Page 68 of Veil of Night & Flames

“What? I like having it in the closet. It’s a convenient way to see him. And I like how my clothes are starting to smell beachy.”

She just smirks again.

I sigh. “It still feels weird, you know. Wanting them both. And I have to say, Adric’s been good about staying out of the Real.”

“I think it’s a hoot,” Tia says. “Adric in the Nightmare Realm, Chase here in the Real. You’re like a kickass heroine in a really hot romance novel.”

“And that crazy perspective on my life is just one of the many reasons I keep you around.”

“Many, many reasons,” she says, then hugs me hard.

I hug her back, but my mind is wandering, lost in the thought that I’m somehow cheating. Not on Chase or Adric, but on the world.

Like the Adric-and-Chase-agreeing-to-share-me part of the program is a prize the world doesn’t hand out during pending apocalypses, and any second now some hard-faced judge is going to take it all away.

Maybe so, I tell myself.

But he hasn’t taken them yet.

There’s a particular kind of crazy in knocking on your boyfriend’s door to kiss him goodbye before you go spend the night with the other man you’re falling for. And engaged to. And who happens to live in another realm. And through whom your boyfriend will totally feel any and all sex that might—okay, will—undoubtedly be going on.

I knock anyway.

Chase opens the door in a soft gray tee and bare feet, and my stomach drops the way it always does—a stupid, happy swoop that has nothing to do with realms and everything to do with the fact that I’m completely gone over him.

“Hi,” I say.

He steps back to let me in, the door clicks shut, and I’m in the space I’ve started to think of as the one place in any realm that truly feels like home.

I don’t make it past the doormat. He pulls me against him before I’ve taken two steps, and I’m grateful, because I’ve been wanting his hands on me since I left the dorm. His arms come around me, and his chin settles on the top of my head. For a moment, I just stand there with my cheek against the soft cotton of his tee as I listen to the steady thump of his heart.

“Missed you,” he says into my hair.

“Same.”

He kisses the top of my head, and when I tilt my face up, I’m rewarded with his lips on mine. Soft at first, then surging into something wild and demanding as his hand slides to the back of my neck, and for a long moment, there’s nothing in the world but the warm press of his mouth and the smell of his laundry detergent and the wonderful reality of being in this man’s arms.

When I pull back, I’m a little breathless.

“Hi,” I say again, because apparently I’ve lost the power to create sentences.

“Hi,” he says back, amusement sparkling in those lovely golden eyes.

He guides me to the bed, now folded up into just a sofa, and we both sit, with me snuggled up tight against him. I know he wants to ask about Adric, but I jump in first. “Dare I ask what’s new with the Widow Maker?”

He’s silent for a beat, and I can practically see the wheels turning as he debates leading with the work or the invisible man between us.

“The dead zone’s still growing,” he says, and I relax a bit, having dodged the Adric-shaped elephant in the room for a little bit longer.

“The diameter?” I ask. “How big is it now?”

“For starters, it’s not a circle as of the last report from Griff. Now it’s elongating toward the walkway, and it’s growing at a steady clip.”

“Like it’s got someplace to be,” I joke, then freeze a bit when Chase actually nods.

“We can’t rule that out.”

“That’s not creepy at all.”