Chapter 264: Madeline
The night folds in slow, syrupy, perfect. We stay sprawled on the bow long after the food is demolished, talking in that lazy loop that happens when nobody wants to be the first to break the spell, until the sun slips clean off the edge of the world and the sky turns into a bowl of ink scattered with diamonds.
I lie back and tuck myself deeper into a blanket. The fiberglass is still holding the day’s heat under my shoulder blades; the air is cool enough to nip the tip of my nose. “Are you two ever scared, navigating in the dark?” I ask, watching my breath ghost in the beam of a mast light.
Reid tips his head, considers. “Normally we don’t navigate at night.”
Jake nods toward the stern, where faint clinks and quiet voices mean Finn and Liam are tidying lines with church-mouse care. “That's why the boys are sweating it a little. But we’re close to the harbor, water’s calm. It's safe. And—” he looks down at me, mouth softening “—you asked for stargazing. So.”
So here we are.
It ends up just the three of us on the deck, the others drifting off to tidy, to snack again, to talk in low laughing pockets I can hear but not quite make out. I tip my face to the sky and start tracing constellations that probably don’t exist, connecting points that never asked to be connected. A tight little cluster catches my eye—three bold stars shouldered up together—and my heart does a ridiculous warm thing.
“That’s us,” I say, pointing. “Look.”
Jake leans over me until his shoulder brushes my cheek. “There isn’t three,” he says, amused. “There’s five.”
I squint, adjust, squint again. He’s right. Two pinpricks, barely there, tucked against the three bright ones like afterthoughts. “Oh. Okay, fine,” I murmur, smiling. “Then I’ll find another us.”
I go searching the whole sky for a trio that matches the exact shape of the ache in my chest, but the twins have one of those silent across-me conversations, their eyes locked on each other in a very serious manner—the kind that feels like static on my skin—and then, in perfect unison, they kiss my cheeks and get to their feet.
“Stay,” Reid says, all low command that still somehow sounds like please.
“We’ll swing her around,” Jake adds, already moving.
I burrow deeper, watch the mast lights wink as they disappear up to the wheelhouse. The engine coughs awake, settles into a soft purr; the bow swings and the stars slide across my field of vision like someone tipped the whole sky. Last time I lay right here, I was dying—cold and slippery with fear and blood and glass; ribs singing, the world narrowing to a pinhole. Now the night is a velvet thing. My belly is warm and full. Somewhere behind the wheelhouse Charlie laughs, and the sound stitches something in me that’s been open too long.
Then—
Swoosh.
It’s so crisp and close I’m sitting up before my brain catches up, breath leaving me in a little oh that squeezes my ribs in protest. I brace a palm, blink hard into the silvered dark. There. A breath again—a tall, clean spout etched in moonlight—and the slick rise of a back that’s all length and intention. The dorsal fin cuts the surface with that understated sickle and vanishes.
“Hello,” I say, ridiculous and sincere, because it feels rude not to.
The Vigil hums under me, steady and sure. I tip my head back toward the wheelhouse and find them immediately—two dark shapes framed in soft red instrument glow, both of them smiling down like I just pulled the stars closer with my bare hands. I lift my fingers in a little wave I don’t even mean to make. Jake touches the glass like he’d touch my cheek. Reid flicks two fingers off the wheel in his version of a salute.
Another breath. Another brief, shining back. A fin whale, sleek as a secret. The night smells like salt and metal and the faint ghost of fries, and I press the blanket under my chin and think, wildly and perfectly, that I asked for stargazing and of course they drove me straight into a sky that breathes.
By the time we tie off at the dock, my bones have the good kind of ache and my cheeks hurt from smiling. Finn, Liam, and Charlie are already halfway down the gangway, ping-ponging ideas about which beer is “coldest on principle” as if that’s a thing, and when they turn back and wave me along, I hate that I have to shake my head.
“I want to,” I promise, meaning it, “but I’m not used to being out this much yet. I think I’m ready to be in bed—if that’s okay.”
“More than okay,” Charlie says, pulling me into a hug that smells like citrus shampoo and sea salt. Finn squeezes me careful and long, Liam kisses my hair and mutters something about saving him a dance for next time, and then they’re peeling off toward the Seafoam’s neon glow while I climb into the back seat with Jake, Reid sliding behind the wheel.
I thank them for the night—the stars, the food, the way they kept the world quiet and soft just for me—and Reid says, “Let’s get you to sleep,” in that voice that could steady a storm.
“I said I wanted to be in bed,” I correct lightly, “not sleep.”
The car goes very, very quiet. In the rearview, Reid’s eyes go dark like deep water, and beside me Jake’s mouth curves slow and private, his gaze dropping to my lips as if he’s already tasting them.
The drive home blurs—streetlights strobing across the ceiling, my pulse in my throat, the warm slide of Jake’s palm over my knee like he can’t help himself—and then we’re in the driveway and Reid’s opening my door, the night air cool on my cheeks, his hand out and steady. I take it. He doesn’t let go.
Inside, I barely get my boots off before Reid hooks an arm beneath my knees and another at my back and lifts. I make a useless protest—“I can walk”—but he only hums, the sound low and pleased, mouth brushing the hinge of my jaw as he carries me up the stairs.
“Arms,” he murmurs in the bathroom, turning me so my back meets the door, so my breath catches. I lift, he peels my hoodie away, careful of the healing wrist, careful of ribs that still remember glass. Jake is there with the softest laugh, already untying the scarf from my neck, fingers skimming my collarbone like a promise.
“Tell us if anything hurts,” he says, and I nod, because I like the way he phrases it—like the only pain he’ll tolerate is the absence of his hands.
They undress me the way you unwrap something you’ve wanted for a very long time and intend to keep forever—no rush, no mercy for my sanity. Jake’s mouth finds the slope of my shoulder and the hollow at my throat; Reid’s palms bracket my hips like he owns the latitude and longitude of me and has every intention of proving it again. I’m down to lace before either of them lets themselves be looked at, and then I am looking, and there’s that dizzying heat again—Reid all shadow and breadth and clean strength, Jake sun-warm and carved, the both of them beautiful in a way that feels a little unfair. Their naked bodies are rock hard and solid, both of them up and ready for me.
“Bed,” I whisper, because my knees have opinions.
Reid carries me the last few steps and sets me in the middle of their sheets, the room dim and gold around the edges. Jake goes to one knee beside me, kisses the corner of my mouth as if he’s apologizing in advance for how quickly this is going to stop being gentle; Reid’s thumb traces the line of my lower lip like he’s memorizing it all over again.
“Still sure?” Jake asks, voice rough velvet.
“I’ve never been more sure,” I say, and it comes out wrecked and honest.
They move like a team because they are one—Reid sliding behind me first, a big warm line from spine to calf, his mouth finding that soft place below my ear that turns my thoughts to smoke; Jake fitting himself to my front, his nose skimming mine, his hand cupping my jaw to tip me into a kiss that starts slow and immediately loses its patience. I’m pliant between them, breathless, the heat building low and insistent, and when my hips chase friction Jake groans into my mouth and Reid answers with a curse against my skin.
“Turn for me, Trouble,” Reid murmurs, guiding me gently until I’m straddling his hips, facing the open room, my hands braced on his thighs. The position steals my breath—his hands spanning my waist, the flex of him beneath me—and then Jake is there in front of me, standing at the edge of the mattress, thumb stroking the pulse at my throat, eyes gone heavy.
“Easy,” Reid tells me, one palm flattening at my belly, the other guiding my hips. “We go slow.”
The first push is careful and devastating. I exhale a shaky sound that makes both of them swear—Reid’s hands tightening, Jake’s head tipping like he felt it in his own body—and then we settle into a rhythm that’s all deep, sure strokes and long shivering breaths. “Good girl,” Reid says into my shoulder, and the words go through me like current; Jake puts the tip of his velvet-soft cock at my mouth, and I lick a drop of precum before looking at him and opening my mouth in a slow invitation.
I ride Reid slow, controlled, finding the angle that lights me from the base of my spine, and when my thigh trembles he just tightens his hold, bearing a little more of my weight the way he always does, the way he always will. Jake’s cock moves slow, in and out, mapping the inside of my mouth and throat with ache-sweet care, then deeper still, his length hot where my pulse gallops. He cups my face again when I start to unravel, eyes on mine, voice the softest command. “Look at me while you come.”
I do. I can’t not. The room narrows to their hands and their mouths and the rhythm they give me, to Reid’s voice in my ear telling me I’m perfect, to Jake’s thumb sliding at the corner of my lips so he can feel the head of his dick through my cheek, and then it hits—low and hot and total. I break on a gasp, clinging, the world a bright, shaking thing, and Reid follows on a groan that I feel everywhere, a rolling wave that leaves me boneless and shaking and moaning around Jake, which gets him there and he pulls out just on time to orgasm in his hand instead of my mouth. Not that I would mind. At all.
They ease me down into the sheets like I’m something sacred, murmuring praise and nonsense and my name, so many times it stops sounding like a word and starts sounding like home. Jake slips in behind me while Reid goes to wet a washcloth; I’m spooned between them for the second time tonight, flushed and floating, their hands everywhere and nowhere, the room a halo of breath.
“By the way,” I manage, voice a wrecked whisper as Reid returns and they tend me with that careful tenderness that makes my eyes sting, “for the record? This is exactly what I meant by being in bed.”
Reid’s chuckle is a low, satisfied thing against the back of my neck. Jake kisses the top of my head and hums his agreement. And when they finally settle—one arm slung heavy over my waist, the other hand tucked under my cheek—I let my eyes close, thinking that if this is what healing looks like, I’m going to be very, very greedy with it.