I let the song carry me toward sleep while the small, careful sounds of him doing the work keep me anchored. The future is still fragile, but in this moment, I am here, and that is enough.
23
Celeste
Our room is half-lit, the curtains still holding the city at bay. We are a tangle of limbs and blankets, so close that it feels like a small, private repair. Lucian’s chest rises and falls under my cheek. His arm is heavy across my waist, thumb tracing slow, absent circles along my hip. Room service is on its way; he ordered something simple and indulgent and then decided neither of us should get dressed or out of bed until it arrived.
We’ve spent the morning talking in fragments, the way people do when they are trying to catch up without making it an interrogation. The tour prep, his recovery. The nights he stayed up working on homework from his physical and cognitive therapists, and the nights I pretended I wasn’t lonely. It is messy and honest, and at this moment, it’s easy. His voice is low and steady, and it makes the rest of the world recede.
The knock at the door arrives at the same time my stomach growls.
“Stay,” he says around a chuckle. “It should be our room service. I’ll get it. Don’t move.”
I can already taste the coffee. Lucian shifts carefully and reaches for the prosthetic at the foot of the bed. Just as he lifts it, the sound at the door changes. It is not the polite retreat of a hotel attendant; instead, it’s the soft scrape of metal, the quiet curse of someone who thinks a lock is stubborn. The handle turns.
Lucian pauses, dropping his prosthetic and reaching for his gun. The room goes thin with the sudden, sharp possibility that this is not our breakfast at all.
The door opens, and a familiar silhouette slips through. Orion’s carrying our room service tray, a grin already on his face like he’s about to make a joke.
Then his eyes find us.
My stomach drops. I scramble, clumsily reaching for the blanket as I pull it up to my neck, heat flushing my face. Lucian’s gun is still in his hand, the dark metal shining in the light. He’s half-turned, with only a sheet covering his hips, the line of his bare shoulder tense.
Orion’s grin freezes. The tray tilts as the smile drains from his face, as something harder slides in. He sets the tray down with a sound that is too loud in the quiet room.
“Orion,” Lucian says, his voice low, already defensive.
My brother’s gaze cuts between us, jaw tightening as he takes in the obvious: we are in bed together, and Lucian is clearly naked under the covers. Heat floods my face. I want to disappear into the mattress.
“Seriously?” Orion’s tone is sharp enough to cut glass. “Not even a damn pillow wall? You could not—what?—pretend to keep it PG?”
I flush hot, pulling the sheet tighter around me. “It’s not—”
Orion’s brows shoot up as he cuts me off. “Do not say it is not what it looks like, Celeste. Because it is exactly what it looks like.”
Lucian swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, pulling a robe on as he ties it at his waist. His face hardens into that look he gets when he’s lost his patience—quiet, controlled, the kind of calm that means he’s already decided how this ends. “This was the last room in a thirty-mile radius,” he says, voice flat.
He snaps back, sharp and loud enough to cut through the quiet. “So what? You couldn’t act like fuckingadultsand not crawl all over each other in the middle of the night. How long has this been going on?”
My mouth opens and closes. The sensible answers line up in my head and then trip over each other. “It’s really not like that,” I start, but the words tangle and fall apart before I can get them out.
Orion narrows his eyes. “Then what is it?”
The truth is on the tip of my tongue before I can stop it. “We’re figuring out what it is, we’re trying again.”
Orion’s brows pull together. “Trying again?”
Shit.
Orion’s head snaps toward me, his expression folding as the pieces click into place. “Wait—again? As in—” He looks at Lucian, and the accusation in his eyes is sharp. “You two were togetherbefore?”
“Yes,” I say, voice small.
Orion lets out a humorless laugh and rubs a hand over his face. “Unbelievable. So while I was worrying about keeping you safe, you were sneaking around with him—back then and now?”
Lucian’s jaw tightens. “You think I don’t worry about keeping her safe?”
Orion’s anger shifts, not toward Lucian but at the omission. “This isn’t about that,” he snaps, voice rising. “It’s about you two keeping me in the dark. About you thinking I didn’t deserve to know.”
