Sylus watches him go, his eyebrows raised. “What a grump.” He leans in to kiss my cheek, his lips lingering a second longer than necessary. “I’ll go check on him.” Then, with a wink, he saunters off after Ezra, leaving me alone with Ace, who stands by the counter, his ice-blue eyes still locked on me.
His quiet intensity is so different from Sylus’s playful chaos, yet it pulls me in just the same. “You look beautiful,” he compliments, and the sincerity in it makes my heart stutter.
“Thank you.” I glance down, smoothing the fabric of my dress. “How are you? I haven’t seen you since…”
“… our chat,” he finishes for me, offering a faint, almost self-conscious smile. “I’m managing.”
I take a step closer, searching his expression. “Managing?”
“I’m trying,” he admits. “Trying to… work things out. To be better for you.”
“You don’t have to be anything for me except yourself.”
“I do,” he disagrees. “And I will be.”
“I missed you,” I confess, the words slipping out before I can second-guess them.
“I missed you too.”
Koen appears at the kitchen’s entry. “Are you two joining us in the living room?” he asks, now dressed in black sweatpants and a shirt. Levi, who walks past us after Koen, is still his glittery self, but his face is bare of makeup.
“Sure,” I say quickly, putting down the glass of water. But as I move to walk past Ace, he reaches out, letting his hand brush against me and his pinky hook around mine.
It’s the same way Rosalee used to hold my pinky—her silent promise that she was there, always—through scraped knees, whispered secrets under the covers, and even that last night.God, if I’d known it was the last one, I would’ve held her pinky tighter. I would’ve told her how much she meant to me.
I blink hard, trying to push the ache back down, but Ace’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “That okay?”
His eyes are searching mine, and something in them twists my heart like he’s asking permission not only to touch my hand but to anchor himself to me—to make it through all of this together.
I swallow, nodding even though the lump in my throat threatens to choke me. “More than okay.”
His lips twitch with the barest hint of a smile, and it’s almost enough to break me right there because it’s the kind of smile that’s a lifeline when you’ve been drowning for so long you’ve forgotten what air feels like.
As we walk toward the living room, our pinkies still linked, the world narrows to this one fragile connection. It’s such a small thing, but somehow, it’s everything. It’s as if that tiny point of contact is healing parts of me I thought were beyond saving.
I don’t know if he feels it, too, the way his touch feels like hope. Or maybe it’s just me, desperate to believe that something as small as hooked pinkies can undo eight years of silence and grief.
But I hold on anyway.
As we step into the room, Ace lets go of my pinky, his hand brushing mine one last time before falling to his side. The absence is immediate like a piece of armor I didn’t know I needed has been stripped away. But my attention is drawn to the other side of the room, where Ezra and Sylus are huddled together.
Sylus’s hands are moving wildly, punctuating whatever he’s saying, while Ezra’s expression grows darker with each passing second.
“What’s that about?” I murmur, glancing up at Koen, whose sharp eyes are already locked on the pair.
“I have no idea.”
Before either of us can step closer to ask what’s going on, the faint groan of the gates opening fills the room. Ezra’s and Sylus’s whispering halts, their heads snapping toward the windows.
I follow their gaze, catching the brief flash of headlights slicing through the dark. They linger for a moment, washing over the walls, then vanish as the car disappears into the garage.
Ezra straightens, his hand instinctively moving toward his waistband. “He knows the code?”
Koen shrugs. “It’s not like we’ve changed it in the last few years.”
“Fucking irresponsible,” Ezra mutters under his breath.
“Yep,” Levi clips.
