Celeste hugs the bag tighter to her chest like a shield. “It’s fine. Really.”
The SUV crunches down the driveway, gravel popping under the tires, then disappears around a bend in the street. The silence that follows feels too big, as if the world exhaled and left us standing in the lingering tension.
I finally turn toward her. My eyes sweep over her automatically, cataloging every detail, from her breathing, her grip on the bag, to the way her shoulders are still too tight. My hand finds her arm, warm and grounding, because I need the contact as much as she does. “You good?”
She nods, but her pulse is still fluttering under her skin like a trapped bird. “Yeah. Just…didn’t expect company.”
The next question comes out sharper than I meant for it to. “Why were you out here at night without telling me?”
She looks small under the porch light, cheeks flushed, eyes avoiding mine for a beat. “I—” She fumbles, then reaches behind her and sheepishly lifts a canvas tote. She opens it, and I see a stack of paperbacks. “I left some books in my car. I went to grab them. I didn’t think—I didn’t want to bother you while you were in the shower.”
The explanation is ridiculous and ordinary and should be harmless. It should be nothing. But the fresh memory of her scream is still a live wire in my ribs, and ordinary things feel dangerous tonight.
Her fingers twist the tote strap like she’s trying to make the apology physical. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”
My voice softens before I can stop it. “Please, just tell me next time.” I pull her a little closer, my palm settling at the smallof her back because contact is a language we both understand. “Okay?”
She nods, eyes wet at the edges but steady. “Okay.”
I guide her back toward the house, not letting go until the door closes behind us and we’re alone again.
* * *
Sunlight threads through the blinds in lazy ribbons. Celeste is a warm, steady weight against my chest; one hand is tucked under my collarbone, the other tracing idle circles on my ribs, as if she’s mapping me. The world is small and soft in this perfect moment. This type of day makes everything else feel negotiable.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table. Celeste reaches for it, thumb swiping the lock, and a ridiculous photo fills the screen—me and Orion in one of those staged, over-earnest JCPenney poses, arms wrapped around each other like a bad prom picture.
She quirks an eyebrow and hands me the phone. “Uh, do you have something to tell me?”
I let the image hang between us, ridiculous and impossible to explain in a sentence. “I’ll tell you about that picture when we have more time,” I say, because the picture has a long backstory.
“Hey, Lucy,” Orion’s voice is smug through the speaker. “How’s Sir Sassafrass doing? Does he miss me yet?”
“No. He’s more concerned about his cape; he’s refusing to take it off,” I tell him. “It keeps getting stuck on things. You need to get him something more practical.”
Orion lets out a delighted cackle, like he’s proud of the chaos he engineered. “Oh man, he’s committed. As Sir Sass’s fairy godfather, I accept responsibility. I’ll get him a wardrobeincluding little tunics, maybe a jaunty beret. He deserves options.”
“Since when are you his fairy godfather?” I ask, the image in my head is absurd, and I feel like brain bleach should be an option.
“I appointed myself. It’s a role, and you need to know I take itveryseriously. Also, I did not expect him to actuallylikethe clothes,” he pauses and clears his throat. “So anyway… Morgan told me I need to talk to you about why my feelings were hurt.” It sounds like he’s covering the speaker on his phone as he asks his girlfriend if he worded that right. “Look, I’m not mad that you and Celeste are together. I tried to push you two together, Lucy. I thought you’d be good together. I wanted that. I wanted… I wanted to see you laugh and experience happiness again. To have something that wasn’t just… pain.
“When we were in Shadow Grove last time, I noticed how you two were around each other. I wanted you to have that kind of happiness again. I wanted to force you two to work together because I wanted you around people who didn’t pity you. I thought if I could get you laughing, if I could get Celeste back in your orbit—maybe you’d find the part of you that used to be okay. When Celeste told me Jamie’s wife was pregnant, I thought this could be the chance. Celeste will need a bodyguard, and maybe it’ll be the nudge you need. I wanted to fix what the accident took, and this seemed like the best way to do it. But you kept your relationship with my sister from me. I would’ve been happy for you. I wanted to be the asshole who teased you about dating my little sister.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and the words are small but honest. “We kept it quiet at first because we didn’t want to make things weird between the three of us if things didn’t work out. I know you don’t want to hear this, but at first it wasn’t serious between us. We had just decided to start seeing each other when the accidenthappened, but after that, everything changed. When we were forced back together, our old feelings came back. This time, we decided it wasn’t casual, and we decided to move forward for real. We didn’t mean to shut you out. That’s a shitty reason to keep you out, and I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, we had only made that decision the night before, and I wasn’t about to text you about it.”
“Thank you, I needed to hear that. I needed to know you weren’t hiding it because you didn’t trust me. I get why you were careful. Apology accepted, maybe,” Orion says, the old smugness threading back through his voice.
Celeste reaches for the coffee table to pick up the new Kindle I got for her, then sets it on my chest, and starts reading. The ordinary domesticity of it makes the moment feel less fragile and more real.
Orion’s voice pulls me from watching his sister read on my chest. “There’s another reason I called, it wasn’t just to gloat about Sir Sass’s new outfit. We traced a handful of IPs related to the ads, all of which come out of Ashburn, Virginia.”
My brow furrows. “Ashburn?”
“Yeah.” He sounds careful, like he’s still trying to decipher the data in front of him. “The person didn’t stay in one place; there are multiple different internet cafés, sometimes a library, where this person placed the ads through. They are always in some variation of hats and hoods, and they always pay in cash. The footage is trash, so there’s nothing clean we can run.”
I grit my teeth. “So they’re careful. Great.”
“They’re also obsessive,” Orion says. “Which is what I’m worried about. You don’t go to that much trouble unless you’re fixated on someone.”
