Chapter 10 Lucian
Lucian
The door closes behind Celeste with a soft, final click, and whatever tension she carried with her slips out of the room as if it belonged to her alone. What replaces it is worse. A quiet so deep it feels deliberate, like the air itself has decided to give me space to bleed in peace.
I make my way to the edge of the bed and sit, shoulders slumping forward before I can stop them.
The towel hangs low around my neck, damp and heavy, clinging to my skin as if it’s reluctant to let go.
It hides most of the scars across my chest and shoulders—the pale lines, the uneven textures, the places where heat and shrapnel rewrote me—but I can feel them anyway.
I always can. I’m seven months into my recovery, and I don’t need to look to know where my skin pulls tighter, goes numb, or where it aches when the room is too cool or the day has been too long.
My prosthetic rests near the chair, exactly where I left it, so I won’t have to reach far for it later. The residual limb throbs with a dull, familiar persistence; this time, the pain is well earned after standing through the concert tonight.
Normally, the pain in my leg would be the loudest thing in the room, aside from Sir Sass’s purr.
Tonight, it barely registers.
Because Celeste was just here.
After all this time, and every day I spent rebuilding myself piece by piece with the singular hope that maybe the next time she saw me, I’d be someone she could look at without pain. Tonight, she stood in front of me and looked through me like I was already a closed chapter.
I drop my elbows to my knees and bury my face in my hands, forcing air into my lungs the way they taught me.
Slow. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Regain control. Ground yourself. Name what you can feel. Stay present. It works when the threat is memory, when it’s a nightmare or a flash of heat and pressure behind my eyes.
It does not work when the threat is her.
Seeing her again feels like taking shrapnel all over—sharp, sudden, lodging itself in places I didn’t know were still exposed.
I thought I’d made peace with what I did.
With the distance and the way I pushed her away before she could see the full aftermath of the explosion, before she could watch me learn how to exist in a body that no longer obeyed me.
I told myself it was mercy, and I was protecting her from the mess. From the man who woke up in an ICU, missing part of himself and couldn’t reconcile who he’d been with who he was becoming.
That story held, right up until tonight.
Because when she looked at me earlier, when she saw my bare skin, the burns and the shrapnel scars and the truth written plainly across my body, she didn’t flinch. If she noticed them at all, she gave no sign that they changed anything.
Which means I didn’t leave because she couldn’t handle it.
I left because I couldn’t.
Celeste was never fragile. She was never something that needed protecting from reality.
She was—no is—wildfire in that brilliant, consuming, strong enough to burn and still keep going way.
And I abandoned her anyway. I pushed her away and left her standing in the flames alone because I was too afraid to let her see me fall apart and still choose me.
And I took that choice away from her when I told the nurses not to let her back in.
I blocked her number and cut her out because I couldn’t stand the idea of being loved while broken.
Now she’s here, and the worst part isn’t the pain in my leg or the scars I still don’t like to look at.
It’s realizing she survived losing me, and I’m the one still bleeding.
The realization settles in my chest, pressing inward as another truth surfaces, this one I still haven’t wrapped my head around, even after seeing her with my own eyes.
Celeste is Ara.
The name alone feels unreal when I attach it to Celeste, like two incompatible truths forced to coexist. I’ve replayed the image in my head, and it still doesn’t fully land.
Onstage, she isn’t just a woman with a microphone.
She moves like something conjured rather than born.
The oil-slick wig fractures the light as she turns, greens and blues rippling through black like living flame.
Her clothes don’t just catch the movement; they become it, flowing like water pulled by some unseen current.
Every step is intentional, every gesture sharpened by discipline and instinct.
She looks untouchable.
Mythic.
And then she sings, her voice—the same one that once murmured my name in the dark, soft and unguarded—rises through smoke and pyrotechnics and transforms a stadium into something reverent.
Thousands of people fall silent or scream themselves hoarse at once, pulled under by the weight of it.
Seeing it live is something else entirely.
Somehow, in all the time I spent with her, in all the late nights and stolen moments that felt like secrets meant only for us, I never knew I’d kissed the woman behind the veil. I never guessed the scale of what she carried.
I knew Celeste as laughter in my kitchen, bare feet on cold tile, the way she leaned into me like the world went quiet when I wrapped my arms around her. I knew her softness, her sharp humor, the way she watched people as if she was always measuring what they didn’t say.
I was in love with her when I thought that was the whole of her.
But it wasn’t.
She learned how to split herself cleanly in two—one version forged for the world, loud and untouchable and worshipped, and another kept private, and human, and breakable.
I only ever held the quiet half. I never realized how much strength it took for her to keep those worlds from bleeding together, and how much trust it took her to give me that side of her.
And now I’m supposed to protect her, the thought sits wrong in my chest. The irony is almost enough to laugh at, if laughing didn’t feel like it might split me open.
I can’t sleep through most nights without waking up tangled in phantom pain, but sure—put me next to the woman I broke and call it personal growth. Call it fate. Call it whatever makes this easier to swallow.
No. She’s not the woman I broke.
She’s Celeste.
I scrub a hand down my face, jaw locking as if I can physically hold myself together by force alone. I told myself I left because I was doing the right thing, and I was sparing her from watching me fall apart, from seeing the man I was turning into.
That was the lie; the truth is uglier.
I didn’t walk away from her.
I ran. Full tilt. As fast as I could manage.
I told myself distance was strength, that cutting her out was a clean, decisive thing instead of the coward’s exit it really was.
I couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing me altered, scarred, unsure of who I was without the body I trusted.
I couldn’t stand the idea of needing her.
Standing in front of her tonight and seeing this other side of her feels like all that running finally slammed to a stop. Like I hit the wall I’ve been sprinting toward for seven months and only just realized it was there.
I’ve been avoiding the wrong thing this whole damn time.
I grab my compression sleeve and pull it on with more force than necessary, then push myself upright before putting the rest of my prosthetic on with practiced ease that has come from months of going through the same motions.
Orion disappeared at some point during my mental breakdown, and Sir Sass watches from the chair, eyes tracking me like he knows I’m about to do something reckless.
I don’t look at him for long. I know if I stay in this room another minute, I’ll drown in the weight of everything I left behind.
The hotel gym is mostly quiet at this hour, just the low hum of fluorescent lights, the steady rhythm of someone else’s footsteps on a treadmill across the room, and the soft, metallic clink of weights as I rerack my last set.
The physical strain helps and anchors me in something immediate, something I can control.
That’s how Orion finds me.
I don’t know how long I’ve been grinding my frustration into steel or how long he’s been watching from the doorway, but he doesn’t announce himself; he just waits to see how much of an idiot I’ll make of myself.
He leans there, his arms crossed, his shoulder braced against the frame like he has no care in the world. The look on his face isn’t judgment. It’s the same quiet, watchful focus he’s worn beside me in parking garages, briefing rooms, and crime scenes that smelled like gunpowder and bad endings.
I grunt and wipe my face with the towel around my neck. “Are you gonna say something, or just keep staring at me like a disappointed parent?”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “I’ve seen disappointed parents,” he says, pushing off the doorframe and stepping inside. “If I were like mine, you’d be bleeding.”
I snort under my breath. “Give it time.”
I lower myself onto the bench, slow and deliberate. My leg is throbbing now, heat pulsing in time with my heartbeat. I pushed it too far, and we both know it.
Orion drags another bench over and sits across from me, his forearms resting on his knees. The sleeves of his hoodie ride up slightly, revealing old scars I recognize. We’ve both collected them over the years, some together, others separately.
“You remember when you told me,” he says after a beat, “that the worst thing someone could do to you after an injury was take away your choice?”
I glance up, surprised. “Yeah.”
“You were right, and I’m not here to do that.” He holds my gaze, steady and direct, the way he always has when he’s about to say something that really matters.
“I talked to your physical therapist,” he continues.
“Then I spoke with your doctor. Separately. Neither of them knew the other had already talked to me. They both said the same thing, that you’ve been working harder than most people half your age.
Your recovery isn’t luck; it’s a result of your determination and discipline.
They cleared you. Not conditionally. Fully. ”
The words land heavier than I expect. My pride swells first, followed immediately by unease. Clearance means possibility, and possibility means risk.
“I want you to take over Jamie’s position while she’s on leave.”
There it is.
I lean back, exhaling slowly. “You know I haven’t done private protection in years.”
“I know,” Orion says. “I also know you’re still one of the best operators I’ve ever trained with.”
“Let’s not forget your sister would rather eat broken glass than work with me.”
“She doesn’t have to like it, she just has to be safe.” Something in his voice shifts. “And I trust you more than anyone else on this planet with her life.”
The silence that follows is thick. I stare at the rubber flooring between my boots, chest tight with something I can’t quite name. Trust like that isn’t given lightly. Not by Orion. Not ever.
“She won’t want me around,” I say finally. “Not after everything.”
He nods once. “Probably not. But she’ll handle it, she’s a big girl.”
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Yes. You’re not just capable,” he says without hesitation.
“And you’re not done yet. Sitting alone with your ghosts isn’t healing, we both know you’re hiding.
” His gaze sharpens, but there’s warmth he reserves for a few people under it.
“This will give you purpose and structure. A reason to keep moving forward instead of circling the same regrets.”
My jaw tightens. He’s not wrong, and that might be the worst part.
He stands, stretching his arms as he walks away. He suddenly stops before turning back to me. “Lucian?”
My name, not my childish nickname.
I look up, meeting his steely gaze.
“I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but if you hurt her again,” he says evenly, “I will destroy you.”
“I wouldn’t,” I say. “Not intentionally.”
He nods. “I know.”
That’s it–no posturing or warning shots. Just trust, balanced with love and the kind of accountability only real friendship earns.
I sit alone in the half-lit gym, leg aching, chest tight, heart pounding with something dangerously close to hope.
And the question isn’t what did I just agree to?
It’s whether I’m finally ready to become the man Orion already believes I am.