Chapter 25
Vee
I wake up and make a decision.
Today I'm not going to think about the hard stuff. Not about Ragon, the registry, broken bonds, flags, or any of the rest of it. Today is a day off. I'm going to do something normal—something that has nothing to do with pack dynamics or omega politics or the mess my life has become.
I'm going to learn yoga.
I pull on leggings and a t-shirt and pad downstairs barefoot into the early morning light.
Drake is on the couch. He's sitting up this time, barely, propped against the arm with pillows behind him. His face is still pale and drawn but he's upright, which is more than he's been the past few days. He’s definitely looking better.
Finn is at the kitchen table with his laptop, messy hair all over the place. He looks up when I come in and says good morning.
Rhys is at the window. Just standing there, one shoulder against the frame, looking out at the tree line with a mug of something in his hand.
He turns when he hears me on the stairs and his expression does the thing it does when I appear—not quite a smile, but the particular settling of his features that I've learned to read as one.
"Where's Malcolm and Alex?" I ask Finn.
"Work. Some issue with a client that couldn't wait." He grimaces. "Malcolm was not happy about leaving. Alex dragged him out anyway."
So it's the four of us.
I glance at Drake. He's watching me with wary eyes, tracking my movement across the room like he's been doing since he woke up. I cross to the couch.
"You look terrible," I say.
His mouth twitches. "Thanks."
"When's the last time you showered?"
"I don't know. Two days? Three?"
"You need to shower." I hold out my hand. He stares at it then takes it, his grip weak but present, and together we get him vertical. He sways and I steady him with a hand on his chest, his heart beating fast and unsteady under my palm.
"Come on," I say. "Bathroom."
I guide him down the hall and leave him there with clean clothes Alex left on the sink. When I come back, Finn is watching me with an expression I can't quite read.
"He doesn't deserve that," Finn says.
"He's sick," I say. "And watching someone suffer without doing anything makes me too much like them." Finn's expression softens and he doesn't push back.
Behind me, I hear Rhys set his mug down on the counter. Not loudly. But deliberately.
I look at him.
He's looking toward the hallway where Drake disappeared. His jaw is clenched, that particular tension he gets when he's managing an impulse.
"He's not a threat right now," I say. "He's barely standing."
Rhys looks at me, then back at the hallway. Then he picks up his mug and goes back to the window.
I take that as acceptance and start pulling soup ingredients out of the fridge.
Finn comes to help. We move around the kitchen together in the early morning light, the familiar rhythm of cooking settling both of us.
He leans against the counter, eyes following my hands as I work. "What's your favorite food?"
When I answer "Italian," his lips curve into a knowing smile.
"Makes sense."
I raise an eyebrow, questioning, and his smile widens.
"I've got the perfect restaurant picked out for when I take you on our first date."
The comment catches me so off guard that I forget what I'm doing with the carrots. Heat creeps up my neck.
"That's very presumptuous of you," I manage.
"Is it?" He tilts his head, studying me with those eyes that see too much. "Tell me I'm wrong."
I can't. So I don't say anything, just focus very intently on chopping, and his quiet laugh tells me he noticed.
Our fingers brush when he hands me the cutting board and we both go still, standing too close, the board between us like a barrier that isn't really a barrier at all. Then the shower shuts off down the hall and the moment breaks, and I step back and tell him we should finish the soup.
From the window, Rhys is watching us with the expression of someone who saw all of that and filed it away without comment.
When I glance at him he looks back out at the trees, but the set of his shoulders is relaxed.
Easy. He's not bothered by what he just saw—if anything he looks pleased, in that quiet way he gets when things are right.
Drake makes it back from the shower eventually, cleaner but not much steadier, and collapses onto the couch with a groan.
His hands shake so badly when he reaches for the soup that he can't get the spoon to his mouth.
I end up sitting beside him and feeding it to him one careful spoonful at a time while Finn holds the glass for him to drink.
It's intimate in a way I didn't expect, his eyes on mine the whole time, and part of me aches for him the way you ache for someone you used to love.
The other part of me is viciously glad he gets to feel this—helpless, dependent, needing someone to take care of him.
The same way I felt burning up alone on that porch.
I don't think the parallel is lost on him either.
Rhys watches all of this from the armchair.
Not with hostility exactly, but with the particular vigilance of someone deciding, moment to moment, whether to intervene.
When Drake reaches up to touch my wrist in what might be gratitude, Rhys goes very still, and I feel the shift in the room without looking at him directly.
I don't make a thing of it. I just set the empty bowl aside, tell Drake to rest, and get up. On my way back to the kitchen I pass the armchair and let my hand rest briefly on Rhys's forearm, just a touch, just a second. His breath comes out slow and he leans back in the chair and the room settles.
Finn catches this from the kitchen doorway. He doesn't say anything, just raises his eyebrows a fraction and goes back to drying dishes.
After the soup pot is clean, Drake is asleep and the morning has opened up, I lean against the counter and tell Finn I want to learn yoga.
His face lights up in a way that's completely disproportionate to the announcement.
"Can I learn too?" he asks, sounding so genuinely eager that my heart does a stupid thing.
He's already moving before I've finished saying yes, pulling blankets from the linen closet with the focused enthusiasm of a man who has been given a mission.
I suggest we go outside because the morning is nice. Finn stops walking mid-step and turns to look at me with an expression that suggests I've said something profoundly unreasonable.
"Outside has bugs," he says. "I don't do bugs."
"You're scared of bugs."
"I'm intelligently cautious. There's a difference." He resumes walking, arms full of blankets. "One sounds reasonable. The other makes me look afraid of butterflies."
"Are you afraid of butterflies?"
"Only the ones that fly at your face. Indoor yoga. Final answer."
I'm laughing as we push the coffee table against the wall and drag the side chairs into the corner.
We layer blankets and towels on the cleared floor and I prop my phone against a stack of books, angling the screen so we can both see the YouTube video I've found—a woman in a purple tank top standing in a beach studio with a view I'm deeply jealous of.
Drake wakes up partway through our furniture rearrangement and watches from the couch without speaking.
Rhys is still in the armchair with a fresh mug of something, and he watches too, but with a different quality.
There's amusement in his expression when Finn nearly drops an armful of towels trying to shake one out, warmth and dry that doesn't show anywhere except his eyes.
The video begins. The instructor talks us through mountain pose and we stand side by side. I close my eyes and breathe and the cabin is just the cabin—not a hiding place, not a safe house, just a room with good light and a ridiculous amount of folded towels on the floor.
Then the forward fold starts and Finn goes sideways almost immediately. I catch him before he goes down and we're both laughing, breathless, and when I look up I find Rhys watching us with that almost-smile fully in residence.
From the couch, Drake watches too. His expression is harder to read—careful and painful, the look of a man observing what he doesn't have a right to anymore.
We work through the poses. Finn is enthusiastic and terrible and improves in small increments, and every time he wobbles I steady him with a hand on his shoulder or his hip.
Every time I struggle he does the same for me.
His hand on my lower back. His fingers on my thigh adjusting my leg.
The touches are practical but they stop feeling purely practical somewhere around warrior two.
By the time we get to the twisting pose I'm very aware of how close we're standing, and when Finn puts his hands on my hips to guide the rotation and speaks against my ear—that's it—the heat that pools low in my stomach has nothing to do with the effort of the pose.
I glance toward Rhys.
He's very still. His mug is set aside, his eyes are on Drake, not on us, and his jaw is set. I follow his gaze. Drake is watching Finn's hands on my hips with an expression I recognize because I wore it for months—that hollow look of watching someone touch a person who used to be yours.
Rhys's chest rises with a slow, deliberate breath. Not the easy kind.
I come out of the twist and cross the room to him before Finn's noticed I've moved.
I sit down on the arm of the chair, then slide into his lap when he shifts to make room without being asked.
His arm comes around me immediately. His chin comes down to rest against my temple and I feel the tension in him—not gone, but contained, working downward.
"Hey," I say.
He makes a low sound that's not quite words.
"He's not going to be here forever," I say, just as. "And he can't take anything from you."
Rhys is still. Then his arm tightens slightly and relaxes. His purr starts up, stuttering and uneven like it always is, and I feel it move through his chest into mine.
From the middle of the blankets, Finn watches us with an expression that's soft and a little wistful. He pushes his glasses up. "You want to keep going?" he asks, addressing us both.
Rhys tips his chin toward the makeshift yoga studio. A very clear yes, proceed.
Finn grins. "Right. Child's pose."
I untangle myself from Rhys and go back to the blankets.
We resume our yoga practice without mentioning the interruption.
The instructor's voice fades to background noise as we move through downward dog, cobra, warrior.
Then we're in child's pose, facing each other, our breaths synchronized.
Finn's glasses have slipped down his nose.
When he reaches to adjust them, his hand lingers, fingers brushing my cheek with unmistakable intention.
The air between us thins. His eyes ask a question my body is already answering as I lean forward. We are definitely about to kiss.
Then I remember Drake.
I pull back and stand up too fast, voice too bright, gathering blankets with excessive purpose. Finn blinks and then understands and gives me space. I thank him, grab an armful of towels, and make it halfway to the stairs before he calls my name.
I stop. Don't turn around.
"You okay?" he asks.
"Fine. Just tired."
I go upstairs before he can ask anything else.
In my room with the door closed I lean against it and breathe.
My skin is still warm where Finn touched me.
My chest is doing several things at once.
I wanted Drake to see—wanted him to watch someone else touch me like I watched him disappear into Marie's bedroom over and over and over.
But I also didn't want it, didn't want him to have that, didn't want to hand him the satisfaction of seeing me want something.
Both things are true. I'm getting used to both things being true.
I slide down to sit on the floor, back against the door.
For a little while, doing yoga with Finn, I forgot. I forgot about Ragon and the registry and all of it and I was just Vee, laughing with someone who wanted to be there, in a body that didn't hurt, in a room that didn't feel like a battlefield.
And then I sat in Rhys's lap and felt his broken purr settle into me and I thought: this is what it's supposed to feel like. Not the forgetting exactly. Just the being okay for a minute. Just that.
Maybe that's enough for today.
I sit there for a while longer, then get up and change into comfortable clothes and climb into bed, pulling the extra blankets around me until I've made something that's almost a nest. Tomorrow I'll deal with the complicated feelings. Today I got a day off, and it mostly worked.
That's more than I've had in a long time.