Chapter 153 Living Close

Chapter 153 Living Close
Anya's POV

Nobody warns you that fear, given enough days to sit still, starts to feel almost like normal life.

It's been six days since the text about the windows, six days of extra patrols and cameras blinking steady red in every corner of the guesthouse, and somewhere in the middle of all that vigilance, something unexpected has started growing in the cracks, something soft, something that has nothing to do with Voss or threats or notes left on my desk.

This morning it's Levi standing in my tiny guesthouse kitchen at seven a.m., hair a disaster, wearing a T-shirt two sizes too big for the frying pan he's aggressively mishandling.

"You're burning it," I say from the doorway, arms crossed, fighting a smile.

"I'm searing it." He doesn't turn around, too focused on flipping what is unmistakably a very sad, very charred egg. "There's a difference."

"There really isn't."

"There is if you don't look too closely." He finally glances back at me, and something in his face softens instantly, the performance dropping away. "I wanted to make you breakfast. I didn't account for eggs being, apparently, a skill."

I cross the kitchen and take the spatula from his hand before he can commit any further crimes against breakfast. "Move. Watch and learn, hockey star."

He leans against the counter instead, close enough that I feel the warmth of him at my shoulder while I crack a new egg into the pan, and for a moment neither of us says anything. It's just the quiet hiss of butter, the early light through the window, his hand finding the small of my back like it belongs there.

"This is nice," he says finally, voice quieter than usual. "Just this. No cameras, no messages, no" He stops himself before finishing the sentence, like even naming it might summon it back into the room.

"Just eggs," I agree softly.

"Just eggs," he repeats, and I feel him smile against my hair when he leans down to kiss the top of my head.

We fall into a rhythm over the next few days that feels almost dangerous in how good it is, dangerous because some small, guarded part of me keeps waiting for it to be taken away, the way everything good in the last month has been taken away almost as fast as it arrived.

Levi does homework at my kitchen table most evenings instead of his own house, claiming the light's better, though I suspect the real reason has more to do with proximity than lighting. I've started leaving my chemistry notes scattered across the counter because he actually understands stoichiometry better than I do, a fact I will never admit to him directly.

"You're humming," he says one evening, looking up from his textbook while I stir a pot of pasta sauce that's definitely not as good as my mom's but is, for the first time in weeks, made with hands that aren't shaking.

"I don't hum."

"You've been humming for ten minutes. Same three notes over and over." He grins, setting his pencil down. "It's actually kind of terrible."

"Excuse you, I have a beautiful voice."

"You really don't." He crosses the kitchen before I can retaliate, hands settling on my waist from behind, chin resting on my shoulder as he peers into the pot like he has any authority to critique my cooking after the egg incident. "But I like it anyway. The terrible humming. I like all of this."

I turn in his arms, sauce spoon still in hand, and look up at him, really look, the way I haven't let myself in weeks, too busy bracing for the next threat to notice how tired his eyes have looked, how much weight he's been quietly carrying alongside mine.

"Thank you," I say, "for making me move here. I know I fought you on it."

"You had every right to fight me on it."

"I did. But I don't regret it anymore. Not the moving in part, anyway." I set the spoon down, wrap my arms around his neck, feeling steadier in his arms than I have in what feels like years instead of weeks. "This" I gesture vaguely at the kitchen, the burnt-egg memory, the chemistry notes scattered everywhere, the ordinary domestic mess of two people learning how to exist in the same small space "this is the first time since the gala that I've felt like a person instead of a headline."

"You've always been a person to me," he murmurs, forehead resting against mine. "Never anything else."

"I know." My voice catches. "I think I needed to remember that myself."

He kisses me then, slow and unhurried, nothing like the desperate, fear-charged kisses we've traded since Voss first showed his face, this one tastes like garlic and pasta sauce and quiet relief, like two people finally exhaling after weeks of holding their breath. When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine, both of us smiling in a way that feels almost foreign after everything.

"I could get used to this," he says softly.

"Me too."

The pasta water starts boiling over behind us, and we both laugh, breaking apart to save dinner from disaster, and for one full, uninterrupted evening, it feels like maybe, maybe, we've earned a little bit of peace.

It's nearly ten when Levi finally heads back to the main house, kissing me goodnight on the guesthouse porch, promising to be back before I'm even out of bed tomorrow. I watch him disappear down the path toward the lit windows of the estate, my chest warm in a way it hasn't been in weeks, and I let myself linger there a moment longer than necessary, breathing in the cool night air like it's something I'm allowed to enjoy now.

I'm turning to head back inside when I notice it, small, easy to miss if I weren't looking exactly where I am.

A single dark rose, laid neatly across the welcome mat, its stem tied with a thin black ribbon.

There's no note this time. There doesn't need to be.

My hand is already shaking as I reach for my phone to call Levi back, my voice barely holding steady enough to get the words out.

"He was here," I whisper. "He was right here, on the porch, and none of the cameras caught him."