That is different.
“She kissed me last night,” I say. I’m not entirely sure why I tell him. Maybe because he’s the only other person awake, or maybe because it’s the kind of thing I’ve been carrying around all day, turning over in my head whenever I have a spare second.
“It wasn’t a flare. She was clearheaded. She chose it.”
He looks at me across the nest, and something shifts in his expression. “Adrian told me,” he says. “About the paintball course.”
Of course he did. The three of us have been talking every day for weeks. I’m well past the point of minding it. “Then you know we’re both past the point of pretending this is just pack dynamics.”
“I was past that point before her presentation,” he says simply.
I look at him. He says it the same way he says most things, like it’s a fact he settled on some time ago and sees no reason to revisit.
“When did you know?” I ask.
He considers the question with his eyes still fixed on Maya. “Since the production began. I couldn’t look away from her.”
I look at the side of his face and think about how I spent the first month after meeting her trying to figure out why she made me uneasy, why I kept checking where she was in a room without consciously deciding to. Then one day I stopped trying to explain it and just let it be.
“We’re doing this together,” I say. The words come out more blunt than I intended.
“All three of us. I need to know you understand that.”
He finally looks at me. “I already live here,” he says.
His words land because they're true. He's been part of this from the beginning, just without an official label attached to it. Sitting across the nest from him in the dark while Maya sleeps between us, I realize there isn't a single part of me that resents it.
We're not competing.
We never were.
I don't think either of us fully understood that until now.
Elias eventually turns his attention back to Maya. After a while, his eyes close, but even asleep he remains close enough to reach her if she needs something. I stay where I am for a while.
Then I get up.
I move carefully, checking Maya's breathing before shifting my weight off the mattress. She doesn't stir. I pull the blanket an inch higher where it has slipped from her shoulder, then ease my way across the room and into the bathroom.
The light is low. I stop in front of the counter and look over the supplies arranged on the shelf above the mini fridge. Cooling packs. Electrolyte packets. The thermometer. The doctor's phone number taped inside the cabinet door.
I already checked all of it before dinner. I know exactly what's there. I recount the electrolyte packets anyway.
Twelve.
The same number as before.
I pull out the cooling packs and reorganize them so the fully charged ones are in front. Then I reconsider and put them back the way they were because they were already organized correctly, and I've only made it worse by touching them. I smooth the spare blanket folded on the shelf above, the lighter one we'll need if the fever makes the heavier blankets too much.
Maya's scent has been changing for three days. I've been tracking it the way people track weather, waiting for the shift.
Tonight, after the nesting, something changed. The vanilla-citrus has become warmer and more pronounced than it was last week. The blockers barely seem to be doing anything anymore. The doctor told us to expect that.
I read four different sources that all said the same thing about late presentations. The heat tends to come fast and hit harder because the biology has spent too long pushing against a door that finally opened.
I pick up the thermometer, then I set it back down.
My fears are very specific. I'm worried about a fever or dehydration because she'll be too deep in it to remember to drink. I'm worried about the emotional crashes that come in the spaces between waves, and whether she'll panic and push us away because the loss of control feels like more than she can handle. Maya Collins has been managing herself alone for her entire adult life, and now she has to trust three other people with the least manageable thing her body has ever done.
