Virgin Dot Com Novel

[Jasmine's POV] Leo and Maya decide on a combined bachelor-bachelorette party because traditional isn't their style. Modern, unconventional, exactly what you'd expect from two people who met at an AA meeting and fell in love over terrible coffee and brutal honesty. They rent an Airbnb upstate-sprawling house with enough bedrooms for the chaos they're planning. I bring the girls because Maya adores them, and honestly, I need the distraction. The brothers promise to come, but separately. Work obligations, they say, and I don't argue because arguing requires energy I don't have.

The weekend is beautiful chaos. Leo's sobriety friends mix with Maya's nurse colleagues, and somehow it works. People who've survived addiction trading war stories with people who've held hands through death. The girls run wild with other kids, their laughter echoing through the house. I relax for the first time in months. Let my shoulders drop, let the knot in my chest loosen just slightly. Saturday night arrives with the kind of anticipation that makes your skin buzz.

The kids are with a designated babysitter-some college student Maya trusts with her life-and the adults take over the living room. Wine flows, laughter builds, and someone makes a toast that has Maya crying happy tears into Leo's shoulder. I'm on my third glass of wine when Leo pulls me aside. The porch is cool, September air sharp against my flushed skin. "Thank you for being here," he says. "Wouldn't miss it." I lean against the railing, watch fireflies pulse in the darkness. "You deserve this, Leo. All of it." "How are you?" His voice is careful.

"Really?" I look at my brother-healthy, happy, in love simply and completely. Maya isn't sharing him with two others. Their relationship is straightforward, socially acceptable, uncomplicated by judgment. They get to have a normal wedding, normal life, normal everything. "I'm fine," I lie. Leo's expression shifts. He's been sober long enough to recognize bullshit from a mile away. "Sis, you look exhausted." He steps closer. "And not just tired. Exhausted in your soul." The observation breaks something. Cracks me open in a way I didn't expect.

"I don't know if we can keep doing this." The words tumble out before I can stop them. "The four of us. It's so hard, Leo. Every day it's hard." He pulls me into a hug, and I feel twelve years old again. Back when Leo fixed everything, before the addiction, before I had to be the strong one. "Then stop," he whispers against my hair. "You're allowed to choose happiness even if it looks different than you planned." "I don't know what happiness looks like anymore." "Then figure it out. But you're allowed to choose yourself, Jazz.

You're allowed." I'm still thinking about his words when Liam finds me an hour later. I'm back on the porch, crying quietly into my wine glass. He sits beside me without speaking, and the silence between us is heavy with everything we're not saying. "Leo asked if we're okay." His voice is rough. "Are we?" I can't answer. Can't form words around the truth lodged in my throat. He takes my hand, and his fingers are warm against my cold ones. The touch feels like goodbye. "I'm trying," he says. "I know I'm failing you, but I'm trying." "I know." My voice cracks. "That's what makes it worse.

We're all trying and still failing." We sit in painful honesty. The kind that strips away pretense and leaves only raw truth. "I love you," he says. "I know. I love you too." I force myself to say the next words. "Maybe love isn't enough." The words hang there-first time either of us has admitted it. First time we've said out loud what we've both been thinking for months. He pulls me close and I let myself be held, but I can feel it. The crack between us widening. The distance growing despite our proximity. His heartbeat is steady against my ear, but it doesn't comfort me the way it used to.

Nothing does. Sunday morning breaks with hangovers and cleanup duty. I'm helping Maya with breakfast when I hear car doors slam. All three of them arrive together-Liam, Finn, and Asher-looking like they've been through a war. "Sorry we're late," Finn says, kissing my cheek without really seeing me. "Emergency business meeting." "The acquisition?" Maya asks, because she pays attention to these things. "Crisis intensifying." Asher's jaw is tight. "We'll tell you later." But later never comes.

They barely interact with me, consumed by work stress that manifests in tense shoulders and constant phone checking. Conference calls in the backyard, huddles in corners, that corporate language that excludes everyone else. I watch them with Maya's friends. Three handsome, successful men who command attention without trying. Maya's nurse friends whisper and giggle, and I can't blame them. They look like something out of a magazine-expensive clothes, perfect hair, that confidence that comes with power. But I see what the nurses don't. The way Liam's smile doesn't reach his eyes.

How Finn's laugh sounds hollow. The distance in Asher's gaze when he looks at me. Three men I love. Three men who love me. Who are slowly becoming strangers. Maya touches my arm. "You okay?" "Fine," I say automatically. She doesn't believe me any more than Leo did. But she doesn't push, just squeezes my hand and goes to join her fiancé. I watch Leo wrap his arms around her, watch them sway together like they're dancing to music only they can hear. Simple. Straightforward. Uncomplicated. Everything mine isn't. Liam catches me staring and our eyes meet across the room.

For a moment, I see it-the same fear, the same exhaustion, the same desperate hope that somehow we'll figure this out. Then his phone rings. He mouths "sorry" and steps outside, already gone before he's even left. And I'm left standing in a room full of people, more alone than I've ever been. Virgin Dot Com