“Mm.” I rest my tea on my knee and watch the fire chew the logs down. “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and hear the horn again.”
Damien laughs low. “You did scream like you were trying to summon the dead.”
“I was summoning luck,” I say, and my eyes find Cast when I say it.
His mouth curves, that small, knowing smile that always finds its way under my skin. “Well, you got me. So I’d say you’re the luckiest girl in the world.”
I nudge him, pretending it doesn’t melt me. “Please. You’re the lucky one.”
Cast’s laugh is low, rough at the edges. “Maybe,” he murmurs, “but I’ll spend my life proving it.”
Before I can answer, Damien slips a hand to the back of my neck, thumb brushing the place he always touches when he wants me grounded. “He’s right,” he says softly, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “The universe did something right when it gave me you.”
I lift my hand and press my fingers under the jersey, palm flat on my belly, a touch so light it might be a thought. Cast’s eyes flick down and then up. Damien’s breath catches. They know me too well or they just love me enough to feel what I feel through skin.
“Later,” I say, because I want to tell Vincent first, because I want to tell all of them where no ghosts can hear. “But… yes.”
Damien makes a sound like gratitude and a prayer discovered under the same rock. He leans forward and presses his forehead to mine, eyes closed, a kiss without his mouth. Heat walks down my spine. Cast’s thumb traces the edge of my jaw, then drops away before I fall into it.
“I miss Vincent” I say to Cast, because the words have been sitting behind my teeth since the horn. “Did he get on the plane yet?”
“Boarded like 30 minutes ago,” Damien says looking down at the flight alert on his phone.
Cast huffs out a laugh that’s more breath than amusement. “Vincent needs to never miss a hockey game again. He is the only one who can stop Damien from deciding it is better to fight on the ice than actually play.”
“Deciding?” Damien repeats, scandalized. “He hit me first, and I knew we were going to win whether I punched him or not.”
“You are a public menace,” Cast says, and there’s affection in it like a secret pocket.
“Says the actual leader of the Cartel,” Damien says, and then looks at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I smile, putting both hands up. “You are both menaces to my personal society.”
“Oh yeah?” Damien teases turning to me.
“Yeah,” I smirk as I turn into the heat of Damien’s body without thinking. “The literal worst.”
He catches my waist and drags me closer. I go willingly. He kisses me like we have all the time in the world. His mouth tastes of smoke from the fire and sugar from earlier, his hand spreading over the small of my back as if he could warm the whole night through me. There’s no rush. Our life is not a series of emergencies anymore; we had enough of those to last several lives.
Cast watches, not removed but reverent, the way he watches a piece of art that taught him something. He shifts so he’s closer—knees grazing mine, the couch creaking in that specific way it learned from us. When Damien lifts his head, Cast leans in. He doesn’t kiss my mouth first; he knows I’m a house that unlocks in a certain order. He kisses the corner, then the other, thenthe place on my cheek that always goes hot when I’m seen, then the soft hinge of my jaw where my pulse thins to a ribbon. His mouth is cool and precise and then not precise at all when I slide my palm against his throat and feel him swallow.
“You,” he says against my skin, like a thesis, like proof.
“Me,” I answer, and it’s ridiculous how much those two letters can hold.
Damien’s laugh ghost-burns across my mouth when I nip his lower lip; Cast’s exhale hits my ear when I curl my fingers at the nape of his neck. They take turns, not in a schedule but in a rhythm; they’ve learned me by heart and each other by accident and then on purpose.
“Easy,” Cast murmurs when my breath hitches too sharp—he has always known when the world tilts and when to lay a hand flat and level it. He’s smiling when he says it, though, becauseeasyis a word we had to build.
“Tease,” I accuse, but the word melts in my mouth when Damien’s palm slides over the curve of my hip and pauses at the warm weight of his jersey falling to mid-thigh. His grin goes wolfish and fond all at once.
“You’re in my colors,” he says, voice low. “I’m a simple man, wife. That’s it. That’s the whole sentence.”
“You say that like I didn’t wear it on purpose,” I murmur, letting my fingers toy with the hem. The fabric is smooth and cool, and underneath it I am all temperature and sensation.
Cast’s laugh is without sound, shoulders shaking once. “Calculated,” he says. “She came downstairs with a battle plan.”
“Of course I did,” I agree, and press my thumb into the hollow at the base of his throat just to hear his inhale snap.
