I stand in the middle and look.
Not one room. A living space — small, functional, a kitchenette along one wall with a coffee maker already set up, a table with two chairs, a couch that looks comfortable. A lamp throwing warm light in the corner. Two doors, both open. Through one I can see his room — a bed, a bag on the floor, nothing personal, just the bare functional setup of a man who travels with exactly what he needs. Through the other, must be mine.
He put us in the same cottage.
I don't know why that hits me. He's my security detail — of course he's on site, of course he's close. But standing here in the common space that smells like him, his room visible through one door and mine through the other, the coffee maker already set up like someone thought about mornings — it helps.
I go through to my room.
Real bed — not a cot, not institutional issue, a bed someone chose for its weight and its warmth. Sheets that don't scratch. A purple blanket folded at the foot. Empty bookshelves along one wall. A lamp in the corner. How long has it been since I had a lamp in my room.
The bed faces the window.
The window faces the trees, not the quad.
He thought about that. He stood in this room before I was in it and he thought about what I would see when I woke up and he pointed the bed at the trees.
I cross to the window and stand there with my hand on the frame.
The shelves are empty. I don't have enough things to fill them — everything I own still fits in the bag I set down by the door. The bookshelves are optimistic. They’re making a claim about a life I don’t have the contents for yet. I look at them, feel it land somewhere in my chest without naming it, and turn back to the trees, breathing until it passes.
I'm not going to cry in front of the window on the first morning. I'm not.
"Hot water works," Dalton says, from behind me.
"How many times did you check."
A pause that's slightly longer than it needs to be. "Three."
I turn.
He's still in the jacket. Hands loose at his sides. He doesn't move when I turn, just watches me — jaw set, eyes on my face, nothing else.
He was here before I woke up. Sent ahead to coordinate security, which means he was in this cottage while I was in that van. While I was standing in my room listening to Gavin's knock. While RJ was in his room not knowing yet.
I cross the room and put my face in his neck.
His arms come around me and his hand finds my spine and the bond runs warm between us and I breathe him in. He doesn't say anything. Neither do I.
Leo is awake and moving — pacing, burning off what he can't fix by putting it in his body. Gray is still, the bond low and even. Jake tight as a fist. Jim reaching, the quality of someone who found something enormous not long ago and just found the distance got longer.
And RJ.
The wanting sits at my wrist like a bruise. Heavy. Not a bond — not yet. Just something that should have been, interruptedbefore it could become what it was always going to be. And under it his howl, still. The ragged sound of a man using the words his body makes because he doesn't have enough of the other kind.
I know RJ, I miss you too.
"They moved me because I'm too much for the facility," I say. Into Dalton's neck. "That's what they decided."
"Yes."
"RJ loses control and Sven gets hurt and somehow I'm the cascade risk."
His hand keeps moving on my spine. "Yes."
"His anger was building."
"I know."
