She gives me the slow, impatient blink of a woman who has decided I’m wrong before I even move. “Try the lift again.”
I lift again. Perfectly. The perfect form that should be filmed and archived for future amputees to study.
I know my body. I know this leg. I feel like I know every millimeter of what it can and can’t do. I’ve rebuilt myself from the ground up—literally. I’m not compensating in this movement.
I go through another round of movements with the slow and controlled form she’s demanding. She still finds something to nitpick. She’d correct the way I blink if she thought it would improve my gait. I’m convinced she has a secret bingo card labeledWays to Annoy Lucian,and she’s one square away from a blackout.
My phone alarm goes off, a blessed, holy sound. I silence it as Celeste steps out onto the back porch with me, like she’s beenpulled by the sound. She walks over to me and pauses when she sees Kelsey on the screen.
“Hi,” she says, her voice bright. “I’m Celeste.” She leans a little closer to the laptop, as if proximity will make introductions less formal.
Kelsey grins and lifts a hand. “Kelsey. Nice to meet you.”
“It’s so nice to meet you, too. I’ve heard a lot of things about you; it’s great to finally put a face to the name. By the way, I love that outfit; it looks really good on you. I used to have one like it.” There’s a small, almost wistful note in the way she says it.
“No way. Small-world wardrobe twins.” Kelsey laughs, then nods toward me.
I glance at my phone: one minute past the session. If I let this run, we’ll be on for another hour. “Thanks, Kelsey. I’ll see you next session,” I say, and end the call before she can answer.
The screen blissfully goes black as I turn my attention to Celeste. She looks a little guilty, like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t, but the sight of her hits me so fast and so deep that whatever she’s hiding doesn’t even register. She’s holding a bottle of water, cheeks flushed, hair a little messy like she rushed out here the second she heard my alarm.
Celeste looks like she stepped straight out of a daydream I didn’t realize I was having.
“You okay?” I ask?
Her mouth curves in a slow, wicked smile that goes straight to the center of my chest, and she hands me the water. “Yeah, I’m just enjoying the view.”
It takes me a beat to realize she means me.
My brain short-circuits in the most undignified way. I take the bottle mostly, so I have something to hold that isn’t her. The air between us shifts, familiar in a way that makes my chest loosen and my pulse settle into something deliberate.
I clear my throat. “The view, huh.”
“Yeah. I can’t help it. I’ve missed this view,” she says, and the words are half confession, half dare.
And just like that, whatever irritation Kelsey left me with evaporates. Burned off like fog under sunlight.
I tell myself a shower will be quick, then I can come back and give her my full attention, the slow, deliberate kind she deserves. I push the door to head inside and stop dead because the living room has been commandeered.
What.
The.
Fuck.
He’s in the middle of the floor in full regalia, cape and crown and all, strutting like he’s been born to it, and Celeste is standing behind me with her hands half-raised and her face the exact color of someone who’s been caught doing something ridiculous and is trying very hard not to laugh out loud. She makes a sound that’s equal parts guilty and delighted, and then, because she can’t hold it in any longer, she blurts it out: “Orion dropped him off earlier wearing this.”
I blink. “What?”
She nods, biting the inside of her cheek until she looks like she might split, and then she adds, as if the detail will make it worse and better at the same time, “Sir Sassafras won’t let me take it off. I tried. Twice. He hissed at me like I was committing treason.”
A laugh escapes her as she leans against the doorframe. Her eyes shine with unshed tears at her brother’s mischief. “Orion said something about payback,” she says, wiping at her eyes, her tone part explanation, part apology. Her laugh starts in her chest and then fights its way up, and makes the room tilt toward something lighter. She wipes at her eyes, trying to tamp it down, and when she looks at Sir Sassafras again, she manages, between breaths, “He really is Sir Sassafras the Sassy Ass Cat, isn’t he?”
I can’t help the smile that pulls at my mouth. “That’s not inaccurate.”
“Do you think his old owner dressed him up and that’s how he got his name?”
The image is ridiculous enough that I let out a laugh of my own. Then I confess, because why not add fuel to the fire: “When I adopted him, we went to the pet store and he tried to get me to buy a silver leather jacket with studs.”
