Chapter 192: Madeline
We spill out of the diner like we’ve been poured—too full, too warm, laughing because breathing feels like work. The door sighs shut behind us and the neon cursive hums over our heads, pink and steady. My coat doesn’t quite meet in the middle with how much poutine and milkshake and “who thought a cheesecake should be this big?” I’m carrying.
“That slice was a prank,” I say, flattening my palm over my stomach. “There is no universe where three people should fail to defeat a cheesecake.”
Reid makes a low sound that might be agreement, might be a complaint. Jake nudges the door with his shoulder so it latches and tips his chin toward the sidewalk like it’s a challenge. The night has scrubbed itself clean while we were busy; the rain has moved on, and the puddles left behind are dark mirrors.
I hop one—too wide for a normal step, too tempting not to try—and land with a little skid and a gasp I pretend not to make. My shoes squeak. The air is cold enough to smooth along my teeth when I smile. Above us, the sky opens like a curtain: so many stars I lose the edges of them. Not Northhaven’s exact sprawl, but close—salt-bright and endless.
“Okay,” I say, pointing up like I’m claiming it. “When we get back, we’re going stargazing. Deal?”
“Deal,” Jake says immediately.
Reid: “Name the hill.”
I squint at the sky, hand to my brow like I’m a very serious navigator. “I bet you’re both secretly good at astronomy. You’re good at everything.”
They don’t answer right away. When I look back, they’re watching me with those small, involuntary smiles—the ones that don’t show teeth—and eyes that feel like hands on my skin. Not grabbing. Holding.
“What?” I ask, awkward because the question is sitting right there and I can’t pretend I don’t feel it. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You look happy,” Reid says. “Free.”
Jake nods, softer. “Yeah.”
For a second I don’t know what to do with my face. I tug my coat tighter and look up again so my voice can go somewhere it knows. “I am,” I say, and I hear the truth in it as I say it. “Tomorrow we’re going to one of the best institutes in the country for an actual discovery.” I can’t stop the smile that hits me. “And also—yeah—I’m happy to be out of Northhaven for a minute.”
I feel them shift more than see it. The way bodies shift when something matters.
“We thought you loved Northhaven,” Jake says carefully.
I spin back like he’s insulted my mother. “I LOVE it.” It comes out too loud; a gull complains somewhere like I scared it. I throw my hands up, grinning because I can’t help it. “It’s probably my favorite place in the world now. I mean—” I make a noise that’s not a word. “—the light, and the stupid wind, and how the house smells like salt and coffee all the time, and the way the beach feels like it’s daring you to step wrong.”
Reid’s mouth tilts like he’s trying not to smile bigger.
“But it’s nice—” I push on, words tumbling over each other. “—to see another place, too. To be just… us. For a few days. Out of the team orbit.” Immediately, panic bumps my ribs. “Not that I don’t adore the team, obviously I do, I love them, I mean Finn literally carried me around the living room once and Liam thinks I’m funny even when I’m not and Charlie is—Charlie, and Sloane is—well, Sloane, but—God, please don’t take this the wrong way, I just—”
They laugh, low, the way men laugh when they’re saying it’s okay without making you feel small.
“We know what you mean,” Jake says.
Reid steps closer by a fraction, enough that I feel the heat through our coats. “We’re happy to be here with you,” he says simply.
The cold licks along my cheeks; their breath shows in little ghosts. A car hisses by, tires slicing a wet line in the road, and the puddles tremble and settle. I look up one more time at the ridiculous sky, then back at them standing like they were cut out of the same dark, and it hits me—like the first inhale after you’ve been underwater too long: this, right now, is exactly what I wanted without knowing how to ask.
“Okay,” I say, softer, because the night feels like it’ll carry it. “Stargazing when we get home. And tomorrow we make smart people fall in love with whales.”
“And with you,” Jake says, easy.
“They can get in line,” Reid says, not smiling anymore, just sure.
Heat pools low and mean, the good kind, and I bounce once on my toes because I haven’t learned how not to when I’m happy. They both look like they’re cataloging the movement for later. It should embarrass me. It doesn’t.
“Come on,” I say, because if I keep standing under these stars with them looking at me like that I’m going to melt into the sidewalk. “Race you to the motel?”
Jake eyes my sneakers. “Unfair advantage.”
Reid glances at the puddles, at the slice of neon over my shoulder, at me. “We’ll spot you ten seconds.”
I take eight. Then I run. And they let me win until the last step, when two hands close around my waist at once and the three of us crash-laugh against the red door, breathless and full and bright as the sky.