Virgin Dot Com Novel

[Jasmine's POV] The doorbell rings at three PM, and I'm covered in finger paint. Purple streaks down my left arm, yellow smeared across my collarbone where Zoe decided my neck needed "sunshine." The girls are masterpieces of chaos-paint in their hair, under their nails, somehow inside Chloe's ear. I answer the door without thinking, without checking the security camera, and Leo is standing there with a woman I've never met. My baby brother. Clean-shaven, holding the hand of someone who looks at him the way people look at miracles they stopped believing in.

She's petite, dark hair pulled into a messy bun, wearing jeans and a sweater that's seen better days. There's paint under her nails too, I notice. Different kind-oil, maybe acrylic. "Surprise?" Leo's smile is tentative, waiting for my reaction. I don't think. Just launch myself at him, finger paint and all, wrapping him in a hug that probably transfers half the Jackson Pollock on my shirt to his. He laughs-that sound I thought I'd lost forever during the worst of his addiction-and hugs me back hard enough to crack ribs. "You're getting paint on my girlfriend." His voice is warm, teasing.

I pull back, suddenly aware of the woman watching us with soft eyes. "I'm so sorry, I-" "Maya." She extends her hand, and when I take it, her grip is firm, grounded. "And please don't apologize. This is the best introduction I could ask for." Something in my chest eases. Women who date Leo fall into two categories: the ones who want to fix him, and the ones who want to break with him. Maya feels different. Solid. Real. The girls barrel into the foyer, and Leo drops to his knees without hesitation.

Within minutes, he's on the floor building a tower from blocks while Chloe explains-in excruciating detail-the complex social dynamics of kindergarten. Zoe climbs into his lap, finger-paints his cheek, and he just laughs. Patient. Present. Nothing like the hollow-eyed ghost who used to crash on my couch between relapses. Maya and I migrate to the kitchen. I make coffee while she watches the chaos with the calm of someone who's seen worse. Probably has-trauma therapist specializing in addiction recovery, she tells me.

They met at a group therapy session eight months ago, started dating two months later. "He talks about you constantly." Maya wraps her hands around the mug I slide across the counter. "His sister who never gave up. Who kept the door open even when he didn't deserve it." My throat tightens. "He's my brother. There's no deserve or not deserve. There's just family." "Not everyone sees it that way." Her eyes hold mine, and there's weight there. Stories she's not telling. "You saved his life, Jasmine. He knows that." I don't know what to say to that.

Don't know how to hold the sudden swell of emotion that's pressing against my ribs. So I drink my coffee and let the moment settle into something manageable. "We have news." Leo appears in the doorway, Maya's hand in his. His thumb traces circles on her knuckles-absent, automatic, the kind of touch that speaks of intimacy earned through time. "We're engaged." The words take a second to land. Then I'm crying-ugly, snotty tears that ruin what's left of my mascara.

I'm hugging them both, getting paint on Maya now too, babbling something incoherent about happiness and wedding planning and how I always knew he'd find someone who could see him. Really see him. All the broken parts and sharp edges and the person he's fighting every day to become. The afternoon bleeds into evening. I'm chopping vegetables for stir-fry, the girls "helping" by arranging peppers into color-coded piles, when I hear the garage door. Finn. Home at five-thirty. A miracle. An anomaly. My hands still on the cutting board.

He appears in the kitchen doorway, loosening his tie, and his eyes find me with the kind of focus that makes my skin heat. He doesn't say anything. Just crosses the space between us in three strides and wraps his arms around me from behind. His chin settles on my shoulder, solid weight, and his breath is warm against my neck. "Missed this." His voice is low, meant only for me. "Missed you in the kitchen, the girls laughing, smelling like home." His lips find the curve where my neck meets my shoulder. Not a peck. Something slower, thorough, deliberate.

His mouth traces a path to the sensitive spot behind my ear, and heat pools low in my belly. My breath catches. The knife in my hand trembles. "Daddy Finn is being mushy!" Zoe's voice cuts through the moment, delighted and scandalized. Finn laughs against my skin, and the vibration travels through my whole body. He squeezes me once more before releasing me, but his hand trails down my arm as he pulls away-deliberate, possessive, a promise of later. Dinner is chaos. Leo and Maya fitting seamlessly into the madness of five adults and two children at one table.

The brothers are charming-Liam telling the story of the merger with practiced ease, Asher discussing a complex fairy case with the kind of detail that makes Maya lean forward in fascination. Finn keeps his hand on my thigh under the table, thumb tracing patterns that make concentration impossible. But they're distracted. Liam checks his phone three times in twenty minutes. Asher's phone rings during dessert, and he takes the call-steps into the hallway with an apologetic grimace that's become muscle memory. Maya's eyes track the movement. Then find mine.

There's no judgment in her gaze, just recognition. The kind that comes from professional experience analyzing dysfunction masquerading as normal. Later, after the girls are in bed and the brothers have scattered to their respective work caves, Leo finds me loading the dishwasher. "You look tired, sis." His voice is careful, gentle. "More tired than I've ever seen you." I don't look up from the plate I'm rinsing. "Five-year-olds are exhausting." "That's not what I mean, and you know it." My hands still under the running water.

The silence stretches between us, filled with all the things I'm not saying. Can't say. Won't say out loud because giving them voice makes them real. "Jazz." He touches my shoulder, and I have to close my eyes against the sudden sting. "When I was in trouble, you were the only person who told me the truth. Even when I didn't want to hear it. Even when it would have been easier to look away." "This is different." "Is it?" His hand squeezes gently. "Because from where I'm standing, you're drowning.

And they're too busy working to notice you're going under." Something cracks in my chest-hairline fracture spreading, threatening to split me open. I turn off the water. My hands grip the edge of the sink, knuckles white. "I'm fine." "You're a terrible liar." His voice holds affection and concern in equal measure. "You always have been." I want to argue. Want to defend the life we've built, the family we've created, the love that's supposed to be enough to sustain us through anything. But the words stick in my throat because Leo's right.

He's always been able to see through my armor straight to the bleeding underneath. "They're doing their best." Even to my own ears, it sounds hollow. "I'm sure they are." He leans against the counter beside me, and I can feel him watching my profile. "But is their best enough? For you? For the girls?" The question hangs in the air between us. I don't have an answer. Or maybe I do, and I'm terrified to speak it into existence. From upstairs, I hear Asher's voice-clipped, professional, still on that call.

In the office, Liam's keyboard clicks with the steady rhythm of a man who won't be coming to bed anytime soon. Finn's in the studio, probably, working on the mix that's due tomorrow. And I'm here, in the kitchen that smells of family dinners and normalcy, with my brother who's fought his way back from hell asking me questions I don't want to answer. "I love them." My voice cracks. "God, Leo, I love them so much it physically hurts." "I know you do." He pulls me into a hug, and I let myself collapse against him for just a moment. "But love isn't supposed to hurt this much, Jazz.

Not the good kind." I pull away before the tears can start. Before I fracture completely. "I should check on the girls." He lets me go. But as I reach the doorway, his voice stops me. "Maya sees addictive behavior for a living. Patterns people use to avoid dealing with what's really broken." He pauses, and I don't turn around. Can't. "She thinks they're addicted to work because it's easier than facing what's happening here. At home. With you." The words land like bullets. I don't respond.

Just climb the stairs to check on my daughters, who are sleeping peacefully, unaware that their mother is coming apart at the seams. And downstairs, my brother stands in the kitchen with his trauma-therapist fiancée, seeing truths I'm not ready to acknowledge. Truths that are going to tear us apart whether I'm ready or not. Virgin Dot Com