Page 154 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
Owen stands up, aggressively pacing the small strip of carpet in front of my desk. “I don’t buy it. We were… we were perfect the other night. After we signed the deal? That night at her apartment? That wasn't regret. That was…” He struggles for the word, his hands flexing. “That was everything. She was happy. We were a family.”
“People change their minds when the adrenaline wears off,” I say, the hardwired pessimist in me rising to the surface. It’s my job to protect them. It’s my job to anticipate the worst-case scenario so it doesn’t completely kill us. “The Sterling deal makes this real, and it makes it dangerous. Maybe she realized the risk isn’t worth the reward.”
“We’re the reward,” Owen shoots back, his green eyes flashing. “We’re worth it.”
“Are we?” I ask, leaning back in my chair. “Look at us, Owen. We’ve dragged her into a situation where she could lose her career, her reputation, and her best friend if this gets out. Maybe she finally woke up and realized that sleeping with three brothers isn’t a modern fairy tale—it’s a massive scandal waiting to happen.”
“Don’t say that,” Owen warns, his voice dropping.
“I’m looking at the strategic landscape,” I say, heavily channeling the CEO persona because it’s significantly easier than being the terrified man in love. “If she wants out, we have to let her go. We can’t force this. We agreed from the start: if she ever wanted to stop, we stop.”
“She hasn’t actually said she wants to stop,” Asher interjects. “She’s just… silent.”
“She looks genuinely sick, too,” Owen adds, pivoting. “Have you seen her? She’s incredibly pale and she looks exhausted. Maybe she’s just coming down with a virus and doesn’t want to get us sick before the board meeting next week.”
“She explicitly refused medical help,” Asher notes. “I offered to bring her tea yesterday when I saw her rubbing her temples at her desk. She told me she was fine and asked me to leave her alone.”
“She’s actively pushing us away,” I say, lacing finality into my tone. “And if we forcefully push back right now while she’s clearly struggling with whatever this is, we’ll break her.”
I look at my brothers. They’re waiting for orders. That’s our fundamental dynamic. We’re a democracy behind closed doors, but when it comes to survival, they look to me to call the play.
“We give her space,” I command.
Owen opens his mouth to protest, but I instantly cut him off.
“I mean it, Owen. No cornering her in the break room. No accidental run-ins at the elevator. No blowing up her phone. If she needs distance to process the Sterling contract or the reality of us, we give it to her. We focus on the work. We have to proveto Sterling that the Confessions module can handle the new user load. If we screw that up, the Morality Clause won’t matter because there won’t be a company left to save.”
Owen looks utterly gutted. He sinks back into the chair, violently scrubbing his face with his hands. “It feels completely wrong, Ethan. It feels like leaving a man behind.”
“She isn’t a soldier,” I say softly, the harshness fading from my voice. “She’s the woman we love. And right now, she’s building a wall. If we try to smash through it, we’re just proving that we don’t respect her boundaries.”
Asher nods slowly. “It tracks. If the system is unstable, adding pressure just forces a crash. We have to stabilize the environment first.”
“Exactly,” I say, though the word tastes like ash in my mouth. “We focus on Mosaic. We let her come to us.”
Owen lets out a long, frustrated breath. “Fine. But I don’t like it. It feels like the beginning of the end.”
“Get back to work,” I order, dismissing them because I can’t handle Owen’s emotional intuition right now. If he keeps talking, he’ll make me break my own command.
They leave, Owen dragging his feet while Asher walks with purposeful, mechanical strides.
When the door clicks shut, I swivel my chair toward the window, staring blankly out over the Austin skyline.
Give her space.
It’s the right call tacitcally. It’s the mature, respectful thing to do. So why does every primal instinct in my body scream at me tomarch down to her desk and demand to know why she’s looking at me like I’m a total stranger?
I unlock my phone, pulling up the encrypted group chat.
Tessa: Not home yet. Just walking around to get air. I’ll let you know when I’m back.
That was it. Wednesday afternoon. Two full days ago. Since then, absolute radio silence.
I scroll up, actively torturing myself. Photos of her smiling. Jokes about Asher’s robotic coffee orders. A blurry selfie of the four of us tangled in sheets, taken by Owen, which we should absolutely not have on a cloud server, but none of us could bring ourselves to delete.
I lock the phone and toss it onto the desk with a hard clatter.
Focus, Branson.
