Page 66 of Yours to Break

Greyson smirked faintly, then looked at Lane. “You two talking about Hudson and Hayes?”

Lane glanced at me before nodding. “Yeah. Ollie was saying how they’ve really started to help him. They take care of him.”

Greyson hummed thoughtfully and came to sit at the edge of the bed, folding his hands in his lap like this was suddenly a session. “My brothers are… interesting. Highly functional, but not what you’d call neurotypical. Both of them meet the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder, commonly referred to as psychopathy. Hudson more in the classic interpersonal realm—superficial charm, manipulativeness. Hayes trends more toward the affective side—low emotional responsiveness, shallow affect, and the occasional lack of guilt.”

“Occasional?” I asked, failing to hold back an amused smirk.

He shrugged. “They feel guilt. Just…selectively. The line between right and wrong doesn’t mean much to them unless it’s personal. But here’s the thing most people get wrong about psychopathy: it doesn’t make someone evil. It just means they don’t process emotion or empathy the same way. But they can still care. They can still love. It just looks different. Less like softness, more like loyalty through violence.”

Lane shifted closer to me, and I leaned into his side instinctively. “They said they love me,” I told Greyson quietly, like it was a secret for just the three of us.

Greyson nodded. “Of that, I have no doubt. They just won’t necessarily show it in words or even gestures. They’ll show it in the people they scare off, the pain they spare you from, the quiet way they memorize the things that make you feel safe.”

He glanced between the two of us. “Don’t expect them to heal you. That’s not what they’re built for. But if you let them, they’ll hold the ground steady while you do most of the healing yourself.”

I swallowed.

That hit harder than I’d expected.

Greyson stood and ruffled Lane’s hair affectionately, which earned him an adoring beam. I could practically see the hearts in Lane’s eyes as he looked at his fiancé. “I’ll give you two more minutes of sappy best friend time, and then I’m stealing Lane back before he forgets who he belongs to.”

As he walked out, Lane giggled and looked over at me. “He always sounds like he’s giving a TED Talk. It makes me so turned on.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice softer now, still contemplating Greyson’s words. Then I registered the last thing Lane had said. “Turns you on? God, I can’t judge. You have a Therapy Daddy, or I guess Dr. Daddy, and I have twin psychopathic Masters. Hm… It would depend on whether he still despises me or not, but would it be weird if I got therapy from Grey? Not because of the kink stuff! Pinky promise. The twins would—I don’t even know.”

We both shook with laughter, which slowly faded away until the room settled into a comfortable silence—the kind you don’t need to fill. Lane leaned back beside me again, and I stared up at his bed canopy, my thoughts drifting.

There were days I still felt the weight of the past pressing into my ribs, as if grief had found a home somewhere behind my sternum. I didn’t talk much about the night I was kicked out. How it was like a switch flipped and I was unmade. How Mr. and Mrs. Lucchetti suddenly didn’t have a child anymore.

And then there was Grammy.

She’d been the one who really raised me. When she died, it was like the last thread keeping me tethered to family. I was suddenly completely alone.

I had never told Lane the whole story, not really. But he showed up anyway. This reckless, bright-souled boy who let me exist without having to perform. His laugh filled rooms. His kindness cracked through the numbness like sunlight through frost. He didn’t fix everything—but he reminded me there were still things worth sticking around for.

And then came Hayes and Hudson.

God, they were certifiably insane.

Violent, possessive, dead-eyed at times—but underneath all that, they had this unwavering intensity. Like I’d become the center of some strange gravitational pull. They didn’t tiptoe around me. They didn’t treat me like something broken or fragile. Theynoticedthings. The way I flinched when someone raised their voice. How I tapped my fingers when I was on the verge of dissociation. How I needed spaceandcloseness in the same breath.

They didn’t ask me to be okay. They just made sure I wasn’t alone when I wasn’t.

Since they crashed into my life, everything felt sharper, more alive, like someone turned the saturation up on the world. I felt like I was finallyliving, not just surviving, not just trudging aimlessly through life.

I didn’t always recognize the person I’d become. There were whole stretches of time that felt like gaps in a film reel—moments lost to survival, to silence, to holding myself together with metaphorical duct tape and denial. I used to wonder if the world would ever feel soft again, if I’d ever laugh without guilt, or sleep without fear.

But now… now it was different.

The pain was still there. The past didn’t disappear just because love found its way to me. But it became something I could carry instead of drowning beneath. Some nights, I even felt proud of myself for letting myself reach toward people, even when I was afraid they’d let go.

Lane shifted beside me, his breathing steady, his hand still loosely wrapped around mine. He was the first person who reminded me that friendship could be fierce and healing. That someone could choose you, even when they didn’t have to. Even when you weren’t easy to love.

A quiet knock on the door pulled me from my thoughts.

It opened slowly, and there they were—Hayes leaning in the doorway with that smile that was always just for me, while Hudson stood beside him, already reaching out a hand toward me.

“Time to go home,” Hudson said, voice low, steady. “You good?”

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