Chapter 200: Madeline
Reid leads me back toward the bedroom, palm warm at the small of my back, and I pad over to my duffel to grab clothes for the day. Steam is still hugging my skin. I let the towel drop.
A sharp curse snaps behind me.
I whirl, thinking something happened to him. “What happened—did you—?”
He’s standing very still, eyes wide, not hurt at all—just staring at me like I’ve knocked the air out of him.
The bathroom door opens. Another curse, lower.
I twist toward the sound. Jake’s in the doorway, hair damp, fists clenched at his sides, a line between his brows that wasn’t there when we were in the shower together.
“What’s going on?” I ask, heartbeat kicking.
“You didn’t tell us we were hurting you,” Reid says at the same time Jake blurts, “Madeline, we’re so sorry.”
One mad at himself. One drowning in guilt. I look down, confused—and see it: handprints on my hips, blue-violet blooming; a few on my thighs where their fingers had held me.
I gasp—surprised, not scared—and look back up. “Guys, it doesn’t hurt.”
They don’t believe me. Reid actually takes a step back.
“Oh, no.” Heat pricks my throat. “No way in hell. Look at me.”
He lifts his gaze, ice and worry.
“After last night?” I say, steady now. “After what you made me feel—how good it was—how much I want it every night of my life? You don’t get to step away from me because of bruises.” I point at both of them. “Look at you. You’re massive. Your arms are bigger than my legs.” A helpless laugh bubbles out. “And you expected not to leave a mark?”
Jake drags a hand over his face. “I’d hardly call it small when I can tell which bruise is mine and which is his.”
I smile—slow, certain. “I like it.”
A sound answers me—half groan, half prayer—from both of them.
“It’s twisted,” I add, “but I love that you marked me.”
They go even stiller, the kind of still that means they’re putting away their worry and picking up something darker. I trail my fingers over the prints, feeling nothing but warmth. “The ache between my legs is ten times more than this. This is just color.”
They flinch—equal parts sorry and wrecked—and I laugh because I can’t help it. “It means you’ll have to do it a lot, so I get used to you.”
Jake’s mouth tips. He shakes his head, surrender and amusement. “Fine.” He moves past us to dress, still smiling like a man who just lost a fight he wanted to lose.
Reid is tense but rooted. I step into him, press a kiss to his bare chest. “Please don’t go cold on me because of that.”
He exhales—long, rough—then folds me in, palm careful at my waist, touch gentler than it’s ever been. He kisses the top of my head. “Not cold,” he says, voice low. “Just… trying not to be a monster.”
“You’re not,” I tell him, and slip away to dress before I climb him like a tree.
I pull on the outfit I packed for today: the soft black pants; the sky-blue button-down; the black crew-neck sweater over it so the blue peeks at the collar and hem; my hair brushed smooth, tucked behind one ear. I lace my white sneakers because I will be on my feet for hours, and grab my black tote.
When I step back out, they both stop moving.
Reid goes still from throat to shoulders. Jake’s eyes drag down and back up like he’s trying to memorize me again.
“You look beautiful,” Reid says, voice gone hoarse.
“Not used to you businesslike and not in fleece,” Jake adds, grinning, like he’s offended and delighted at the same time.
I giggle, cheeks warm. “Don’t get used to it.”
They dress too—semi-professional, and it knocks the breath out of me. Reid in a black, textured sweater that makes his shoulders look obscene, dark trousers, watch catching the light. Jake in a fitted black dress shirt, sleeves crisp, belt straight, the kind of clean lines that make my brain go fuzz. Together they look like trouble in a boardroom and sin in a hallway, and I actually sway.
“I have always prided myself on being the smart girl who would never put a man before her ambitions,” I manage, clutching my tote like a shield. “But right now? I want to cancel the institute and stay here and just… watch you and drool.”
They both chuckle—low, matching, not helping at all.
“That,” I say, pointing, “does not help.”
Reid shakes his head, mouth curved. “Let’s go, Trouble.”
Jake hooks two fingers at my waist as he passes, the lightest touch, a promise for later. “You can watch us after,” he says, and holds the red key fob up like a start gun.
I roll my eyes and follow them out, bruises warm under cotton, heart louder than the door when it clicks shut.
The door clicks behind us and the cold rinses my skin clean. Only then do I manage to tuck the echo of their hands into a quiet corner of my body and remember why we’re here.
The institute. The work.
These next few hours might change everything—for me, for SWMRI, for the way a map of calving grounds gets drawn and taught. I breathe in pine and exhaust and something sharp like new weather and let the nerves and joy braid together.
On the walk down the exterior stairs I run the checklist in my head, smoothing every edge: drives with the inshore tracks, the shore logs, the porpoise neonate sightings; time-stamped photos and weather overlays; the notes where I first circled “overlap?” and then underlined it twice because I didn’t trust my own eyes. My heart beats hard enough to make my collar shift, but it’s the right kind of fast.
“Today’s the day you teach a room why Northhaven hums,” Jake says, easy, settling into the back seat. “We’ll handle the rest.”
“Authorship and MOU,” Reid adds, buckling in. “We keep the noise off you.”
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and look out at the thin blue of morning, at the road uncoiling toward something that wasn’t possible yesterday. My throat goes tight for a second—not from fear. From the size of it.
I’ve spent years loving the work because it didn’t need anything from me but everything I had. Today, maybe, it gives something back: a line on a paper, a door that opens to a lab I haven’t stood in yet, a dataset big enough to prove the thing I can feel in my bones.
I set my palm on Reid’s forearm for one breath—thank you lodged in it—and then twist in my seat to catch Jake’s eyes in the mirror. “Ready?”
He grins. “Been ready.”
Reid pulls out of the lot. Asphalt, then highway. My laptop hums when I wake it; the first slide of my deck glows in the early light—Northhaven: Preliminary Evidence of Calving Overlap.
Life changing, I think, and the words feel less like a wish and more like a fact. I get to cross this step with them—one hand on the science, one on the future we’re building, all of it pointed in the same direction.
“Let’s go make them believe,” I say.
“They will,” Reid answers.
“They’re about to fall in love with your brain,” Jake adds, wicked and proud.