"Tank and Tyler."
"They kept touching each other during Church. Small things. A hand on an arm. Shoulders pressed together. In a room full of armed men in leather, and nobody blinked." There was recognition in his voice. "And the redhead. Irish, was it?"
"Irish."
"He looked at me like he was running a background check with his eyes."
"He was. Irish reads people the way most people read menus. Thoroughly and with strong opinions about what he finds." I leaned back in my chair. "He knows."
"Knows what?"
"About us. Or suspects. Irish doesn't miss that kind of energy. Never has."
The wordussat in the dark kitchen between us. I'd said it without filtering. Logan didn't correct it.
"Is there an us?" Logan's voice was low. Careful. The patience of a man who'd learned to wait for the right moment to ask the right question.
"You told me you missed me."
"I did."
"I didn't get to answer."
"I noticed." The ghost of a smile in the dark. "Some men shot the windows out before you could."
"I was going to say yeah."
"Just yeah?"
"Yeah covers a lot."
The kitchen was dark and quiet and the compound was sleeping and the distance between us across the table was two feet. Maybe less. His hands resting on the surface, the knuckles pale in the ambient light.
I stood, and moved around the table. Slowly. Deliberate. Logan tracked me with his eyes, his head turning, his body going still—he knew what was coming and he wasn't retreating from it.
I stopped beside his chair. Close enough that my thigh touched the edge of the table. Close enough that if he turned his body toward me, we'd be inches apart.
He turned his body toward me.
The blue eyes in the dark. Looking up. The light from the courtyard window caught the color and held it. The T-shirt pulled across his chest with the rotation, his neck exposed, the pulse visible at the base of his jaw.
I reached out. My hand found the side of his face. The jaw rough with stubble, the skin warm, the bone beneath it solid and real andhere. He wasn't a memory anymore. The living man was sitting in our kitchen, breathing against my palm.
His eyes closed. The exhale that left him was shaky— a sigh of relief. The sound of a man who'd been holding something for a very long time and had just been given permission to set it down.
I leaned in. Close enough that I could feel his breath on my lips. Millimeters from closing the distance.
And I stopped.
Because behind me, twenty feet down the corridor, was the room where I'd slept for years. And beyond that, the rooms where my brothers were sleeping, and if I kissed Logan in this kitchen, I would not stop at the kiss, and what followed would be audible through walls built for durability, not privacy.
I wasn't ashamed. The Phoenixes didn't care who you loved. They'd proven that three times over. But this—Logan, the six years, the first touch since Bragg—this was mine. Ours. And thefirst time wasn't going to happen in a communal kitchen where Irish might wander in looking for a midnight snack.
The first time was going to be right. Private. Ours.
I pressed my forehead against his. Held it there. His hands came up and found my hips, the grip firm and warm through the fabric of my shirt, and the contact traveled through my body like a current finding ground.
"Not here." My voice came out rough. Lower than I intended. "Not yet."
