"Good morning, sleepyhead."
"Look who's alive," Jace says. He's grinning.
"Leave her alone," Reid says, without heat.
"I'm just saying, some of us have been up since five."
"Some of us didn't have the night she had," Reid says, completely deadpan, and Jace chokes on his coffee and I feel the blush climb my throat like a brush fire.
Reid pulls out a chair. "Sit. Eat." He sets a plate down, eggs and toast and bacon, and gives me the look of quiet authority that runs through everything he does. "You skipped dinner last night."
The blush deepens. Jace smirks into his mug. I sit down and focus very hard on the eggs because if I look at either of them right now I will combust.
"Technically," Jace says, "she had a very balanced evening. Cardiovascular activity. Hydration. Fresh air."
Reid gives him a look. Jace grins. I eat my eggs and feel the warmth settle over me, the easy rhythm of their banter, the absence of awkwardness. I expected this morning to be complicated. Loaded with subtext and careful navigation.
Instead, it's just breakfast. Jace teasing. Reid anchoring. Coffee and eggs and the sound of forks against plates. The ease of it surprises me. As though what happened between me andJace, what happened between me and Reid, has rearranged something in the household and the new arrangement is simply how things are now.
I look at the empty chair at the end of the table.
"Where's Owen?"
The air shifts. A fractional change in pressure.
Reid and Jace exchange a look. Quick, fluent, the silent language of men who've been reading each other for years.
"He had some things to take care of," Reid says. "Went out early."
"Business stuff," Jace adds, too casually.
I look at the empty chair. At the place where Owen's plate would be, where his coffee would be, where his quiet, precise presence would be anchoring the end of the table the way it always does.
He left early enough to avoid me. To avoid sitting at a table where the morning-after energy between me and Jace would be impossible to miss, where the shift in Reid's behavior toward me would be equally legible.
The guilt I woke with doubles. Layers now. The secret, and this. The sense that my presence in this house is pulling something apart even as it builds something else.
Reid's fingers find my chin. Gentle. He lifts my face until I'm looking into his steady and certain eyes.
"Eat your breakfast," Not a command. A reassurance shaped like one. "Let us worry about Owen. Okay?"
I nod. He holds my gaze for one more beat, his thumb brushing my jaw, and then he lets go and picks up his fork and the moment closes.
I eat. The food is good and I'm hungrier than I realized and little by little the knot in my stomach loosens. Not because the worry disappears but because the ease between Reid and Jaceis real and solid and infectious, and being inside it feels like standing in a warm current.
Reid tells Jace they need to move the wolves between enclosures today. Something about the drainage in the east pen and new fencing that needs testing. Jace nods, asks about tranquilizers, Reid says no, these two know the routine, they just need patient handling.
"You want to come?" Jace asks me. "It's pretty incredible to watch up close."
I want to. The thought of seeing Reid with the wolves, of watching the specific quality of attention he brings to creatures that trust him, pulls at something in me. But my editor's last email sits in my inbox like a ticking clock, and I'm three illustrations behind where I should be.
"I'm running late on the book," I say. "I need to stay and work. If that's okay."
"More than okay," Reid says. "The office is yours."
They finish eating. I stand and start gathering plates, waving them off when they try to help. "You cooked. I clean. That's the deal."
Reid comes to me at the sink. He doesn't say anything. He just stands behind me, puts one hand on my hip, and presses his lips to the top of my head. Long. Warm. The weight of his hand steady on my hip, his chest close enough to feel the heat of him through my shirt. Not dramatic. Not claiming. Just present, in the way that Reid is always present, fully and without performance.
