Off Limits

✦CHAPTER 4 — The Look That Stayed

My apartment smells like cedar and coffee and the kind of loneliness you make friends with. I toss her a clean sweatshirt from the chair; she disappears into the bathroom and returns with damp hair and my clothes swallowing her. I pretend it doesn’t wreck me.

“You can use the dryer,” I say, taking her jacket, trying not to memorize the warmth.

“Thanks.” She perches on the edge of the couch like it might bite. “Did Mason text you?”

“Not today.”

She nods, swallows. “He warned me about you.”

“Did he?” My laugh comes out tired. “He’s been warning people about me my whole life.”

“Was he right?”

I should say yes. I should make myself smaller and easier to hate. “Sometimes,” I admit. “But not about this.”

“What is this?” she asks.

We look at each other like the answer could save us. I don’t know if it can.

Footsteps pound the hallway. A fist hits my door—three hard knocks. My stomach drops. Instinct moves faster than thought; I touch a finger to my lips and she freezes.

“Luca!” a voice snaps from the other side. Familiar. Furious. “Open up.”

Nova’s eyes widen. The color drains from her face. She whispers the name I’m already thinking.

“Mason.”

*Nova POV*

The knocks don’t sound like a brother. They sound like a verdict.

I freeze on the couch, swallowed by Luca’s sweatshirt, damp hair dripping onto my collarbone. He lifts a hand—quiet—and the room obeys. Even the dryer forgets to hum.

“Bathroom,” he mouths.

I shake my head. Running is an admission. Also, the bathroom door sticks, and panic has a way of making small noises sound like gunshots.

He reads my refusal like it’s familiar and crosses to the door instead, silent, controlled. I’ve never seen someone move like danger without making any.

Mason’s voice slices through wood. “Open up, Luca.”

My stomach hollows. I tug the hood over my head, tuck my knees into the couch, and stare at the bracelet he clasped around my wrist an hour ago. The tiny charm catches light like it’s conspiring against me.

Luca unlocks the chain. Doesn’t open yet. He turns, meets my eyes. It’s the same look from last night in the kitchen—steady, unflinching, like he could stop a storm just by deciding to.

I nod.

The door swings wide.

*Luca POV*

Mason shoves past me, storm first, reasoning later. He’s dressed like he got the memo about being the good son—pressed shirt, perfect hair, breath spiked with anger.

His gaze sweeps the room, cataloging sin. It lands on the couch. On the hood that is very obviously mine. On the knee bouncing under it. On the way the fabric dips at a collarbone I know the shape of now.

He goes very still.

“Nova,” he says. It’s not a greeting. It’s a detonator.

She lowers the hood. The room shrinks to the three of us and the space between every word we never should’ve said.

“Say it’s not what it looks like,” he whispers.

No one does.

I move between them before the air can light. “You don’t get to show up at my door and interrogate my guests.”

His mouth twists. “Guests? Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Call it what you want,” I say. Quiet. Final.

He laughs once, a broken hinge. “You told me to stay away from your messes. And this is what you were doing—”

“Enough.” My voice drops, and Mason hears what strangers hear when I let that register go. The one Father trained. Command without volume.

For a second, I see the kid he used to be—scuffed knees, bruised pride, looking to me for what to do next. It makes everything worse.

“Maybe I should go,” Nova says, standing. The sweatshirt swallows her. My sweatshirt. The part of my brain that stays savage even around her snarls at the sight of it on her. Mine. The word flashes and bleeds.

Mason’s eyes hook on the bracelet, the way the charm winks. He gave her one once, another lifetime ago. I remember because he made me drive back to the pier at midnight when she lost it, and I found it for him under a bench. He never knew how.

“Don’t,” he says to her. Then to me, quieter: “You could have anyone. Why her?”

I’m not answering that for him.

The hall creaks. Footsteps. A neighbor maybe—or not. The building’s full of ghosts with rent. But my phone vibrates, and the name cuts cleaner than the knocks did.

Elijah.

I don’t pick up. He’ll call again if it matters. He always does.

Mason steps closer like he’s choosing a fight he can’t win on purpose. “She’s not a weapon,” he says. “You don’t get to aim her at me.”

“Then stop standing in front of the barrel,” I say.

“God,” he breathes, looking at Nova like she’s the last good thing he lost twice. “Does he make you feel safe?”

It’s a cheap shot, because we all know what safe means in our family. Not comfort. Control. Walls. Deals signed in other people’s blood. I left that word’s clean meaning years ago.

Nova’s chin lifts. “No,” she says, surprising all of us. “He makes me feel… seen.”

And there it is—the look that stayed. The one I caught in the kitchen under bad lighting and worse decisions. Not pity. Not rescue. Recognition.

Mason flinches like the truth hit bone. “He’ll ruin you,” he repeats, softer now, almost pleading. “He ruins everything.”

“Maybe I ruin myself just fine,” she says.

The phone vibrates again. Same name. I answer without breaking eye contact with Mason. “What.”

Elijah’s voice is a blade wrapped in velvet. “Sienna’s been asking questions about a photo by the river. You want that out there?”

I glance at Nova. Wet hair. My sweatshirt. The bracelet. A river. How fast everything corrodes in the wrong mouth.

“Handle it,” I say.

“Already am,” Elijah replies. “But she’s not scared of me, she’s scared of you losing your temper. Control it.” A pause. “Or I will.”

The line clicks dead.

Mason watches me pocket the phone. “Sienna?”

Nova goes pale, and that’s on me. I had a thousand chances to cut clean. I took none.

“She doesn’t matter,” I say. It’s not technically true, and all three of us know the cost of technicalities.

Mason looks between us like the last board on a collapsing bridge. Then he nods to himself, decision cooling in his bones. “You want to be him?” he says to me. “Fine. Be him. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when Father uses her to teach you what obedience costs.”

The temperature in the room drops a degree. He just shoved the conversation into a house with a locked door and cameras in the corners. Family business. Father. Obedience.

Nova hears the capital letter even if I didn’t say it.

She takes a step toward Mason. “I never meant to hurt you,” she says.

“Intent doesn’t stop bleeding,” he answers, and walks out before I can block the door. The hall swallows his footsteps.