What if belonging didn't mean belonging to one? What ifclaimeddidn't meanownedbut chosen, freely and completely? What if I could be held in place not by control but by want? Reid's steadiness. Jace's fire. Owen's still, deep attention.
All of it. All of them.
What if I could let them want me? What if I could want them back?
I put down my fork.
Reid looks up. His eyes find mine, and what I see in them isn't hunger or expectation. It's tenderness. Quiet and certain. The kind that doesn't need a response because it isn't a question.
I turn my head. Jace is watching me too. He winks. Not the teasing version he aimed at Reid earlier. Something softer. Something that saysstop thinking so much.
And against every rational warning my body has learned to obey, I let myself believe.
I remember who I used to be. The Maya who sang in the car with the windows down. Who made friendship bracelets for her kindergartners and cried at their graduation. Who laughed freely and constantly.
She's been here lately. Surfacing without permission, bypassing every defense I've built. Laughing at Jace's terrible jokes before I can stop myself. Bickering with him about dish-drying technique. Standing in Owen's office doorway too excited about a fox illustration to remember I'm supposed to be careful.
She keeps coming back, that old Maya.
I like her. God, Imissher.
I look down at my plate. Empty. I don't remember finishing.
"I'll clear up," I say, standing, stacking plates. Motion. The familiar refuge.
Reid pushes back his chair. He stands and the kitchen reshapes itself around him, not crowded, just full. He carries his glass to the sink, sets it down, pauses beside me.
His lips press against my forehead.
The scratch of his beard against my skin. Brief, particular. Rough and soft at the same time. His mouth stays one second longer than casual. Not dramatic. Not for show. A man pressing his lips to a woman's forehead in a kitchen because he wants to, and wanting to is enough.
"See you tonight," he says, only for me.
His eyes hold mine. I feel my pulse in my wrists, in my temples, in the place on my forehead where his beard was, steady and insistent, the warmth spreading outward like pigment dropped into water.
Then he's gone.
I stand at the sink with a plate in one hand and the other pressed flat against the counter because the warmth on my forehead is still there and my body has decided to remember everything at once, the ridge, his hands, his voice sayingsweetheartagainst my hair, and I need a task immediately.
I turn on the faucet. Run the water too hot. Don't adjust it.
Footsteps behind me. The clink of dishes on the counter beside the sink.
Jace.
"I'd stay and help," he says, "but I've got to run into town."
He leans in. His breath grazes the curve of my ear, unhurried, and every nerve ending along my neck fires in sequence.
"We have an unfinished conversation, Maya." His voice casual. "And I intend to finish it. Very soon."
My hands go still in the water.
I don't turn around.
His laugh, quiet, knowing, slightly insufferable, follows him out of the kitchen.
Owen is still in the kitchen.
