Chapter 76 76
Annabeth's POV:
The porch was a concrete slab with a rusted railing and one step down to a patch of dead grass that might've been a yard at some point. Not exactly a scenic overlook. But the sky.
God, the sky.
I'd forgotten what stars looked like when you weren't near a city. The safe house was far enough from town that there was almost no light pollution, just the kitchen window throwing a weak rectangle of yellow onto the grass, and above us the entire universe had shown up for Thanksgiving.
It was freezing. Late November freezing, the kind where your breath turns solid the second it leaves your mouth. I should've been cold, I was wearing flannel and sweatpants and no shoes because I hadn't thought that far ahead. But the fire was back, dim and flickering and unreliable, and it kept my core warm enough that the cold was just a thing I noticed without really feeling it.
Kaelen stood beside me at the railing. He wasn't wearing shoes either, I noticed. Just socks, on a concrete porch, in November. His dragon metabolism kept him warm. Always had. One of the advantages of being a walking furnace.
"There's Orion," he said, pointing. "See the belt? Three stars in a row."
"I know what Orion looks like."
"Right. Biology major. And all sorts of nerdy sciences."
"Shut up. If I’m a nerd, you’re like a super-plus-extra nerd, literature boy."
And I liked it. In fact, I loved that from him, but I didn’t mention it.
He was smiling. I could see it even in the dark, the way the starlight caught the edge of his mouth. Starlight. Like that was a thing that actually existed in my life now, standing on a porch looking at a boy's mouth in starlight like some goddamn romance novel.
Which I guess it was. Kind of.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
"Thank you. For today. For the chicken and the bread rolls you let me steal and for not making it weird when I talked about my mom."
"You didn't talk about your mom. Marcus talked about her."
"Yeah, but I almost cried and you didn't point it out. Which is the polite thing to do when someone's trying not to cry over canned cranberry sauce."
"The sauce was very emotional."
"It really was."
We were quiet for a minute. The wind pushed my hair across my face and I tucked it behind my ear, that gesture I'd been doing since forever, the one Kaelen always watched like it was the most interesting thing in the world.
He was watching now.
"Can I tell you something?" he said.
"Depends. Is it going to make me cry again? Because my eyes are still wrecked from the last three days and I don't think they can take more."
"It might."
"Great. Go ahead."
He turned to face me, leaning his hip against the railing. His eyes were that dark blue-green they got at night, the gold completely hidden unless you knew exactly where to look. I knew where to look. Right at the center, this thin ring of amber that only showed up when he was feeling something strong.
It was showing up now.
"A month ago," he said, "I was lying on my bed at three in the morning thinking about how I'd ruined the best thing that ever happened to me. And I kept thinking, if she never forgives me, if this is it, at least I got to know what it felt like. Having her. Being close to her. Being the person she chose." He paused. "And I thought that would have to be enough. That memory of you, of us, would have to last me the rest of my life."
"Kaelen..."
"But I was wrong. Because memory doesn't come close." His voice was doing that thing, that quiet thing. "Being here with you, right now, eating grocery store chicken and watching a movie on your phone and standing on this ugly porch in our socks... this is better than any memory. This is better than anything."
I opened my mouth to say something, probably something deflective and sarcastic because that was my default when emotions got too big, but nothing came out. Because he was looking at me the way he'd always looked at me, the way he'd looked at me the first day in the cafeteria and at the stone well with the golden flowers and on every porch and every trail and every quiet moment we'd ever shared. Like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.
And I was so tired of pretending I didn't look at him the same way.
I reached for his hand. Deliberately. Not grabbing it in panic, not holding on during a healing session, not gripping his shirt through a nightmare. Just reaching across the cold air between us and finding his fingers and lacing them through mine.
His hand was warm. Obviously. Always warm, always solid, always there.
"I look at you too," I said. "You know that, right? I look at you and I see every stupid thing you've done and every brave thing and every lie and every truth and I still..." I squeezed his fingers. "I still want to be standing on ugly porches with you. In our socks. Eating bad chicken."
"It wasn't bad chicken."
"Kaelen."
"Sorry. Keep going."
"That was it. That was the whole speech. I don't have more."
"That was a really good speech."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
I don't know which one of us moved first. Maybe both. Maybe neither and the space between us just collapsed because it was tired of existing. But his free hand came up to my face, his thumb on my cheekbone, his fingers curving along my jaw, and I tilted my head up and his came down and then we were kissing.
Not desperate, not frantic, not the kind of kiss that happens when you're pressed against a tree and your dragon natures are screaming at each other. This was slow. Careful but not cautious, like we were both saying I know what this means and I'm choosing it anyway.
His lips were warm and a little chapped from the cold and when I reached up and put my hand on the back of his neck his whole body exhaled, this release of something he'd been carrying so long he'd forgotten how heavy it was.
I pulled him closer. He came, stepping into me until we were pressed together at the railing, his hand still on my face and mine on his neck and our other hands still laced together between our bodies. The kiss deepened and I felt the bond respond, not the painful bleeding thing it had been for weeks but something warm and expansive, like a door opening into a room full of sunlight.
His emotions poured through. Joy, this overwhelming ridiculous joy that made my eyes sting. Relief so intense it felt like grief. Love, all of it, everything he'd been holding back, every ounce of it that he'd been carrying silently for a month while I punished him for a mistake made out of fear.
And mine poured back. I let them. Didn't block, didn't filter, didn't build a single wall. Let him feel everything, the anger and the hurt and the forgiveness and the terrifying fragile thing growing in the space where the anger used to be. Hope, maybe. Or something close to it.
When we finally pulled apart we were both breathing hard, our foreheads pressed together, our breath making clouds between our faces in the cold air. His eyes were open, gold at the edges now, and mine were probably doing the red thing because I could feel the heat behind them.
"Hi," he whispered.
"Hi."
"That was a good speech."
I laughed, this shaky wet sound that was half laugh and half something else. "You already said that."
"It deserved repeating."
He kissed my forehead. Then my nose, which made me scrunch my face. Then the corner of my mouth, soft, barely there.
"We should go inside," he said. "Marcus is going to come back and see us out here and then I'll have to explain to your father why I was kissing his daughter on the porch in our socks."
"He already knows. The bond thing. He can probably feel it."
"That makes it worse, not better."
"Yeah, probably."
Neither of us moved.
The stars were still there, all of them. Orion's belt and whatever else was up there that I'd forgotten from the astronomy books I’d read. The wind had died down and the night was still, that kind of still that only happens in late autumn in places far from everything, when the world holds its breath between one season and the next.
"Happy Thanksgiving," I said.
"Happy Thanksgiving, Annabeth."
He squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. And we stood there on the ugly concrete porch in our socks, the bond humming between us warm and steady and not hurting at all, and for the first time in months I felt something that I'd almost forgotten existed.
Peace. Just peace. The stupid, ordinary, unremarkable kind.
The best kind there is.
I knew the storm was close and unavoidable, but I still wanted to grab that moment with all I had and keep it tattooed in my mind during the upcoming battles.