Chapter 255: Madeline
By late morning my brain’s humming—Charlie and I have been camped at the dining table with coffee rings on legal pads, paging through the institute’s packet while she translates all the admin-speak into real-people words and I track notes with a blunt pencil and way too many exclamation points. Around noon Finn and Liam tumble in like Labrador puppies, announce a movie night, then groan in tandem when Charlie reminds them I’m on a temporary screen ban. Cards it is. We play until my sides hurt from laughing at Liam’s inability to remember what’s been played and Finn’s suspicious habit of “accidentally” dropping wild cards into his lap.
The door opens; my two storms roll in. “Vigil looks good,” Jake says, voice low and warm. Reid’s mouth curves—barely there, but there—and somehow that tiny smile is louder than the words. They take one look at the mess of cards and data and cousins and clap their hands like bouncers at closing time.
“Out,” Reid tells the trio, affectionate and merciless. “We’re stealing her.”
“Rude,” Charlie sings, but she’s already gathering the boys by their shirt collars.
The house quiets. I swear the air changes when it’s just us; heavier with pine and sandalwood and heat. Reid slides an arm under my knees, another behind my back, and lifts me like I weigh nothing. “Counter,” he murmurs, and sets me on the cool marble with ridiculous care, like I’m breakable crystal instead of a girl held together by stitches and stubbornness.
Watching them cook might actually be my new favorite sport. Jake salts and peppers the steaks with that surgeon’s focus of his, forearms tightening as he works, knuckles nicked and bandaged and somehow—God help me—hot as sin. Reid tosses zucchini, red onion, and cherry tomatoes with olive oil and cracked pepper, the slick clatter of vegetables against the bowl weirdly soothing. The oven door yawns; heat kisses my knees; something inside me unties.
“Put me to work,” I say, because I need to do more than float.
Jake slides a cutting board in front of me, sets down a bowl, a lemon, a nub of garlic, a dollop of Dijon, a cloud of yogurt. “Two tablespoons yogurt, one Dijon, juice of half, pinch of salt,” he says, and taps the spoon handle against my palm. Reid adds a drizzle of honey and a handful of chopped herbs like we’re making a spell.
I kneel on the counter to get leverage—very dignified, very adult—and whisk, tasting with my finger. Lemon bright, honey soft, garlic flirting with trouble. When I look up, they’re both watching me like I’m the meal.
“What?” I ask, heat climbing my cheeks.
Reid’s voice goes rough. “We fucking love you in our kitchen.”
Jake’s mouth tilts, wicked. “And we wish we could do a lot more than cook in here.”
My face becomes a space heater. “Focus, chefs,” I whisper, but I’m grinning and my pulse is a drumline.
We eat at the island like we’ve been doing it for years—steak carved in pink ribbons, roasted vegetables sweet at the edges, the sauce I made spooned over everything while they make exaggerated praise noises until I swat them with a dish towel. There’s so much ordinary woven through the special that I ache with wanting it always: science in the morning, friends in the afternoon, these men at night. The domesticity of it turns out to be its own kind of high.
“Go shower,” Reid tells me when he steals my plate to rinse it, the command softened by the kiss he drops on my temple. “We’ll finish up.”
Hot water makes the world go fuzzy at the edges. I’m careful with the bandages, careful with the wrist that still throbs when I reach too far, and by the time steam curls out the bathroom door I’ve wriggled into soft underwear and am facing the mirror. The bruises have ripened to blues and golds, a galaxy scattered across my skin. I don’t cry—I’m past that—but the curve of my mouth goes wrong anyway.
A knock. “Can I come in?” Jake asks.
I nod, and he’s there, filling the doorway in a faded T-shirt and joggers, hair a little damp at the ends. His eyes go straight to my face, then lower; his jaw tightens.
“Why the sad face?” he asks, gentle. I try to shrug.
“I’m…blue and yellow everywhere,” I admit, hating how small my voice sounds. “It’s not…sexy.”
It’s like I slapped him. He flinches back a fraction, then steps in as if he’s remembering how to breathe. “You have to be kidding,” he says, not unkind, just stunned. When I don’t answer—because I’m not—he crowds my reflection from behind, heat at my spine, and turns me to face him.
He starts at my jaw, his mouth feather-soft. “This looks like this,” he murmurs against the bruise, “because you yap at us, nonstop, all day.” A laugh slips out of me, helpless, and he smiles into my skin like he planned it.
He moves to my throat and shoulders, slow reverence in every press. “Here,” he says, lips ghosting over the places I spritz perfume, “is where you drive me insane at the doorway before we’ve even left the house.” My pulse stutters under his mouth; I smell vanilla and water and us, and my knees very nearly forget their job.
He sinks to his knees and I stop breathing. His hands bracket my waist, careful of the tender places; his mouth grazes the fading thunderstorm along my ribs. “These?” His voice drops. “These make mine go tight. Your heart lives behind them,” a kiss right below my breasts, “and you already know how I feel about these.” He glances up, lashes dark, then bends and kisses my belly—soft, lingering—before looking at me without a word, a thousand futures humming in the silence between us.
Heat molten-sweet rushes through me. I thread my good hand through his hair and he tips his head, lips moving lower in a map of gratitude along the trail of bruises: careful, claiming, worship rather than apology. He takes my forearm next, the one with the neat ladder of stitches. “Strong enough to climb a roof for a kitten,” he says, kissing the line of the scar like it’s a ribbon I won, “and soft enough to hold every creature in this town like it’s precious.”
My fingers—banged up knuckles, healing cuticles, a faint ink smudge from today’s notes—end up cradled in his palms. He kisses each one, slow as vows. “These write what your brain invents. They pull miracles out of data and seawater. They feed us. They touch us. They’re my favorite instruments.”
By the time he stands, the room’s spinning in a way that has nothing to do with stitches or the shower. He frames my face, thumbs smoothing at my cheekbones, and lets me read his eyes until the self-consciousness in my chest loosens its chokehold.
“No amount of bruises,” he says, voice low and certain, “will ever change how beautiful you are. Or how much you wreck me. You hear me, trouble? Not a single mark.”
I nod, and his smile goes soft at the edges like he’s relieved I believed him. He kisses my forehead, then the corner of my mouth, then holds me there against him for a long breath, letting the reassurance sink bone-deep.
“Good,” he says finally, flicking a look at the door like he’s already planning the next ten minutes and the next ten years. “Now come let me feed you strawberries while Reid pretends he doesn’t watch you eat.”
“Bossy,” I whisper, grinning despite myself.
He grins back, wicked and warm. “Only about the important things.”