Drake looks at him. "Where's home?"
Eli squeezes once. "We'll find out. Together."
They walk out the door.
I stand in the middle of the living room and watch them go.
Chase and Arden come back from the kitchen gathering jackets. Arden goes upstairs briefly—I hear voices, low, Finn's and then something rougher—and comes back down. Jasper is still outside, waiting to leave with his pack. Arden holds the door for Chase and then looks back at me.
"Well done," he says. "All of it."
Then they're gone.
The door closes, and the house is quiet. I watch through the window as all three climb in the car and leave.
Malcolm comes out of the kitchen. Finn comes downstairs. Alex is already back in the room. His eyes find mine and hold them.
I feel it all at once—a storm of contradictions crashing through me. The feeling of putting it all down.
I'm sad and I'm emptied out. I'm also lighter than I've been in a long time.
Finn crosses to me and puts his arms around me from the side, his chin on my shoulder, quiet.
"You okay?" he asks.
"No," I say honestly. "Also yes."
He nods. Stays where he is.
Malcolm's hand finds my back, steady and warm.
"Rhys?" I ask.
"Upstairs," Alex says.
I go up.
My door is partly open. I push it and find him sitting on the edge of my bed, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped, staring at nothing. He looks up when I come in.
I don't say anything. I just go to him and step into him like I always do, my arms going as far around him as far as they can reach. His arms close around me immediately, squeezing.
His purr starts, tenor deep and everything I needed to hear.
We stay like that for a while.
Then I pull back and look up at him. "Can we—" I gesture at the bed. The blankets I've been slowly colonizing all week, the extra pillow that migrated from somewhere, the shape of a nest in progress.
He doesn't answer in words. He just shifts back onto the bed and makes room.
Alex comes up a while later.
He stands in the doorway taking in the situation—me half-nested in the middle of the bed, Rhys beside me taking up a considerable portion of the available mattress.
"There's not room," he says.
"There's room," I say.
There isnotroom. But he comes in anyway and the three of us manage it like you do when you want it bad enough. I end up tucked between them with Rhys's warmth on one side and Alex's careful steadiness on the other.
