“Sleep?” I ask Talia.
She shrugs without meeting my eyes. Her shoulders twitch. “Enough.”
Lies. I can see it in the way her fingers dig into her own arms, in the twitch of her jaw, in the faint tremble of her foot where it taps restlessly against the blanket. She’s not present. Not really. There’s a distance there I haven’t seen from her before—not just anxiety, not just fear. Something more… detached.
The mole is a girl.
I hate that the thought surfaces when I look at her. I hate myself for letting it.
Jackie catches my glance. Her eyes narrow, tracking the silent math I’m doing.
“Talia’s fine,” she says, more for me than for Talia. “It’s that boy she’s all tangled up over.”
Talia’s head snaps up. “Oh my god, would you stop?”
Jackie’s mouth curls. “You think he’s subtle? You think you’re subtle? You sigh when he texts you. You glare at your phone when he doesn’t. You slip off to the bathroom like I’m not going to notice you staying gone longer than any human needs to pee.”
“You time my bathroom breaks?” Talia demands.
Jackie shrugs. “I count. Keeps me sharp.”
I snort despite myself.
Talia’s cheeks flush, the faintest pink rising under her skin. She ducks her head, curls falling further around her face. “It’s not… like that.”
“Sure,” Jackie drawls. “You only talk about him in your sleep.”
“I do not,” Talia says too fast.
Jackie’s grin widens. “You literally said his name three times last night. Like Beetlejuice.”
Talia tosses a pillow at her half-heartedly. Jackie catches it with her free hand and tucks it behind her lower back, unbothered.
We’re almost relaxed. Almost.
Then the door opens without a knock.
Asher steps inside and the temperature of the room shifts in an instant.
He doesn’t storm in; that’s never been his style. He simply appears, a controlled presence in a black T-shirt and worn jeans, shoulders filling the doorway, gaze moving immediately to Talia. His eyes sweep over her—position, posture, phone beside her thigh—then lift to Jackie and the baby, then to me.
They linger on me half a second longer than they should, something unreadable passing through them before he shutters it away.
“No boys,” he says, voice even.
Talia groans, tipping her head back against the wall. “You don’t even know what we’re talking about.”
“I know enough,” he says. “No boys.”
Jackie rolls her eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t fall out. “Can you not?”
“She has enough to deal with without some teenage idiot dragging her into his drama,” Asher says, gaze still on Talia. “No boys.”
Talia’s jaw tightens, eyes flashing. “You didn’t say that when Xavier brought half the city home to our doorstep.”
Asher’s expression flickers—wounded, then blank. He opens his mouth, shuts it again. For a fraction of a second, I see something raw in him, something that looks like regret and the ghosts of fights he already lost.
“Out,” Jackie says abruptly.
