Four weeks. Twenty-eight days of the same knot in her stomach, the same two phones lighting up with the same two names she couldn't bring herself to choose between. And now here they were, cross-legged on Natali's bedroom floor like they'd been exiled there, surrounded by the wreckage of a paint-and-sip that had gone sideways the moment someone asked if Joshua was coming to the birthday party.

Natali's eyes were puffy, swollen in that ugly way that made her want to hide in her bathroom with a cold spoon pressed to each lid. She'd cried twice tonight. Twice. Over a man. She'd made grown men weep into her carpet and here she was, leaking over one who wouldn't even answer her texts. The irony sat in her chest like a stone she couldn't swallow.

Andrea nursed her lip, split from biting it all night, that raw red seam a testament to every word she'd swallowed. She'd been uncharacteristically quiet for the last hour, which was its own kind of violence. Andrea quiet was Andrea loading the cannon.

"Bitch, I am NOT skipping your birthday party." Andrea's arms crossed tight over her chest, the chunky gold necklace catching the lamplight. "You hear me? I don't care what happens between now and then. I'm gonna be there."

"I didn't ask you to skip it." Natali's voice came out small, tired, the honey gone out of it. She picked at a fleck of dried paint on her thigh—emerald green, her color. She'd worn it tonight like armor, and it hadn't helped.

"Then why am I responsible if he's not coming?" Andrea's voice pitched up, indignant, the way it did when she was gearing up for a fight she didn't actually want. "Why's it on me, Nati? You said I didn't do anything—"

"For the tenth time, Andrea, I never said you were responsible." Natali's hand flattened on the floor, fingernails pressing into the rug. "I didn't say that. I never said that."

This was the problem with proud friends. They were loyal, they were fun, they were the kind of people who'd show up at your door at 2 AM with tacos and a bottle of something cheap. But when all hell broke loose, trying to get a proud person to change their mind was the equivalent of downing a bottle of cheap tequila: bitter, burning, and ready to make you vomit.

Four weeks. Four weeks of this nonsense. Four weeks of "Nati, I'm not going if he's going" and "Nati, tell me when she leaves" and the two of them orbiting each other like planets with a mutual gravitational hatred. Natali had tried everything. She'd tried the soft approach, the hard approach, the "let's all just talk like adults" approach. Nothing. Joshua wanted an apology Andrea had already given a hundred times. Andrea wanted him to acknowledge that he'd been an asshole too. And neither of them would budge an inch.

All Natali wanted was to fix it. That was the thing nobody understood. She didn't want to pick a side. She wanted to glue the pieces back together and pretend the crack wasn't there. But you couldn't glue two people who kept throwing themselves off the table.

She glanced at her friend—her best friend, the one who'd held her hair back at twenty-one, who'd driven three hours to pick her up from a bad date, who'd never once made her feel like too much. Andrea's curls were a wild mess around her face, escaping every clip she'd tried tonight. Her crop top was splattered with paint—some of it hers, some of it Natali's, from the moment they'd given up on art and started flinging color at each other like children. She was beautiful like that, all fire and chaos and a dimple that appeared even when she was furious.

Natali hadn't seen the motherfucker moment. She'd been at the bar, had turned away for one second, and by the time she looked back Andrea's face was in Joshua's and that word had come out of her mouth like a gunshot. But she could picture it. Andrea with her face up close, hazel eyes blazing, saying that word so vicious it left a bruise in the air. Andrea always said what she felt, even when it cost her. She didn't back down. She didn't know how.

The silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable. Natali sniffled—a small, wet sound that betrayed how recently she'd been crying. She hated that sound. Hated that she'd been reduced to it.

"I know you really want him there." Andrea's voice had softened, just a little. "But I'm the best friend. I get seniority. I don't care how thick his dick is—he can fuck you any time. I only get to celebrate you on that day."

Natali said nothing. Because Andrea wasn't wrong. She wasn't wrong at all. But what woman wouldn't want the dick she'd been eyeing for months, practically bow-tied and waiting for her at her own party? She let herself have the thought—just for a second. His cock, wrapped up pretty, presented to her like a gift. She'd unwrap him slowly. Make him wait. Make him beg for it.

Her thighs tightened. She shot herself back to reality before the thought could go anywhere productive.

Yes, she dommed men. Yes, she loved it—the power, the control, the way they looked at her when they realized she owned them. And yes, she'd had recurring fantasies about Joshua being her subject, about making him kneel, about watching that stubborn pride break apart under her hands. But she could barely hide her fear enough to introduce the idea to him before. There was no way she'd bring it up now, not while she was in the doghouse for something she didn't even do.

The burn of that injustice flared in her chest again. She hadn't done anything. She'd been standing there, caught between them, and somehow she was the one who'd lost both of them.

"If he was a girl," Andrea muttered, half to herself, "I would've slapped that bitch by now. This conflict would be all over. Done. Finito."

"Slapping him would've been fun," Natali said, without thinking. "But you two took that off the table pretty damn quick."

Her hand flew to her mouth the second the words left it. Too late. The damage was already done.

Andrea turned to look at her. Slowly. Like a predator clocking movement in the grass. Her eyes went wide, then narrow, then wide again—a whole conversation happening in her face before she spoke.

"Bitch."

Natali's stomach dropped. "Please move on. Please move on. Please move on—"

"You never told me Joshua was a candidate." Andrea's voice had a hunger in it that Natali recognized all too well. It was the same hunger she'd seen in every person who thought BDSM was cool, who romanticized it from the outside, who didn't understand what it actually cost. "When you told me about your secret life, you said he was off the table yourself. You said—"

"I know what I said."

"Omg. OMG. You have to let me watch. Please. I need to see him get his. I need to watch that smug little—"

"Andrea." Natali sat up straighter, her voice snapping like a rubber band. "You aren't listening to me."

Andrea's mouth snapped shut, but her eyes were still blazing.

"Yes, I thought about it." The words came out slow, careful, like she was testing each one before she released it. "I've dreamed about it a few times. The guys I domme don't usually look like him. They're softer. Easier. They come to me already half-broken, looking for someone to finish the job." She paused. "He's not like that. He's a whole man. A proud one. And I wondered if I could introduce it, if I could find a way to make him see that it's not about humiliating him, it's about—"

"About what?"

"About trust." The word came out quieter than she meant it to. "About giving someone the keys to you and knowing they won't crash the car."

Andrea was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "But he hates me now. And he dislikes you as a consequence."

"Yes."

"And you want me to bring this up now?"

Andrea's jaw worked. She looked like she was chewing on something bitter. "Well, he's clearly a really proud man-boy." She gestured vaguely, frustration bleeding through every word. "I can't go around apologizing for the rest of my life. I don't even do that for my mom, and I love my mom. But here I am, doing it for you. I'm apologizing to you, for him. I'm trying to keep the peace. And I don't see him trying to fix it. I don't see him doing a single thing to make this right."

Natali had to admit that was true. Andrea adored her. Andrea was actually trying, in her own loud, clumsy, Andrea way, to hold the pieces together. She was apologizing—not to Joshua, never to Joshua, but to Natali, for the wreckage. She was showing up. She was staying.

Joshua liked her. Sure. He liked her a lot. But he didn't care enough about either of the two girls to put himself out there. He hadn't called. He hadn't texted. He'd said he'd call when he cooled off, maybe, and then he'd just... not. Four weeks of silence, and she was the one crying into her paintbrush.

Her skin prickled. A slow, creeping heat that started at the base of her spine and crawled up her neck. She hadn't realized how much she hadn't liked that. It bothered her, down in her stomach, in that place where her pride lived. And she realized, with a clarity that felt like cold water, that maybe Andrea did have a point.

"I'm clearly liking this guy more than he likes me." Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact, the voice she used when she was making a decision. "And that needs to change."

Andrea's face erupted. The frustration vanished, replaced by something bright and gleeful and slightly unhinged. "Omg. Are we doing this? Are we actually doing this?"

"We?" Natali's eyebrow arched. The word came out before she could stop it.

This was risky as hell. Even attempting this, even thinking about it seriously, was a gamble she'd never taken before. Her subs were strangers. Men who found her through channels she kept carefully separate from her real life. Men who didn't know her name, who didn't know her friends, who existed only in the space between her four walls and their need.

Joshua would be furious if he knew Andrea was involved. He'd be furious if he knew anyone was involved. The thought should have cooled her. Instead, her pussy twitched. A small, unmistakable pulse of heat that made her realize—she liked the idea of his anger. She liked the idea of that pride straining against a leash. She liked the idea of him looking at her with fury and wanting and having nowhere to put it but on his knees.

Andrea leaned in, her voice dropping to something almost conspiratorial. "We have two weeks before your birthday. Two weeks, Nati. We do this before then, and we all wind up there together. Him, me, you. One party. One night. No drama." She paused. "And you get to see him squirm."

Natali stared at her. The word hung in the air between them, shimmering with possibility.

"Fine."

The word came out of her mouth before her brain had fully signed off on it. But once it was out there, she found she didn't want to take it back. She had no idea how she was going to pull this off. No idea how she was going to get Joshua Bennett—proud, stubborn, vault-door Joshua—into her playroom and onto his knees.

But she knew she was going to try.

Andrea let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-whoop, and threw her arms around Natali's neck. The hug was fierce, crushing, full of paint and perfume and the particular warmth of a friend who loved you enough to fight for you. "We're gonna break him," Andrea whispered into her hair. "We're gonna break that motherfucker so good."

Natali closed her eyes. Her heart was hammering. Her skin was hot. And somewhere deep in her chest, something that had been coiled tight for four weeks finally, slowly, began to unspool.

"Yeah," she said. "We are."