Chapter 23 Celeste
Celeste
Our room is half-lit, the curtains still holding the city at bay.
We are a tangle of limbs and blankets, so close that it feels like a small, private repair.
Lucian’s chest rises and falls under my cheek.
His arm is heavy across my waist, thumb tracing slow, absent circles along my hip.
Room service is on its way; he ordered something simple and indulgent and then decided neither of us should get dressed or out of bed until it arrived.
We’ve spent the morning talking in fragments, the way people do when they are trying to catch up without making it an interrogation.
The tour prep, his recovery. The nights he stayed up working on homework from his physical and cognitive therapists, and the nights I pretended I wasn’t lonely.
It is messy and honest, and at this moment, it’s easy.
His voice is low and steady, and it makes the rest of the world recede.
The knock at the door arrives at the same time my stomach growls.
“Stay,” he says around a chuckle. “It should be our room service. I’ll get it. Don’t move.”
I can already taste the coffee. Lucian shifts carefully and reaches for the prosthetic at the foot of the bed.
Just as he lifts it, the sound at the door changes.
It is not the polite retreat of a hotel attendant; instead, it’s the soft scrape of metal, the quiet curse of someone who thinks a lock is stubborn. The handle turns.
Lucian pauses, dropping his prosthetic and reaching for his gun. The room goes thin with the sudden, sharp possibility that this is not our breakfast at all.
The door opens, and a familiar silhouette slips through. Orion’s carrying our room service tray, a grin already on his face like he’s about to make a joke.
Then his eyes find us.
My stomach drops. I scramble, clumsily reaching for the blanket as I pull it up to my neck, heat flushing my face. Lucian’s gun is still in his hand, the dark metal shining in the light. He’s half-turned, with only a sheet covering his hips, the line of his bare shoulder tense.
Orion’s grin freezes. The tray tilts as the smile drains from his face, as something harder slides in. He sets the tray down with a sound that is too loud in the quiet room.
“Orion,” Lucian says, his voice low, already defensive.
My brother’s gaze cuts between us, jaw tightening as he takes in the obvious: we are in bed together, and Lucian is clearly naked under the covers. Heat floods my face. I want to disappear into the mattress.
“Seriously?” Orion’s tone is sharp enough to cut glass. “Not even a damn pillow wall? You could not—what?—pretend to keep it PG?”
I flush hot, pulling the sheet tighter around me. “It’s not—”
Orion’s brows shoot up as he cuts me off. “Do not say it is not what it looks like, Celeste. Because it is exactly what it looks like.”
Lucian swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, pulling a robe on as he ties it at his waist. His face hardens into that look he gets when he’s lost his patience—quiet, controlled, the kind of calm that means he’s already decided how this ends.
“This was the last room in a thirty-mile radius,” he says, voice flat.
He snaps back, sharp and loud enough to cut through the quiet. “So what? You couldn’t act like fucking adults and not crawl all over each other in the middle of the night. How long has this been going on?”
My mouth opens and closes. The sensible answers line up in my head and then trip over each other. “It’s really not like that,” I start, but the words tangle and fall apart before I can get them out.
Orion narrows his eyes. “Then what is it?”
The truth is on the tip of my tongue before I can stop it. “We’re figuring out what it is, we’re trying again.”
Orion’s brows pull together. “Trying again?”
Shit.
Orion’s head snaps toward me, his expression folding as the pieces click into place. “Wait—again? As in—” He looks at Lucian, and the accusation in his eyes is sharp. “You two were together before?”
“Yes,” I say, voice small.
Orion lets out a humorless laugh and rubs a hand over his face. “Unbelievable. So while I was worrying about keeping you safe, you were sneaking around with him—back then and now?”
Lucian’s jaw tightens. “You think I don’t worry about keeping her safe?”
Orion’s anger shifts, not toward Lucian but at the omission. “This isn’t about that,” he snaps, voice rising. “It’s about you two keeping me in the dark. About you thinking I didn’t deserve to know.”
The room narrows to the three of us: the heat of embarrassment, the hard edge of betrayal, and the quiet, dangerous thing between Lucian and me that neither of them can name without breaking.
“Because it wasn’t your business,” Lucian shoots back, his own voice sharp.
“She’s my sister, Lucian,” Orion growls, stepping closer, “and you—”
“Don’t,” Lucian cuts him off, his jaw tight. The single word lands like a warning.
Orion hesitates for a beat. I see the flicker of guilt cross his face, quick and human, and then the scowl deepens. “It doesn’t mean I wanted to walk in and see this,” he says, motioning between us. “You could have said something. Either of you could have.”
My hands go to the blanket, and I pull it tighter, like armor. “It just happened last night. No one knows. We didn’t know you were going to break in with breakfast at the ass crack of dawn, Orion,” I snap, more defensive than I mean to be.
His jaw flexes. His expression twists into something halfway between annoyance and embarrassment. “It’s not dawn, it’s nine,” he says.
“Who fucking cares,” I mutter.
Orion makes a sharp, frustrated sound, halfway between a growl and a scoff. “Fine. Eat your damn food. I’ll just go fuck myself.”
“Orion—” I start, but he’s already moving.
He doesn’t look back as he stalks to the door, yanking it open. “Just figure out what the hell you two are doing,” he throws over his shoulder before stepping out and letting the door slam behind him.
A heavy, lingering silence settles after he leaves the room. Lucian exhales slowly, the tension in his shoulders easing a fraction as his gaze drifts to the closed door. He drags a hand down his face, then turns to me. The hardness in his eyes softens the second they meet mine.
“Are you okay?” He asks, his tone is careful, like I might crack if he pushes too hard.
I let out a shaky breath and lean back against the headboard, still clutching the blanket. “Yeah. I think so.” My mouth quirks into something that almost passes for a smile. “Honestly, I thought that was going to end way worse.”
Lucian’s brows lift, a ghost of a smirk tugging at his mouth. “Worse how?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug and let out a half laugh that feels like it loosens something. “I figured a confrontation with Orion would end in yelling, maybe something breaking. I definitely thought someone was going to get shot.”
A real smile finally reaches him. He shakes his head and props himself on one elbow. “Give it time. It’s still early.”
I snort and feel the tension in my shoulders ease a fraction. “Good point. Maybe we should get dressed and eat before he comes back and changes his mind about not killing you.”
He chuckles under his breath. His gaze lingers on me, something soft and unspoken in it. For a moment, the memory of the confrontation is gone, and the room is just the two of us again, fragile and steady at the same time.
I sit cross-legged on the bed, blanket still wrapped around my waist. Lucian leans against the headboard beside me, one knee drawn up. We eat more out of habit than hunger, hands moving on autopilot while our conversation fills the small spaces between bites.
My attention keeps snagging on the little things: the way his shoulder brushes mine when he reaches for his drink, the way his eyes flick to my mouth when I chew, the faint smirk that shows up every time he catches me staring. It is small and dangerous and somehow ordinary.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I mutter.
“Like what?” he asks, too innocent.
“Like you’re replaying the last twelve hours in your head.”
His smile slows, becoming dangerously devilish. “I’m offended you think I could forget.”
Heat curls low in my stomach, and I take another bite just to give my hands something to do.
The meal blurs into folded wrappers and emptied cups, the quiet broken only by the occasional look that says more than either of us will say out loud. When we finish, Lucian gathers the trash with efficient, controlled movements. Real life starts to creep back in.
He glances at the clock on the nightstand, then at me. “We should probably get ready.”
The word “should” hangs reluctantly between us.
“Yeah, today doesn’t pause because my brother walked in on us naked.”
“Talk about tragic,” he replies dryly.
I huff a laugh and slide off the bed, the blanket slipping off my naked body. Lucian’s appreciative gaze tracks the movement automatically before he catches himself and looks away with visible effort.
That small restraint does something to me.
I pad toward my suitcase, rummaging through my new clothes, acutely aware of him behind me. I can feel his attention like heat on my skin. When I straighten, I catch him watching me again, jaw tight, eyes unreadable.
“You’re doing that thing again,” I say.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you look at me like you’re deciding how much trouble you’re willing to risk.”
His mouth quirks. “I already crossed that line.”
“Clearly.”
He crawls across the bed on his knees, stopping just shy of the edge of the bed, crowding me. The proximity is deliberate and controlled in a way that makes my pulse stutter.
“A lot is going on today,” he says carefully.
His gaze flicks to the bathroom door, then back to me. Something shifts in his expression.
“Before we get dressed,” he says quietly, “we should probably shower.”
My breath catches. “Because—”
“Because we’re going to have to face the world,” he replies. “And I think you should be grounded before we do.”
It is the grounding that undoes me. Not the want or the need, just the composed: I want you steady.
I study his face, searching for the edge, the demand. What I find instead is restraint wrapped around need, like it’s taking real effort to hold it together.
“Together?” I ask.
He nods once. “Only if you want.”
There’s no hesitation in me. “I want.”
He moves toward the bathroom first, steadying himself with the wall and the cabinetry in a way that tugs at something tender inside me.
He hasn’t put his prosthetic back on, but he shifts with practiced ease, his movements economical in a way that speaks of the time he’s spent learning his body all over again.
He turns on the water before stepping into the shower, then shifts just enough to reach the built-in bench and lowers himself onto it.
The water hits his shoulders, rolling down his chest, steam rising around him in soft, curling waves.
There’s nothing self-conscious in the way he sits.
I follow him inside, and the heat wraps around me immediately, blurring the edges of the room until all I can see clearly is him. He looks up as I step closer, and there’s something in his eyes that makes my breath catch—a softness, a question, a kind of reverence I’m not sure I deserve.
“Can I wash you?” he asks, and the way he says it feels like an offering rather than a request.
“Yes,” I say, and the word feels steady in my mouth. “You can.”
He nods again, almost relieved, and reaches for the soap.
And that’s when I realize what I’m seeing: he hasn’t angled himself away or tried to hide the place where his body changed after the accident.
He’s sitting there without the prosthetic, without the careful positioning he has used in the past week to soften the moment, without the tension in his shoulders that tells me he’s bracing for my reaction.
He hasn’t let me see him like this without preparing himself first. But now he’s simply here, letting me take him in without apology or explanation, trusting me with a part of him he’s always tried to protect.
The realization settles deep in my chest, and I step closer before I can think better of it. The heat of the water, the closeness of the space, the way he watches me all fold together into something that feels fragile and enormous at the same time.
He lathers the soap in his hands, and when he looks up again, there’s a question in his eyes he doesn’t voice. I move toward him until the spray hits my shoulders too, until the warmth of him is something I can feel even without touching him.
I’m surprised by how steady I feel, how natural it is to stand here with him like this, and that the sight of him without his prosthetic doesn’t make me flinch or hesitate.
If anything, it draws me closer, because this is the man I’ve known and have missed, but is also so different from the man who spent so long trying to shield me from the parts of himself he thought were too much.
He shifts slightly on the bench, finding his balance with a familiarity that makes my throat tighten, and I reach out without thinking, letting my fingers brush through his loose, wet hair. He sighs, a quiet sound that feels like something inside him loosening.
“Turn around,” he murmurs, voice low and warm, and there’s something almost reverent in the way he says it, like he’s asking me to step into a moment he’s been holding open for me.
And I do.