Chapter 178 178

Chapter 178 178
Emma's POV:

He took me upstairs. His room was small. Desk by the window, a bookshelf that was mostly video game cases with about three actual books shoved in the corner. Corkboard above the desk with postcards, a movie ticket stub, and a printed meme that said JUST ACT NATURAL in block letters. The bed was sort of made, blanket pulled up but not tucked, and on the nightstand there was a game controller, a half-eaten bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and a phone charger plugged into nothing.

"This is me," he said. Nervous. Like showing me his room was harder than the whole dragon thing. "It's not, uh. It's not much."

I looked around. At the corkboard. At the Doritos.

And then I looked at the bed. At the space between the frame and the floor, where something was pushed back but not far enough. A pillow. White, mostly. With a brown, irregular burn mark on the side, roughly the size and shape of an open hand.

Lucian saw me see it. His whole body locked up.

"What's that?" I said.

"Nothing."

"Lucian."

He sat on the bed. Ran his hands through his hair. Stood up. Sat back down. "Okay. So. You know how I said the gold gets hot? When I lose control? Like the controller, the doorknob, stuff near my hands gets..."

"Yes."

"It also happens when I'm..." He stopped. Started over. "When I'm, uh..." He looked at the ceiling. At the wall. At the Doritos. At literally everything that wasn't my face. "When I'm... thinking about you."

Oh.

"The pillow," I said.

"The pillow."

"What were you doing when the pillow..."

"Emma, I swear to God."

"I'm asking."

"You KNOW what I was doing!" His face went red, regular embarrassed red, nothing supernatural about it, and his voice cracked on the last word like he was fourteen again. "I was, look, I was THINKING, okay, and my hands got hot, and when I, when it, when the, you know, HAPPENED, the pillow started smoking. It didn't catch on fire, there were no actual flames, but it burned. And it smells awful. Like a cigarette died in a microwave." He put his face in his hands. "And that is what happens when I lose control."

I sat down next to him. On the bed. Our knees touching.

"So," I said. Slow, working through it. "Every time we've been together. Every time you pulled away. On the rooftop, on the couch, every time you stopped and said you needed a minute—"

"I was trying not to set you on fire. Yes. That is what was happening."

"The redirect thing. The breathing."

"Marcus taught me. Gold up, spread, breathe. It holds for about fifteen, twenty seconds. Less when it's, when you're..." he gestured vaguely at me, at all of me, "when you're RIGHT THERE."

I looked at the burned pillow. At his hands on his knees, the same hands that had healed Evie and written me that poem and thrown a man into a tree and burned a pillow at night in this room because he was alone thinking about me.

"So when we actually..." I started, and I could feel my own face getting warm, my kind of warm, the normal boring human kind. "When we try to..."

"Yeah."

"Yeah what?"

"Yeah, that's the problem." He looked at me. Blue-green, no gold, just Lucian, just scared. "I don't know what happens. Marlen told me to be careful I don't set you on fire, which was her version of being supportive, and Kaelen said he dealt with something similar with Annabeth but he has control, he's ALWAYS had better control, and I'm the one who crushes soap dispensers and melts PlayStation controllers and—"

I kissed him. Mid-sentence. Not dramatic, just my mouth on his, quick, warm, stopping the spiral before it took him somewhere I couldn't follow.

He froze. Then unfroze. Kissed me back. His hand came up to my jaw, gentle, and his palm was warm against my skin. Warm. Not burning. Not dangerous. Just warm.

I pulled back an inch.

"We'll figure it out," I said.

"What if we can't?"

"Then we'll figure that out too."

"That doesn't actually mean anything, Emma."

"It means I'm not going anywhere. We covered this yesterday. Keep up."

He looked at me. At my mouth. His pupils were shifting, the blue-green going lighter, that thing they did before the gold. Not there yet. Close.

"You're really not scared," he said.

"I'm a little scared. But not of you." I took his hand from my jaw and held it in both of mine and brought it to my lap, palm up, the way I'd done in the forest. His palm was warm and calloused and alive. "I'm scared of not figuring this out. I'm scared of you pulling away every time because you think you're gonna hurt me. I'm scared of the look on your face when you think I should be running."

His fingers curled around mine. Tight.

"That's enough scared for both of us," he said.

"Yes, it is... And, by the way, I’m not giving up on sex with you because things can get a little bit hotter than usual, you know?"

"Shit, Emma," he laughed, nervously.

From downstairs, Kalessi's voice: "Cookies are getting cold!"

"They're room temperature, Mom," Lucian yelled back. "They've been on the table for an hour."

"Come get them anyway!"

He looked at me and I looked at him.

"Come on," I said, and stood up, and pulled him with me. "Before she stress-bakes something else."