We push. The bed slides surprisingly easily across the thick carpet, and within moments the two frames are flush against each other, creating one massive sleeping surface that takes up most of the room’s floor space.
Phoenix climbs onto the combined mattress immediately, testing the firmness, bouncing experimentally. When she laughs, the sound fills the space in the exact way I imagined it would.
“This is amazing.” She sprawls across the center, arms and legs spread like a starfish. “I can’t believe you did all this in just a few weeks.”
Heat crawls up the back of my neck. “It’s uh…it’s been a bit longer than a few weeks.”
Phoenix sits up fully, legs crossed beneath her. The movement is graceful, casual, but her focus on my face is absolute. “Atticus, when did you start working on this?”
Shit.
I really wish she wasn’t quite so observant.
“I might have started the renovation before we even left for the press tour,” I admit.
Her eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “How long before?”
“When did we first meet? That first table read forMidnight Serenade.” The confession scrapes its way up my throat. “I’d say sometime right after that. I think I called my contractor maybe a week later.”
Phoenix goes very still.
“I know how it sounds,” I continue, the words coming faster now. “Presumptuous. Like I was assuming things I had no rightto assume. Please don’t take this the wrong way. And if it’s too weird or if you hate the idea that I was already planning to build you a heat suite within days of us meeting, then we can convert it to literally anything else. A gym. A recording studio. A display room specifically for Gerald Jr. and whatever other stuffed animals you want me to obtain for you?—“
“Atticus.”
“—or we could just go back to calling it storage, honestly, because that’s what I told you it was and technically I haven’t been lying if you think about it from a certain perspective. All of these heat supplies have to bestoredsomewhere?—“
She’s suddenly right in front of me.
I didn’t even see her move off the bed. One second, she was sitting in the center of the giant nest-fort surface, and the next she’s standing on her toes, hands fisted in the front of my shirt, pulling me down to her level.
She kisses me.
Hard enough that it’s impossible to breathe through it.
When she pulls back, we’re both breathing hard.
“I love it,” she says simply. “I love all of it. I love that you built this for us before you even knew if we’d work out. I love that you’ve been planning for our future since the beginning.”
Relief floods through me so intensely it’s almost painful. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She kisses me again, softer this time. “Now help me test these beds properly.”
Phoenix drags me toward the mattress with surprising strength for someone barely five-four.
I follow willingly, my objections dissolving under the force of her enthusiasm. She pulls me down onto the plush surface, and we land in a tangle of limbs and laughter that quickly transitions into something more serious.
“Your next heat is still months away,” I point out.
“So?” Phoenix is already pulling her shirt over her head, tossing it somewhere into the room without looking. “You don’t need to be in heat to build a nest.”
“That’s…true.”
Phoenix works with manic energy, especially for an omega easily weeks away from their next heat.
She strips every pillow from the window seat, raids the cabinet of blankets, and commandeers the duvet in under three minutes. Her hands move with the same instinctive certainty I watched during her heat at Judah’s house: folding, stacking, layering, creating walls and tunnels and cozy pockets with an architectural vision that would impress most engineers.
“Hand me that.” She snaps her fingers at a weighted blanket still folded at the foot of the bed.
