Chapter 34 Lucian #2
“It’s so nice to meet you, too. I’ve heard a lot of things about you; it’s great to finally put a face to the name. By the way, I love that outfit; it looks really good on you. I used to have one like it.” There’s a small, almost wistful note in the way she says it.
“No way. Small-world wardrobe twins.” Kelsey laughs, then nods toward me.
I glance at my phone: one minute past the session. If I let this run, we’ll be on for another hour. “Thanks, Kelsey. I’ll see you next session,” I say, and end the call before she can answer.
The screen blissfully goes black as I turn my attention to Celeste.
She looks a little guilty, like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t, but the sight of her hits me so fast and so deep that whatever she’s hiding doesn’t even register.
She’s holding a bottle of water, cheeks flushed, hair a little messy like she rushed out here the second she heard my alarm.
Celeste looks like she stepped straight out of a daydream I didn’t realize I was having.
“You okay?” I ask?
Her mouth curves in a slow, wicked smile that goes straight to the center of my chest, and she hands me the water. “Yeah, I’m just enjoying the view.”
It takes me a beat to realize she means me.
My brain short-circuits in the most undignified way. I take the bottle mostly, so I have something to hold that isn’t her. The air between us shifts, familiar in a way that makes my chest loosen and my pulse settle into something deliberate.
I clear my throat. “The view, huh.”
“Yeah. I can’t help it. I’ve missed this view,” she says, and the words are half confession, half dare.
And just like that, whatever irritation Kelsey left me with evaporates. Burned off like fog under sunlight.
I tell myself a shower will be quick, then I can come back and give her my full attention, the slow, deliberate kind she deserves. I push the door to head inside and stop dead because the living room has been commandeered.
What.
The.
Fuck.
He’s in the middle of the floor in full regalia, cape and crown and all, strutting like he’s been born to it, and Celeste is standing behind me with her hands half-raised and her face the exact color of someone who’s been caught doing something ridiculous and is trying very hard not to laugh out loud.
She makes a sound that’s equal parts guilty and delighted, and then, because she can’t hold it in any longer, she blurts it out: “Orion dropped him off earlier wearing this.”
I blink. “What?”
She nods, biting the inside of her cheek until she looks like she might split, and then she adds, as if the detail will make it worse and better at the same time, “Sir Sassafras won’t let me take it off. I tried. Twice. He hissed at me like I was committing treason.”
A laugh escapes her as she leans against the doorframe.
Her eyes shine with unshed tears at her brother’s mischief.
“Orion said something about payback,” she says, wiping at her eyes, her tone part explanation, part apology.
Her laugh starts in her chest and then fights its way up, and makes the room tilt toward something lighter.
She wipes at her eyes, trying to tamp it down, and when she looks at Sir Sassafras again, she manages, between breaths, “He really is Sir Sassafras the Sassy Ass Cat, isn’t he? ”
I can’t help the smile that pulls at my mouth. “That’s not inaccurate.”
“Do you think his old owner dressed him up and that’s how he got his name?”
The image is ridiculous enough that I let out a laugh of my own. Then I confess, because why not add fuel to the fire: “When I adopted him, we went to the pet store and he tried to get me to buy a silver leather jacket with studs.”
Celeste chokes on air and then loses it completely, the sound turning into a high, helpless peal that makes her shoulders bounce.
She claps a hand over her mouth and leans forward, eyes bright and wet with laughter.
“He did not,” she gasps between breaths.
“Please tell me you let him get his studded jacket.”
“I didn’t, and when I told him no, he threw a fit and knocked it on the ground,” I deadpan, and the absurdity of defending my distaste in feline fashion is exactly the kind of thing that makes both of us dissolve. We look over at Sir Sassafras at the same time.
He’s now perched on the fireplace mantle like it’s his throne, cape draped perfectly, crown tilted at a rakish angle, and the sight of him is absurd, regal, and so utterly unconcerned with the chaos he’s caused, it pushes us over the edge.
We both start laughing again, the sound spilling out of us until it’s almost painful, until Celeste’s shoulders shake and she starts to wheeze, clutching at her ribs as if the laughter might actually split her in two.
Sir Sassafras blinks down at us with the bored disdain of a monarch who has tolerated enough peasantry for one evening.
Celeste wheezes harder.
And just like that, the night settles around us, ridiculous, warm, and exactly what it needed to be.