Conrad turns his attention back to me. He isn’t any less angry. He’s just decided anger isn’t a wedge; it’s a tool. “Next time, wake me before you go.”
“You were out,” I say. “You needed it.”
“I need her more,” he answers.
“Noted.”
Phoenix watches us like we’re a picture she’s deciding where to hang. There’s heat in her eyes again from earlier, or still. It’s not an aftershock. It’s a carryover. I feel it answer in my blood like a low chord. She reaches for me, and I go because I always will when she looks like that. I slide an arm under her knees and the other around her back and lift. She fits her face into my neck and laughs once in pure pleasure at the novelty of it.
“Show-off,” she murmurs.
“Always,” I say.
Conrad follows us down the hall. He doesn’t say he’s coming. He doesn’t have to. The air changes.
I nudge my door open with a shoulder and carry her in. Conrad steps in after and closes it quietly behind him. He stays against the door without turning the lock, like he wants it known that anyone could walk in and we’d still have nothing to be ashamed of.
I set Phoenix on the edge of the bed and step back just enough to look at her. She reaches for the zipper of her hoodie and pauses, eyes moving between us, the focus lazy and sharp at once.
“Conrad,” she says, soft. It’s not a request. It’s an opening.
He stands there and stares at her like she’s an answer to a question he thought he had to live with his whole life. The hand that finds the back of his neck is almost funny in its surprise; he didn’t know his body was going to do that.
“I’m going to watch him with you,” he says to her, voice rough. “Because I want to. And because it’s you. And because I don’t know how not to anymore.”
“Okay,” she says. “Maybe you won’t just watch.”
He inhales like he’s standing on a dock and the tide finally reached him. “Maybe.”
He saysmaybe,and I feel it all the way down my spine.
Phoenix’s hoodie is half-zipped, her fingers on the pull. She’s on the edge of my bed, bare legs swinging once, slow, like she’s testing gravity. Conrad’s still by the door, one shoulder to the wood, big hand at the back of his neck like he’s holding himself together by a grip.
“Color,” I ask, because we’re not doing a single thing without that.
Her gaze cuts to me. Steady. Hot. “Green.”
Conrad exhales like he’s been underwater for a decade. I hear that sound in my bones.
“Door stays unlocked?” he asks.
“Yeah,” she says. “You’re still on watch.”
Something in his expression eases and tightens at the same time. “Then I’m on watch,” he says quietly. “For you.”
“You’re both on me,” she corrects, and the way she says it makes my pulse trip over itself.
I move first, because that’s my job. I step in until I’m between her knees, my hands braced on either side of her on the mattress. Her hoodie gapes just enough to tease. She looks up at me, pupils blown wide, mouth soft and stubborn.
“You sure?” I ask, even though I heard the green.
“I started this,” she says. “I’m sure.”
“Okay then, Firebird,” I murmur. “Let’s catch up.”
I kiss her.
She tastes like toothpaste and heat and whatever word meansminein a language I don’t speak. Her fingers curl in the front of my shirt, hauling me down like she’s annoyed it took this long. I let her take what she wants, tilting my head, deepening the kiss when she licks into my mouth, giving her every bit of filthy, grateful hunger I’ve been sitting on for weeks.
