He’s smarter than he looks.
“She’s going to be okay,” Vaelor says. “Just needs rest. Food. Warmth.”
“She needs to stop running,” Locke says.
“She needs to know she doesn’t have to,” Beckett says quietly.
We all look at her. Small and pale, wrapped in blankets, finally still.
Home.
That’s what she is for me. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Chapter 25
Trey
I didn’t sleep.
Not really. The chair by the window wasn’t built for it—too narrow, wrong angle, it looks comfortable until you actually try to exist in it for more than ten minutes. But I stayed.
No one told me to go. That’s the thing that keeps getting to me. Kyron carried her in and they all moved around her like a choreographed disaster—blankets, water, someone checking her pulse—and I just stood in the doorway like an idiot. Waiting to be asked to leave. Waiting for one of them to look at me and saywhat are you still doing here?
They didn’t.
Vaelor handed me a plate around midnight. He didn’t say anything. Just put food in my hands and walked away.
So I stayed. Ate food I don’t remember tasting. Watched them take turns sitting with her, checking on her, doing all the things people do when someone they love is unconscious and they can’t fix it.
Love.
I don’t know if that’s the right word for whatever’s happening here. I don’t know what the right word is. But they have it. Whatever it is. They have it and it’s obvious and I’m sitting in a chair that doesn’t belong to me watching something I’m not part of.
Except I couldn’t leave.
Morning comes gray and slow through the window. She hasn’t woken up, but something’s shifted. Color in her face that wasn’t there last night. The way her fingers twitched this morning when Beckett moved her blanket. She’s still out, but not gone. Not like before.
Vaelor finds me in the kitchen around seven. He’s making coffee, moving through the space like muscle memory, and I’m standing by the counter not sure if I should offer to help or get out of the way.
“You should eat before you go,” he says without looking at me.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat anyway.”
He slides a plate across the counter. Eggs, toast, bacon. More than I deserve.
I eat because arguing seems pointless.
“She’s looking better,” I say. Stupid thing to say. Obvious. But I need to say something.
“She is.” Vaelor pours two mugs of coffee, pushes one toward me. “Color’s coming back. Pulse is stronger. She’ll wake up soon.”
“And then?”
He looks at me for the first time. Really looks, like he’s taking my measure.
“And then we figure it out.”
