Finn peels himself off the couch with exaggerated care, sliding his arm out from under me like he’s defusing a bomb.He presses a kiss to the back of my head without thinking.“Coffee,” he murmurs, and pads to the kitchen in socked feet like he’s lived here forever and knows where everything is, which he absolutely does not.
Atlas eases upright, stretches once, and winces.I reach out and touch the seam where his shoulder meets his neck, thumb working circles.He leans into it with a low sound that makes heat bloom in my chest.“I can’t feel my left leg,” he mutters, more amused than annoyed.
“That’s because you tried to fold yourself into furniture,” I say.
He grins, slow and crooked.“Worth it.”
Kael opens his eyes, blinks like he has to return to the world carefully, and pushes his hair back with his free hand.He doesn’t remove the finger from my belt loop until I sit up.Then he lets it fall.
“Bathroom?”he asks, practical.
I nod and slide carefully around Atlas’s knees.He stands as I do, like he’s ready to catch me if I wobble.I don’t.But the readiness lands anyway.
In the mirror, my hair is a disaster, my cheeks are flushed, and there’s a kiss-swollen softness to my mouth that makes me touch my bottom lip with the pad of my thumb and blush harder.For a second, guilt tries to climb up my spine—old training that says anything I want beyond safety is greedy.
I breathe.
Last night was safe.
Last night was wanted.
Last night was mine.
When I return, the room has shifted into morning.Finn is at my counter humming, acting like the coffee maker is a mixer deck and he’s the headlining DJ at a love-fueled brunch.Atlas is crouched by the baseboard heater with a screwdriver he found in my utility drawer, tightening the cover because one of the screws has been loose since I moved in and he noticed in the thirty seconds he walked past it.Kael is standing at the window, two inches off the glass, blinds angled, eyes on the street with the kind of attention that steals guilt’s air and replaces it with gratitude.
My gratitude must be loud.Kael turns, registers my face, and relaxes the exact amount it takes to say everything here is fine.
Finn offers me a mug with two hands like it’s a gift he’s terrified I’ll refuse.“Warning: I guessed your ratio.If it’s wrong, I’ll throw myself out the window and try again.”
I take a sip.It’s perfect.I don’t know how he did that.“You’re insufferable.”
He lights up.“But accurate.”
Atlas slides the screwdriver back into the drawer with a clink.“Your latch was loose,” he says.“Fixed now.”
“Thank you,” I say, and mean more than the latch.
We eat toast and fruit at my tiny table, elbows bumping, knees brushing, the kind of quiet that doesn’t need to be filled.Somewhere below my window a dog barks in short, insistent bursts.Upstairs, Mrs.Rankin plays Sinatra too early and too loud.The city is itself again and for once it doesn’t feel like a threat.It feels like the ground under my feet.
Finn tells a story about a youth-league tournament in Quebec and a bus that broke down on a bridge and a man named Lou in a reflective vest who saved them with a thermos of hot chocolate and a toolbox.Atlas outlines a plan for rearranging my living room so my couch doesn’t block the heat like a criminal.Kael checks his phone once and then face-downs it, a small defiance that reads as respect.
When the food is gone, I gather plates out of habit.Kael plucks them straight back out of my hands and sets them in the sink.“No.”
I blink.“No?”
“You don’t pick up after us in your own home,” he says, gentle but immovable.
I open my mouth to argue.Finn flicks water at me from the sink sprayer like a menace.“Captain’s orders.”
Atlas leans a hip against the counter, watching me with a look that makes arguing feel like refusing a gift I want.
I surrender with a laugh.“Fine.”
After dishes, the room slides into a late-morning laziness that makes my ribs expand all the way.Finn sprawls on the rug and scrolls through the photos from our day—me in a scarf on the harbor, Kael pretending not to smile while Finn whispered something obscene, Atlas with snow in his hair pretending he didn’t care and caring anyway.He picks the cannoli picture and sets it as his background.“My lock screen is hot now,” he announces.“Rate it.”
Atlas pretends to scowl; his eyes are stupidly soft.Kael shakes his head.“Absolutely not.”
I take Finn’s phone anyway and look.The four of us in a rectangle of light: my mouth open midlaugh, Finn’s cheek pressed to my temple, Kael’s shoulder against mine so close it’s almost a lean, Atlas caught in profile like someone turned a statue human and taught it how to try.
