I didn’t touch her. Not yet. But she leaned just a fraction closer, enough that her shoulder brushed my arm. On purpose.
It felt like something real. Something earned. Something we were building together—slowly, carefully—brick by brick.
Behind us, Legend called out, “Dinner in ten!”
Grace sighed. “Are you sure I can’t help?”
“You’re helping me just finewayover there,” he said with just enough laughter and humor in his voice to make her smile.
I looked down at her. “You hungry?”
“A little.”
“Good. Eat. Then sleep. You need rest.”
Her lips curved upward. Barely, but it counted. “What about you?”
“I’ll sleep.” I shrugged. “We all will.”
“In our gigantic, ridiculous bed?” A note of real teasing crept into her voice as the firelight chased the shadows out of her eyes.
I snorted. “Dollface, that thing isn’t a bed. It’s a landmass. I’m pretty sure we need a map, a compass, and emergency rations just to locate each other in it.”
She twisted toward me, grinning up with a spark I hadn’t seen all day. “So what I hear you saying is that we should run some survival drills up there?”
The sultry glide of her voice hit me low and hot, damn near buckling my knees.
“If it involves full-body contact?” I arched a brow at her. “You won’t hear a single complaint. From any of us.”
“Hoowah!” Voodoo crowed from the couch, shameless and triumphant.
Grace broke into bright, helpless laughter—warm and alive—the shadows in her eyes scattering like they’d never existed.
Much better.
Legend
Two weeks back at Base, and Montana had done what Montana did best—buried the world in white and dared us to be anything but still.
Snow drifted past the big windows in lazy sheets, thick and soft as down. The fire crackled in the hearth, steady and warm. Goblin snored under Alphabet’s desk. Voodoo pretended to read. Bones pretended he wasn’t hovering. As for me? I was in the kitchen pretending not to stress-bake a third cobbler.
And Grace…
Grace stood near the fire wearing Bones’ hoodie and a look that said she was two thoughts away from falling down some dark tunnel. She tilted toward the heat like a flower leaning toward the sun. She didn’t even realize she did that—seeking warmth without asking for it. Seeking us without admitting it.
We were all adjusting to being home again. But she was the one relearning how to breathe.
Bones had gone to her first, because, of course he had. He always moved to protect without thinking, and she always softened just a little when he did. I watched them from the kitchen counter as I chopped more apples for the cinnamon apples for Gracie’s morning pancakes. She had a weakness for them. Hence the apple cobbler for tonight’s dinner.
That and Voodoo sourced way too many damn apples, so I had to use them before they went bad.
Bones made her smile, and the tiny flicker of it loosened something tight in my chest.
Good. She needed that. Hell—weneeded that.
Because the truth was, since coming back, everything had shifted. We’d always been a team. A family of sorts. But Grace had become the center gravity of this house. Of us. Not because she asked to be. Not because we wanted her to carry anything—fuck she didn’t have to do a damn thing but keep breathing. No, she was the center because that was where she fit.
Where she belonged.
