Virgin Dot Com Novel

[Jasmine's POV] The house is finally quiet. Both girls down for their nap, the monitor crackling with the soft rhythm of their breathing. I should be working-invoices stacked on the kitchen counter, emails multiplying like rabbits-but instead I'm scrolling through my phone, thumb moving on autopilot. That's when I see it. The headline punches through the screen: "The Blackwood Scandal: Five Years Later - Polyamory, Business, and Two Little Girls." My chest constricts, ribs suddenly too tight around my lungs.

The article is long-form, the kind of investigative piece that pretends at objectivity while dripping with judgment. There's a photo-recent, maybe from last week when we took the girls to the park. All six of us captured in high definition: Liam pushing Zoe on the swings, Finn lifting Chloe onto the monkey bars, Asher's hand on the small of my back. The photographer must have used a telephoto lens because the image is crisp, intimate. Invasive. I scroll. Each paragraph is a knife between my ribs. The writer has done their homework. Financial records from the merger.

Quotes from "anonymous sources" at Blackwood Industries. A timeline of our relationship that reads like a case study in moral decay. The comments section loads, and I should stop reading. I know I should stop. "Those poor children will be so confused." "This is child abuse, plain and simple." "Imagine explaining this at parent-teacher conferences." My phone is shaking. No-my hands are shaking, and the phone is just along for the ride. There's a sound building in my throat, something between a laugh and a scream, and I can't decide which one will destroy me less. The phone rings.

Nora's face fills the screen. "Ignore it." Her voice is fierce before I even say hello. "Jazz, whatever you're reading, whatever you're thinking-it's bullshit. All of it." "They have photos, Nora. Recent photos." My voice sounds hollow, like I'm speaking from the bottom of a well. "Someone's been following us. Following the girls." "Then we get a restraining order. We sue for harassment. But you do not-listen to me-you do not let these vultures in your head." She pauses, and I hear her exhale slowly. "Where are the guys?" "Work. Where they always are." The bitterness surprises me.

Bitterness directed at them, at this situation, at myself for being naive enough to think we could build something beautiful without the world demanding its pound of flesh. "Jazz-" "I have to go. The monitor just went off." It didn't. But I need to hang up before she hears me fracture completely. The kitchen is too bright, all that designer lighting Liam insisted on. I lean against the counter, and my body decides this is the moment to betray me. Tears-hot and furious-streak down my face. My breath comes in sharp gasps that sound too loud in the empty space. The garage door opens. Asher.

He's never home at two PM. Never. His schedule is carved in stone-meeting rounds until four, consultations until six. But he walks into the kitchen and stops dead when he sees me. His messenger bag hits the floor. His suit jacket follows. Then he's there, solid and warm, arms wrapping around me with a certainty that makes my knees weak. I bury my face in his chest, and his hand cups the back of my head, holding me together while I come apart. His shirt is going to be ruined-mascara and snot and all the ugly parts of breaking down-but he doesn't pull away. He doesn't ask what's wrong.

Doesn't demand explanations or offer empty platitudes. "They don't know us." His voice rumbles through his chest, and I feel it in my bones. "They don't know what we've built." I want to believe him. God, I want to sink into that conviction and let it be enough. But there's a voice in my head-small, vicious-asking if what we've built can survive this kind of exposure. If love is enough when the world is determined to call it something ugly. His thumb traces circles on my shoulder blade. The touch is almost absent, automatic, like he's soothing himself as much as me.

And maybe that's the thing that finally lets me breathe-knowing I'm not alone in this terror. The evening meeting happens after the girls are asleep. We gather in the living room, the space that usually feels like sanctuary now crackling with tension thick enough to choke on. Liam paces by the windows. Finn sits on the arm of the couch, jaw tight. Asher stands with his back to the fireplace. I'm curled in the leather chair that smells like Asher's cologne, trying to make myself small. "We need to hire a PR firm." Finn's voice is steady, controlled. His CEO voice.

"Craft a narrative before they craft it for us." "That legitimizes the story." Asher's arms are crossed. "If we respond, we're confirming there's something to respond to." "There are photos of our children, Ash." Liam stops pacing, and there's something wild in his eyes. "We need to issue a statement. Set the record straight." "The record?" I hear my voice-sharp, cutting. "What record? That we're exactly what they say we are?" "Jazz-" "No." I stand, and my hands are fists at my sides. "You want to issue statements and hire PR firms and manage the narrative. I just want privacy.

I want our daughters to go to school without being the weird kids with the weird family." "That's not realistic." Finn's tone is gentle, which somehow makes it worse. "This is out there now. We have to manage it." "Manage it." The words taste like acid. "Like damage control. Like a crisis." "Maybe we need to think about optics." Asher's voice is measured, reasonable. "For the business." Something snaps inside me. "Optics?" The word comes out strangled. "We're not a brand strategy, Asher. We're not a corporate restructuring. We're a family." The silence that follows is suffocating.

Liam's face goes pale. Finn's jaw works like he's chewing glass. Asher stares at me, and there's hurt in his eyes-real, raw hurt-that makes my stomach twist. "That's not what I meant." His voice is quiet. "But it's what you said." No one has a response to that. The air in the room is poison, thick and toxic, and I can't breathe through it. Can't stand here and watch us tear each other apart under the weight of other people's judgment. "I need to be alone." I walk upstairs. Get ready for bed in the master bathroom with methodical precision-wash face, brush teeth, moisturize.

Each action performed with the kind of focus that keeps me from thinking. From feeling. The bed is massive, king-sized luxury with Egyptian cotton sheets. Usually, there are bodies filling that space. Liam on my left, his steady breathing. Asher on my right, one arm slung possessively across my waist. Finn at my back, solid and warm. Tonight, it's just me. The emptiness stretches in all directions-acres of cold sheets and unused pillows. I lie in the center, spreadeagled, and still can't fill the space.

My body knows something's wrong, all my nerve endings firing wrong, like phantom limb syndrome for people who should be here but aren't. The house settles around me. A door closes downstairs. Footsteps in the hallway-heavy, probably Asher-that pause outside the bedroom door. I hold my breath, waiting. Hoping. Dreading. The footsteps move on. I roll onto my side, pull my knees to my chest, and stare at the wall. Outside, a car drives past. The neighbor's dog barks. The world continues its rotation, indifferent to the fact that everything inside these walls is cracking apart.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. A text from Finn: We need to fix this. Another from Liam: I'm sorry. For all of it. Asher: Come downstairs. Please. I turn the phone face-down and close my eyes. But sleep doesn't come. Just the echo of Asher's words- optics for the business -playing on repeat. Just the cold sheets and the empty bed and the terrifying knowledge that maybe, after five years of defying the odds, the world has finally found the crack in our foundation. And it's going to pry us apart from the inside out. Virgin Dot Com