“For what?”
“For saying the parts I don’t know how to say without breaking something.”
“Break the right thing,” I say.“We’ll point when it’s time.”
Finn’s voice drifts up from the couch.“If you two are done flirting, some of us are trying to stare the ceiling into behaving.”
Atlas flips him off without turning his head.I shake mine and step back into the bedroom.
Wren hasn’t moved much.One hand has crept toward the empty space where my palm was.I slide my fingers there again, not to wake her, just to let her body know that the promise from before wasn’t a temporary one.
Her breath evens out another fraction.
In the doorway, the hall light pools like a small moat—Atlas’s shadow on one side, Finn’s soft rustle on the other.The world doesn’t feel fixed.But it feels held.
Adrian Frost exists in the dark between rooms we haven’t locked down yet.He knows her number.He knows fear.He knows persistence.
He doesn’t know us.
Not like this.
I look at her sleeping face and don’t try to untangle what I feel.There’s time for that when the ground is steadier.For now, the equation is simple:
She asked.
We answered.
And we will keep answering until her body believes the question is gone.
I keep my hand where it is, count five of her breaths, and let the plan hum in my head like the rink lights do at two a.m.
First shift: Atlas, hall.
Second: me, chair.
Third: Finn, couch.
Morning: coffee, quiet, options.
If he calls—her choice.
If he texts—her choice.
If he shows—ours.
Ten feet.
Zero if he crosses it.
I sit.I don’t watch the door.I watch Wren’s shoulders rise and fall.The scotch warms my chest.The night holds.
And for the first time since she said his name out loud, I believe we can make it through to morning without giving Adrian Frost anything else that belongs to her.
