Chapter 3 Willow #2
“Flatterer,” I whisper back, and tuck her blanket tighter around her shoulders. Rose likes to feel contained and in charge simultaneously; the trick is corners tucked sharp and choices offered generously. “Tomorrow we will go buy a tree and all the ornaments you want.”
“Okay,” she agrees, and gives me a regal little nod that breaks into a grin the moment I stand.
Theo is already peeking at the poster of the solar system on his wall, mouth moving with calculations.
I brush his hair back and touch the small constellation of freckles near his temple.
He catches my hand, disguises the softness as a wrist-lock because that’s how he knows how to be tender when he’s feeling big.
“When I grow up,” he says suddenly, eyes serious, “I’m going to be a goalie and a lawyer and a detective and a magician. ”
“Perfect,” I say. “You’ll be terrifying and very in demand.”
Penny’s room is a greenhouse of paper snowflakes and taped-up drawings. She scoots over so I can sit on the edge of her bed and strokes the hem of Damien’s jersey with small, fascinated fingers. “I like you in Papa’s colors,” she says softly. “You look like a cheerleader.”
I swallow around that. “I feel like one. A good one.”
“Does the elf get to sleep?” she asks, worry creasing her brow. “Or does he have to stay handcuffed all night?”
“Mercy,” I remind her, and kiss her forehead. “We’ll parole him after the adults have made their coffee plans.”
She nods, satisfied. “Mercy,” she echoes, and snuggles down with a sigh like a content animal.
Elise is already gone, mouth open, hair spilled across her pillow like spun sugar.
I watch her breathe for a long moment, because I can, because I have her and she has me and those sentences once felt like wishes written in steam on cold glass.
I press a kiss to the warm round of her cheek and she makes a small sound, somewhere between a gulp and a laugh, that she will deny in the morning.
Cast leans in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching me watch them.
His face is something only I get to see—unmasked, a little undone, an expression that lives somewhere between reverence and grief for the boy he didn’t get to be.
I slip my hand into his when I step into the hall and he laces our fingers without looking down, as if they were designed for this.
Downstairs, the house has gone velvet around the edges.
Lights dimmed, string lights around the staircase blinking erratically, the kitchen island cleared of sugar except for the place where our lives always leave a mark—one small scatter of white I’ll find under my elbow tomorrow.
The elf is leaning against the espresso machine with a look that might be smug if felt could smirk.
The dog has taken up guard on the rug like a curled comma.
I pour hot water over a tea bag because coffee will turn my blood erratic tonight.
Cast takes the mug when I almost set it down wrong and holds it out until I curl my hands around it properly.
Damien disappears into the living room and sets the fire with the competence of a man who has learned to make warmth on purpose.
When the flames catch, the room changes color; when he turns back, so do I.
The three of us fall into our gravity without needing to locate it.
Damien’s shoulder brushes mine as he passes with a blanket; Cast’s palm slides up the back of my neck like checking a pulse.
The couch takes us. I tuck my feet under me.
Damien sits close enough I can feel the heat of his thigh along my calf.
Cast leans on the armrest, half-facing me, one hand draped along the back of the couch like a promise placed, not pressed.
“You all right?” Cast asks again, softer, as if the answer might have changed since the upstairs version.
“Mm.” I rest my tea on my knee and watch the fire chew the logs down. “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and hear the horn again.”
Damien laughs low. “You did scream like you were trying to summon the dead.”
“I was summoning luck,” I say, and my eyes find Cast when I say it.
His mouth curves, that small, knowing smile that always finds its way under my skin. “Well, you got me. So I’d say you’re the luckiest girl in the world.”
I nudge him, pretending it doesn’t melt me. “Please. You’re the lucky one.”
Cast’s laugh is low, rough at the edges. “Maybe,” he murmurs, “but I’ll spend my life proving it.”
Before I can answer, Damien slips a hand to the back of my neck, thumb brushing the place he always touches when he wants me grounded. “He’s right,” he says softly, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “The universe did something right when it gave me you.”
I lift my hand and press my fingers under the jersey, palm flat on my belly, a touch so light it might be a thought. Cast’s eyes flick down and then up. Damien’s breath catches. They know me too well or they just love me enough to feel what I feel through skin.
“Later,” I say, because I want to tell Vincent first, because I want to tell all of them where no ghosts can hear. “But… yes.”
Damien makes a sound like gratitude and a prayer discovered under the same rock. He leans forward and presses his forehead to mine, eyes closed, a kiss without his mouth. Heat walks down my spine. Cast’s thumb traces the edge of my jaw, then drops away before I fall into it.
“I miss Vincent” I say to Cast, because the words have been sitting behind my teeth since the horn. “Did he get on the plane yet?”
“Boarded like 30 minutes ago,” Damien says looking down at the flight alert on his phone.
Cast huffs out a laugh that’s more breath than amusement. “Vincent needs to never miss a hockey game again. He is the only one who can stop Damien from deciding it is better to fight on the ice than actually play.”
“Deciding?” Damien repeats, scandalized. “He hit me first, and I knew we were going to win whether I punched him or not.”
“You are a public menace,” Cast says, and there’s affection in it like a secret pocket.
“Says the actual leader of the Cartel,” Damien says, and then looks at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I smile, putting both hands up. “You are both menaces to my personal society.”
“Oh yeah?” Damien teases turning to me.
“Yeah,” I smirk as I turn into the heat of Damien’s body without thinking. “The literal worst.”
He catches my waist and drags me closer.
I go willingly. He kisses me like we have all the time in the world.
His mouth tastes of smoke from the fire and sugar from earlier, his hand spreading over the small of my back as if he could warm the whole night through me.
There’s no rush. Our life is not a series of emergencies anymore; we had enough of those to last several lives.
Cast watches, not removed but reverent, the way he watches a piece of art that taught him something.
He shifts so he’s closer—knees grazing mine, the couch creaking in that specific way it learned from us.
When Damien lifts his head, Cast leans in.
He doesn’t kiss my mouth first; he knows I’m a house that unlocks in a certain order.
He kisses the corner, then the other, then the place on my cheek that always goes hot when I’m seen, then the soft hinge of my jaw where my pulse thins to a ribbon.
His mouth is cool and precise and then not precise at all when I slide my palm against his throat and feel him swallow.
“You,” he says against my skin, like a thesis, like proof.
“Me,” I answer, and it’s ridiculous how much those two letters can hold.
Damien’s laugh ghost-burns across my mouth when I nip his lower lip; Cast’s exhale hits my ear when I curl my fingers at the nape of his neck. They take turns, not in a schedule but in a rhythm; they’ve learned me by heart and each other by accident and then on purpose.
“Easy,” Cast murmurs when my breath hitches too sharp—he has always known when the world tilts and when to lay a hand flat and level it. He’s smiling when he says it, though, because easy is a word we had to build.
“Tease,” I accuse, but the word melts in my mouth when Damien’s palm slides over the curve of my hip and pauses at the warm weight of his jersey falling to mid-thigh. His grin goes wolfish and fond all at once.
“You’re in my colors,” he says, voice low. “I’m a simple man, wife. That’s it. That’s the whole sentence.”
“You say that like I didn’t wear it on purpose,” I murmur, letting my fingers toy with the hem. The fabric is smooth and cool, and underneath it I am all temperature and sensation.
Cast’s laugh is without sound, shoulders shaking once. “Calculated,” he says. “She came downstairs with a battle plan.”
“Of course I did,” I agree, and press my thumb into the hollow at the base of his throat just to hear his inhale snap.
We drift and knot and drift again. The fire drops to a red bed of heat. The dog lifts his head once as if to ask if we need anything, then resettles with a grumble that sounds like approval. Time gets elastic; the edges of me go petal-soft.
“Bed,” I say at last, because if I stay here I will end up asleep with my cheek against Cast’s thigh and wake with the imprint of his buttons on my face. “Before the gremlins wake up.”
“They’re only gremlins after sugar,” Cast snorts.
I stand, smoothing the jersey down over my hips.
Cast’s eyes follow the movement like he’s cataloging a museum piece he’s been given private access to.
I extend a hand to him without thinking; he takes it and rises in that unfussy way he does everything difficult—like gravity consulted him before making a plan.
His palm is warm and a little rough with travel, the nick across his knuckle a question I’ll ask tomorrow.
We only make it two steps before Damien wraps an arm around my waist from behind. The move is easy and practiced; he pulls me back, lifts, and I startle a laugh that hits the ceiling and comes back down like confetti. He settles me over his shoulder as if I weigh nothing.
“Damien,” I gasp, thumping his back with the side of my fist, mostly for form. My view is now the back of the couch, the fireplace, then the floor sliding by and Cast’s boots stalking next to us. “This is undignified.”
“Tonight,” he announces, cheerful and unbothered, “she’s mine.”
Cast groans—a deep, theatrical, put-upon sound that tries and fails to cover how pleased he is. He rakes a hand through his hair and glares at the fireplace like it personally scheduled the season. “I can’t wait for hockey to be over.”
“Liar,” Damien says over his shoulder, and pats the back of my thigh, scandalously fond. “You love me dramatic.”
“Tragic,” Cast corrects, but his mouth won’t stay in the shape of the word.
I lift my head enough to meet his eyes upside down. The room flips in my vision; he doesn’t. He reaches out and, very gently, with two fingers, tucks the hem of the jersey closer to my legs so the cold air doesn’t find skin. It’s the kind of tenderness that undoes me faster than heat.
“Mercy,” I tease.
His gaze warms like a door opening. “Always.”
Damien carries me down the hall, shoulder steady under my ribs, laughter ringing easy in the quiet house. Behind us, Cast kills the lights and follows, a shadow and a star, both falling to my mercy.