Page 65 of Bound

It should be ugly and sad, but it’s not. It’s beautiful in the aching way messy things are before they are whole but you know they will be spectacular in the end.

Sometimes you have to wade down the muddy road to get to the rainbow at the end.

Our convoy arrives to our destination. We beat the cold, all rushing up the stairs to get a better view.

They’re calling it the watch tower.

A pub-slash-cigar bar with families housed in a building across the street from our battlegrounds. We stand in a line, soldiers preparing for battle, pressed to the windows, where we have a perfect view of the gates outside the new Village and what we can see of the rebuild.

We are watching and we are waiting.

Lucian stands beside me, silent. His hand is still wrapped around mine like he’s still scared I’ll let go now that I know about the baby.

He told me on the plane.

A tiny life that existed in the before world, with the before Lucian and before Isobel, then disappeared just before the couple were woven into Carlos’s web of destruction.

I thought today couldn’t get any weirder, with me, him, and Isobel loading up on the jet like some kind of time-traveling love triangle.

Then he told me about their baby. And I felt protective of them. All three of them.

Which I will not tell Isobel because today does not need to get any stranger.

Lucian watches the gates like they might breathe.

His eyes are trained forward.

Not looking at me.

Then, he says, “What you said in the car.”

“About the spider?” I ask.

His mouth almost moves. “No.”

“Oh.”

His thumb slides over my knuckles. “Thank you.”

Two words. Quiet. Rough.

Enormous from him.

I look at him. “You don’t have to thank me. It was a sad thing.”

He sighs. “I know many people who would be…different about it.”

“You have too little faith in people,” I say.

“Yes.”

I nudge him with my elbow through my coat. “Maybe stop doing that.”

“Working on it.” He gives me a shy peek over his shoulder. “Also, the other thing you said in the car…”

“When I told you that I can handle you loving anyone, but I couldn’t take it if you were still in love with someone?”

“Exactly.”