeks burn faintly, even though no one is here to see it. The instinct is undeniable now. Not abstract. Not theoretical.
My body is trying to protect itself.
I shift again, tucking Sol’s sleeve closer to my shoulder, adjusting Koa’s flannel beneath my hip, curling slightly into the shape I’ve made. The layered scents fold around me – smoke and salt and chocolate, tonka sweetness and burnt caramel warmth, the deep comfort beneath Sol’s darker notes.
It’s overwhelming for a second.
Then it settles.
The restless hum under my skin dulls to something bearable. The hollow ache in my chest eases just enough that breathing stops feeling like effort. My pulse slows, not because the hurt isgone, but because my body has found something it recognises as safety.
I press my face into Finn’s shirt without thinking, inhaling deeply. The balance in it steadies me in a way that makes my throat tighten again.
“You’re idiots,” I whisper into the fabric, though there’s no real venom in it now. “All of you.”
And me most of all.
Because I didn’t just get caught in a bet.
I let myselffeel.
The exhaustion hits suddenly, like a wave rolling in after the tide has already gone out. My body has been running on adrenaline and humiliation and biological confusion for days. Now, wrapped in the layered scents of the men who broke me, it finally decides it can stop fighting.
My fingers curl into the flannel beneath me.
My breathing deepens.
The nest tightens around my senses, holding in warmth and smoke and salt until the house no longer feels empty.
I don’t mean to fall asleep.
I just close my eyes for a moment.
And the next thing I know, the ache has softened into something distant, the fabric warm under my cheek, the layered scents still thick in the air as sleep finally takes me without resistance.
For the first time since I walked away, I am not braced.
I am held.
Even if it’s a poor imitation of the arms I really want around me.
FORTY
LANI
I wake slowly.
Not because I’m rested.
Because I’m warm.