"Same outcome." He grins. Unrepentant.
Rhys hasn't moved from his chair.
I look at him.
He's watching me with those dark warm eyes, and his expression is the fullest version of itself—no containment, no management, just everything he feels sitting right there on the surface for once. He stands slowly, like he does everything, deliberate and careful, and crosses to me.
He doesn't spin me or pick me up.
He just puts his hands on either side of my face and looks at me. Then he presses his forehead to mine.
His purr starts. Broken and utterly sincere.
I close my eyes.
"Okay," I say softly. "Okay."
He pulls back and nods once. That small certain nod. Then he sits back down, which is peak Rhys—maximum feeling, minimum spectacle.
Finn is still grinning at me from across the room. "We need champagne. Do we have champagne?"
"We have beer," Malcolm says.
"Beer it is. Beer is fine. Beer is celebratory." He's already moving toward the kitchen. "Someone put music on."
"We're not putting music on," Alex says.
"We're absolutely putting music on," Finn calls back.
Music goes on.
We spend the rest of the afternoon around the kitchen table with beers and the leftover banana bread from this morning and nobody trying to have a serious conversation. We just exist in the warmth of something good.
Eventually it turns into dinner.
Nobody plans it exactly. It just happens how things happen with this pack. Someone starts something and everyone else joins without being asked. Malcolm starts chopping vegetables. Finn takes over the pasta because Malcolm's relationship with boiling water is fraught. Rhys, who has discovered that he is useful in the kitchen in the way of someone who can reach things on the highest shelves and carry very heavy pots without strain, positions himself as infrastructure. I take over the sauce because I have opinions about sauce.
Alex pours wine.
It's loud and crowded and nothing is coordinated. Finn and Malcolm argue about whether the pasta needs more salt and the argument escalates to a point that requires Alex to intervene with a calm authoritative verdict that both of them immediately dispute. Rhys reaches over all of us to get the pepper without moving anyone out of the way, which requires the rest of us to briefly become very small. I burn the first round of garlic and Finn doesn't say anything but his expression says everything.
It's the best dinner I've cooked in years.
We eat at the table, all five of us, elbows bumping, conversation running over itself, nobody waiting for a gap before speaking. At some point I realize I haven't thought about the registry in hours. I haven't thought about Ragon. I haven't run the low-level anxiety inventory that has become so habitual I stopped noticing I was doing it.
I'm just here.
"Where are we going to live?" Finn asks. He has his wine glass in one hand and his fork in the other and he's asking it like it's the most natural dinnertime question in the world.
"Not here permanently," Malcolm says. "The cabin is Chase's."
"We need something bigger anyway," Alex says. He glances at Rhys. "Significantly bigger."
Rhys doesn't look up from his plate. "I'm not that large."
Everyone at the table looks at him.
"I'm not," he says.
