Page 15 of Final Drive

I flinch at how flat he says it, but he isn’t wrong. Kowalski’s questions were too well aimed to be accidental.

Tyler reaches across Zane for his phone. “The problem is timing. If we file after somebody makes this public, it looks reactive.”

“Because it is reactive,” Beckett says.

“Legally, that doesn’t matter. Optically, it does.”

“Can we stop saying optically while I’m eating?” Zane asks.

“No.” Tyler takes his phone back.

Gray looks at me. “Which means we need to decide what we’re doing before somebody else decides what this looks like for us.”

I know what doing means. Pack recognition means documented bonds, and right now only Jackson and Beckett have claimed me. Six names at this table still come with six sets of teeth, six marks that don’t come off, six decisions that can’t be made because a reporter showed up on our dock.

“So we’re doing this,” Zane says, quieter now. “For real. All of us.”

“I want this.” It comes out steadier than I feel. “I want all of you. I just don’t know where to put it all yet.”

“Overwhelmed,” Bo offers.

“A little.”

Gray’s attention stays on me. “This has to be your choice. All of it. If there’s another way, we find it.”

“We don’t have to solve it tonight,” Cameron says.

It’s the most he’s said all evening, and every head turns toward him. Beckett lifts his eyebrows. “Profound. Did you get that off a fortune cookie?”

Cameron flips him off without moving anything else in his face, and the table breaks. Zane snorts, then Eli, and within seconds the whole heavy conversation has dissolved into eight men insulting each other over jambalaya.

This is the part I’d lose. Not only the men, but the noise, the bread going around, somebody’s elbow in my ribs.

I push back from the table. “I’m going to shower. Save me some bread?”

“No promises,” Zane calls after me.

The bathroom is at the end of the hall, big enough for the industrial shower that nine athletes in one house require. I peel off practice clothes still damp with sweat and lake water and step under the spray.

The hot water is bliss on tired muscles. I tip my head back and let it pound my shoulders while I try to quiet everything down. Pack bonds, legal filings, six more sets of teeth. The reporter and the scouts. Quinton’s text. Gray keeping a room’s width between us for four days running.

The door opens, and I turn my head as Jackson comes in already pulling his shirt over his head. He’s all lean muscle and hard angles, a body built by eight years of pulling on an oar.

“Room for one more?”

“Depends. Are you going to use all the hot water?”

He doesn’t smile, but his eyes lose an edge. He strips off the rest and steps in behind me, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him through the steam.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“What I’ve been trying not to do since practice.”

His hands find my hips and pull me back against him. He’s already hard against my lower back, so whatever he’s been trying hasn’t gone especially well.

“That doesn’t look like trying.”

“I stopped.”