Chapter 191 191

Chapter 191 191
Emma's POV:
A week after the building, Lucian came downstairs for dinner.
Not because he wanted to. Evie had drawn him a place card. Construction paper folded in half, LUCCAIN in gold Sharpie, a dragon underneath that looked more like a cat with wings, and she'd put it on the kitchen table at the Ellsworth house next to her own seat and announced at four-thirty that Lucian was eating with them tonight and that was that, because she’d already thrown another card, an invitation, under his room.
I'd been at the Ellsworth house every day since that first night. After classes, sitting outside his door for an hour or two, then in the kitchen with Kalessi, on the couch with Annabeth when she came by. Kaelen had gone back to his routine, the office, the editorial work, but his texts came every two hours and the dark under his eyes said he wasn't sleeping.
I’d brought Evie with me two times, the first time she talked to him and that afternoon. She already loved everyone there, and it was reciprocal. Even Marlen was really sweet with her, unlike with the rest of the world.
Evie was so happy about the visits that my parents hadn’t asked why I kept bringing her to my friend’s house. Because, of course, it’s not like I’d had time to tell them he was actually my boyfriend. And it’s not like they were stupid and didn’t know it anyway. They were just giving me time to be honest about it, and I appreciated it, I did, especially because I was lying about way too much and I needed to eventually give them some piece of the truth.
Marlen kept sliding notes under Lucian's door. I saw a couple of them. One said "if you're not downstairs in ten minutes I'm telling Mom about the time you tried to microwave a Pop-Tart wrapper and almost burned down the old house." The other just said "I miss you, asshole" and I think that one was the one that cracked something because the next day Kalessi told me he'd come down at midnight and eaten leftover rice out of the pot with a spoon, standing at the stove in the dark, and gone back up.
So when Evie put the place card down, I watched the stairs.
Kalessi was making the garlic chicken. The recipe she made when things were bad, according to Annabeth. Erik was setting the table. Evie was on a chair she'd pulled right up next to where Lucian's place card was, so close their plates were almost touching.
Six-fifteen. The stairs creaked.
He came down slow. Jeans and a clean shirt, the dark green one I'd told him once looked good on him and he'd worn three times since, and his hair was wet from the shower and his face was thinner and his eyes were just blue-green, no gold, and he looked like someone who'd been sick for a long time and was trying to remember how people worked.
Evie saw him first.
"LUCIAN!" Off the chair and across the kitchen, forty pounds of five-year-old hitting his legs, and he caught her. Lifted her up. Put her on his hip, her arms around his neck, and he held the back of her head and his jaw tightened and his eyes closed for a second. Just one.
"You came," she said.
"You sent me an invitation. Can't say no to an invitation."
"It has a dragon on it."
"I saw. Really good dragon."
"It's you."
"I know."
He put her down. Looked at the table. At the place card and the gold Sharpie cat-dragon. At his mother at the stove with the wooden spoon. His father with plates. His sister on the couch pretending to scroll through her phone. All of them trying not to look at him too directly.
Then he looked at me.
Something crossed his face. Not a smile. Not yet. More like his face remembering that smiles existed and considering the possibility.
"Is that the garlic chicken?" he said to Kalessi.
"Sit down and find out," she said, and her hand on the spoon was white-knuckled.
He sat. Evie climbed back up next to him and scooted her chair over until they were touching. I sat next to her. Kalessi served the chicken and Erik served the rice and Marlen materialized from the couch without being called, which was a first.
Nobody mentioned the building. Nobody mentioned the seven days. This family had survived five years of separation and a facility and a rescue and they knew some things healed faster if you didn't poke at them.
Lucian ate. Slow at first, then less slow. He reached for the salt and knocked over Marlen's water glass, which hit the bread basket and sent a roll onto the floor, and Marlen said "there he is" and Lucian said "shut up" and Kalessi said "language" and Erik picked up the roll and put it back on the table without a word and I laughed. This wet, broken sound that came out of nowhere, and Lucian was looking at me with water dripping off his elbow and his face did the thing. The almost-smile. Closer to real this time.
Kaelen arrived with Annabeth at seven. They'd been at Marcus's cabin. Logistics. The things nobody talked about but everyone understood had been handled. Kaelen came into the kitchen and saw Lucian at the table and stopped in the doorway and his face did the Ellsworth blank and then it broke for a second.
"Hey," Kaelen said.
"Hey," Lucian said.
"You look like shit."
"Thanks."
Kaelen sat down. Annabeth next to him. And the table was full. Erik at the head, Kalessi at the other end, Kaelen and Annabeth on one side, me and Lucian and Evie on the other, Marlen on the counter because the table was "too crowded and too emotional."
After dinner, Evie dragged Lucian to the fridge to show him the gold dragon she'd taped there. The fourth attempt. Gold Sharpie on white paper, wings spread wide, eyes filled in solid gold.
"That's you," she said. "That's the real you."
He looked at it for a long time.
"The wings are really good," he said.
"I KNOW. I'm doing a new one and putting it on my wall. It’s like a picture of you!"
He crouched down, hugged her, quick and tight, his face in her hair, and when he stood up his eyes were wet and he said "allergies" and Evie said "I didn't know you have allergies" and Marlen from the counter said "he doesn’t, he’s just allergic to common sense."
To be honest, maybe I was too. But I didn’t care at that point, I just wanted him back.