Virgin Dot Com Novel

[Jasmine's POV] Nora appears at six PM with wine and enough Chinese food to feed a small army. She breezes past me before I can protest, sets the bags on the kitchen counter with the decisive thud of someone on a mission. Maria looks up from where she's supervising the girls' dinner, and Nora waves her off with the authority of a general dismissing troops. "Go home, Maria. I've got this." "But-" "Paid in full. Jasmine will text you tomorrow. Go. Enjoy your evening." Maria glances at me for confirmation.

I nod, too exhausted to argue, and she gathers her things with the relief of someone granted unexpected freedom. The door closes behind her, and Nora turns to the girls with a smile that's pure mischief. "Who wants a sleepover at Aunt Nora's?" The twins erupt. Chloe's already running for her backpack, listing everything she needs to pack. Zoe's more hesitant, looking to me for permission, and I see the question in her eyes-is Mommy okay? Can we leave her? "Go have fun, baby." My voice comes out steadier than expected. "I'll see you tomorrow." Within twenty minutes, they're gone.

The house settles into silence so complete it's suffocating. I stand in the kitchen, surrounded by takeout containers I didn't ask for, and something in my chest is cracking apart. Nora opens the wine without ceremony. Pours two generous glasses. Sits across from me at the kitchen table and fixes me with the look that's broken through my defenses since college. "Okay. Talk. What's really going on?" The question should be simple. Should have a simple answer. Instead, it opens something inside me that's been festering for months-years, maybe. The first sob catches me off guard.

Then I'm crying in earnest, ugly and desperate, while Nora sits witness to my unraveling. "I'm so lonely." The words scrape out of my throat, raw and bleeding. "I'm surrounded by people who love me, and I've never been more alone in my life." She doesn't interrupt. Just reaches across the table, takes my hand, lets me fracture. "The girls are confused. We're confused. I don't know if we're a family or just four people playing house who happen to love the same woman." My voice breaks. "And I'm so tired, Nora. I'm exhausted from holding everything together while they work themselves to death.

From being the only one who remembers that life exists outside of office and recording studios." "When's the last time you had sex?" Her voice is blunt, cutting through my spiral. The question lands like a slap. I blink, pull back slightly. "What?" "Sex. With any of them. When?" Heat floods my face. "Two weeks ago. With Asher. It was..." "It was what?" "Fine." The word tastes like ash. Nora sets down her wine glass with deliberate precision. "Fine. Jesus, Jas.

You're twenty-nine years old with three hot men who are supposed to be crazy about you, and you're having 'fine' sex every two weeks?" The words should sting. Should make me defensive. Instead, they just confirm what I've been trying not to acknowledge-that we've become roommates who co-parent. That the passion that used to sustain us through impossible logistics has been slowly suffocating under the weight of responsibility and exhaustion. "We're busy." Even as I say it, I know it's a pathetic excuse. "You're dying." Nora's voice is fierce, almost angry.

"You're dying by inches, and they're so caught up in their own shit they can't see it happening." I can't argue. Can't defend them or us or the life we've built. Can only sit here while my best friend speaks truths I'm terrified to acknowledge. The garage door opens. Liam's home early-or what passes for early now, barely eight PM. He appears in the kitchen doorway, tie loosened, exhaustion carved into every line of his face. His eyes find mine, and whatever he sees there makes him go rigid. He crosses the space in three strides. Doesn't ask what's wrong, doesn't demand explanations.

Just sits beside me on the bench, pulls me into his side with the kind of deliberate care that suggests he knows I'm fragile. His arm bands around my shoulders, solid and warm, and I collapse into him despite everything. His eyes find Nora's across the table. "Thank you for being here for her." "Someone has to be." The pointed comment lands with precision. Nora doesn't look away, doesn't soften the accusation. "Someone has to notice when she's falling apart." Liam's arm tightens around me. His jaw clenches, and I feel the tremor run through him-shame, maybe, or recognition.

He doesn't defend himself. Doesn't argue. Just holds me tighter while Nora gathers her things with pointed efficiency. "Call me tomorrow," she says at the door. To Liam: "Take care of her. Actually take care of her, not just promise to when work calms down." Then she's gone, and we're alone in the too-quiet house. Liam doesn't let go. We sit in silence, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear, and I count the beats because it's easier than thinking. Easier than speaking the words building in my throat. "I'm sorry." His voice is rough, scraped raw.

"Jazz, I'm so fucking sorry." "For what specifically?" The question comes out sharper than intended. "For the loneliness? For the 'fine' sex? For the fact that my best friend sees me falling apart while you're too busy to notice?" He flinches. "All of it. Everything. I'm drowning in responsibility, and I keep telling myself it's temporary. That once this crisis passes, once the merger finalizes, once-" He stops, laughs bitterly. "There's always a once. Always another deadline. Another emergency that takes precedence." "Over me." Not a question. A statement of fact we've both been avoiding.

"Yes." The admission breaks something between us. "Over you. Over the girls. Over everything that actually matters." I pull back, need to see his face. His eyes are wet, red-rimmed with exhaustion and unshed tears. This man who commands respect in every room he enters is crying in our kitchen, and the sight does something to my anger. Doesn't erase it, but complicates it. Makes space for the love that exists underneath the hurt. "I'm lonely," I whisper. "I'm lonely in our bed. I'm lonely at family dinners where you're all checking your phones.

I'm lonely in a relationship that's supposed to be four times the love but feels like a quarter of what I need." His hands frame my face, thumbs wiping away tears I didn't realize I was crying. "Tell me how to fix it. Tell me what you need." "I need you here. Present. Not just physically in the house but actually here with me." My voice cracks. "I need to matter more than the next deal. I need 'fine' sex to become extinct because we're too busy having the kind that makes me forget my own name." Something flickers in his eyes-heat, recognition, desperate need.

His forehead drops to mine, and we're breathing the same air, existing in the same charged space where want and hurt and love tangle into something unbearably complex. "Come upstairs with me." Not a request. A plea. I let him lead me to our bedroom. Let him undress me with hands that shake, that trace my body with reverence that contradicts the speed. This isn't frantic passion. It's slower, more deliberate. Reconnecting. Relearning. His mouth finds the hollow of my throat, the curve of my collarbone, the swell of my breast.

Each touch is a question and an apology, and my body responds despite everything. Despite the anger and loneliness and fear. We make love with the lights on, eyes open, seeing each other fully. His weight above me is familiar and foreign at once-the body I know better than my own but somehow lost in the chaos of logistics and crisis management. I wrap my legs around him, pull him deeper, and the groan that escapes his throat is primal. Real. The most honest sound either of us has made in months.

"Don't drift away from me." The words escape against his mouth, whispered between kisses that taste like tears and desperation. "Please, Liam. Don't drift away." "Never." His voice is fierce, almost angry. "I promise you, Jazz. Never." The orgasm builds slowly, spreading through my body in waves that feel more emotional than physical. I come apart beneath him, and he follows moments later, face buried in my neck, saying my name like a prayer. We collapse together, tangled and sweating, hearts racing in sync. For a moment, everything is perfect. Connected. Real.

Then his phone buzzes on the nightstand. He doesn't reach for it. Doesn't move. But I feel him tense, feel the shift in attention even as his arms remain around me. Work. Always work. The world outside our bedroom demanding his focus, pulling him away even as he's still inside me. "I have to-" "I know." My voice is flat. Empty. He pulls away slowly, reluctantly. Reaches for the phone, and his face shifts into CEO mode-professional, focused, already mentally elsewhere. I watch him slide back into the person the world demands he be, watch him leave me even though his body is still in the room.

"I'm sorry," he says again, and the words have lost all meaning. I roll onto my side, pull the covers around myself, and close my eyes. Listen to him talk about investors and projections and schedules, his voice steady and authoritative. The voice he uses to command boardrooms but never seems to use when fighting for us. When he finally ends the call, I feel the bed shift as he lies back down. His hand finds my hip, tentative. "Jazz?" I don't respond. Just lie there in the dark, wondering how many more times I can fracture before there's nothing left to break. Virgin Dot Com