Page 27 of Rebound My Alpha
"I think I left my jacket at the shop."
He arches an eyebrow. "You're wearing a jacket."
"I own two jackets. I'm a complex person. Are you letting me in, or are we doing this in the hallway?"
He steps back. I walk in, my designer brain cataloging the space before my boots even stop moving. It’s a standard shitty one-bedroom, but the walls are completely covered. Flash designs, custom pieces, sketches tacked up with tape. There’s a half-finished geometric mandala pinned above the secondhand couch. Ink stains cover the coffee table, art supplies scattered across every flat surface like someone shook out a toolbox and walked away. It’s chaotic. It looks exactly like my own workspace, which makes me like him more. Fuck.
There’s a photo stuck to the wall with a thumbtack—a woman with Knox's dark eyes and a tired smile, her arm around ayounger Knox. I stare at it for a second too long, then force my gaze away.
"Beer?" Knox asks.
"Sure."
He disappears into the kitchen. I'm alone in the living room, my eyes tracking over the mess as I remove my jacket and place it on a chair. The magazines. The beanie thrown over the couch arm. A coffee mug with a dried ring at the bottom.
Then I see it. A black sketchbook on the coffee table, half-hidden under a tattoo magazine. It's beat to hell, the cover soft from being handled a thousand times.
I pick it up—out of professional curiosity. I expect flash designs. Practice sheets.
The first page is a face.
Sharp jaw. A galaxy of freckles. A nose ring catching the light.
My breath stalls in my throat. The sounds of Knox opening drawers and rummaging around fade away.
I turn the page. A profile. The undercut, the exact shade of electric blue fading to teal at the tips. The smirk I use when I'm about to verbally destroy someone. He got the crinkle at the corner of my eye. I keep turning, my heart hammering against my ribs. Pages and pages of me. Quick sketches, detailed studies. My hands holding a coffee cup—something he had to have imagined, because I've never held a coffee cup in front of him. The bite mark on my shoulder, mapped out with obsessive precision, the bruising shaded perfectly.
Then, halfway through the book, the geometric design from my hip.
He didn't just freehand that. He'd been practicing. He'd been drawing me for months before he ever put that pen to my skin.
My hands start to shake. The lie I’ve been telling myself—that I was just a forgettable hookup, that I meant nothing, that I waseasy to walk away from—shatters. I wasn't nothing. The proof is staring right back at me in charcoal and ink.
"Hey, I finally found the opener—"
Knox freezes in the doorway, two bottles of beer in his hands. His eyes drop to the open sketchbook.
The smirk vanishes. Just gone. Like someone cut the power.
His knuckles go white on the glass. I watch him try to formulate a joke, a deflection, anything to put the mask back on.
"I draw everyone," he tries. It’s so weak we both wince.
"How long?" I ask, my voice sounding way too small.
He sets the beers on the counter with a careful clink. He shoves his hands into his sweatpants pockets, pulls them out, rests them on the counter. "Since the week I left."
The week I was scrubbing his number from my phone and redownloading KnotMe out of pure spite, he was doing this.
"Why?"
He stares at the floor. I can see him fighting the urge to package the story into something manageable. He tries, and fails.
"My dad overdosed," he says. The words are flat, shoved through a tight throat. "Four a.m. I was in your bed, and my phone buzzed. My mom was just...crying. Saying 'hospital' over and over. I got dressed, and I left. I didn't wake you because I didn't know what to say, and I thought if I opened my mouth, I’d fall apart. And I don’t do that. Ever."
He paces, running a hand through his damp hair. "Three days at the hospital. I just handled it. Talked to doctors, filled out forms. Sat in a plastic chair at three in the morning watching monitors beep, thinking about how your sheets smelled like us and knowing I was never going to be in them again." His voice cracks. He ignores it. "That’s what I do. I hold everything together, I don’t talk about it, and I don’t let anyone in. It’s how I survived that fucking house."
His jaw clenches. "By the time things stabilized, the silence had set. I convinced myself you were better off. That I’d just drag you into my mess." He stops pacing and stares at the ceiling. "This sounds like a fucking excuse."
