16 - Haven
HAVEN
I’d finally found a seat at the table, so to speak. Sure, I was wedged into the last available inch of space between Caleb’s elbow and the wall, but hey, I was still there.
And that’s because I’d made it that way.
“I’m not standing,” I’d said again, earlier, when no one moved.
No one argued. No one made room for me, either.
And so I’d made my own.
I sat square shouldered, cradling my coffee like I belonged. Like I hadn’t spent the night somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.
Like nothing had changed.
Across the table, Zack was mid-story about something that sounded like it involved poor decision-making and even worse timing. No one was really listening, though. Everyone was buried in eggs, sausage, bacon and biscuits.
The room actually felt normal. Too normal. Like the house had collectively decided to pretend that last night never happened.
Good.
That made two of us.
I lifted my mug, which by now was cold. The coffee pot was full again, but warming it up would certainly lose my spot.
Heat. Cold. I tried hard not to think about those things. I didn’t want to remember how the chill in my body had disappeared last night, the very instant I’d—
NO.
I took a sip of my cold coffee instead, and ate the last crust of my toast. Focusing on that was the better choice, even if it delayed the inevitable for only a few more seconds.
Then, inevitably, I looked.
Across the table, Sebastian sat angled slightly away, his attention fixed very deliberately on something Caleb was saying. He hadn’t looked at me once. Not when I came down, not when I sat, and certainly not now.
Which was… fine. Expected, even.
And probably smart.
I went to look away, but he glanced up at the last minute. His eyes found mine — just for a split-second — and then immediately shifted away again. Far too quickly to be comfortable.
I stared down into my coffee again.
Right. So we’re doing that.
It was fine, I convinced myself. Better actually. Cleaner and easier to pretend nothing happened, if neither of us were willing to acknowledge it.
I dared to reach for a piece of bacon, as Zack laughed at his own story. Someone threw a piece of toast at him. Dorian spilled juice on himself, for the second time since sitting down.
It was normal. All of it. Except—
“Hey!” Asher said suddenly, looking at me.
I didn’t look up right away. The piece of bacon still dangled guiltily between my fingers.
“Yeah?”
“You weren’t in your room last night.”
And there it was.
I set my coffee down slowly, as I brought the bacon to my plate.
“Sure I was,” I said flatly.
He snorted.
“No. You weren’t.”
Finally I lifted my gaze, meeting his directly.
“And you would know that how?”
“I had to use the bathroom up there,” he said, leaning back. “In that refrigerator you call an attic.”
I said nothing. I only crunched bacon.
“First floor was a war crime,” he went on. “Second floor was clogged.”
“Zack,” Caleb muttered.
Zack clasped both hands and held them overhead, like he’d just won a trophy.
“Both floors?” Dorian grunted.
“Hey, I warned you guys.”
“You didn’t warn anyone,” Asher shot back. “You destroyed it, and walked away.”
“Semantics.”
A few of them laughed, and another piece of toast sailed across the table. I thought that’d be it. But—
“So I was up there, doing my business,” Asher went on, “and I didn’t see you.”
His eyes swept me again, and my pulse quickened. The bacon tasted like nothing.
“Maybe you didn’t look hard enough,” I suggested.
But Asher shook his head.
“Your door was open,” he said. “Blankets were thrown back. Bed was empty.”
Across the table, something changed. It was subtle at first, but then I saw it.
Ares.
He hadn’t said anything, or looked at me directly. But his posture was different now. His shoulders had hunched forward, and his jaw was clenched just a little bit tighter. It wasn’t anger, exactly. It was something different.
Next to him, Grayson murmured something into his ear. They glanced up at me for a moment, then both went back to eating.
Fuck.
Asher went back to slurping down his eggs, finally letting me off the hook. The room returned to normal. New conversations picked up, filling the space like nothing had happened.
But the damage, if any, was already done.
I drained the rest of my coffee, and finished my bacon with an inaudible sigh of resignation. Did it really matter? They could think what they wanted. Let them try to connect whatever dots they were trying to connect.
Across from me, Sebastian was still staring into his plate. The fact that he hadn’t looked up during the whole conversation — not even once — was starting to bother me. Way more than it should’ve.
I stood up, and got more coffee. Miraculously, my spot was still there when I got back.
“Big day,” Caleb said, off-handedly. “Mercer’s gonna run us into the ground before tomorrow.”
“Good,” Ares said.
It was the first thing he’d said all morning. His voice was flat, but there was something under it.
“We need it,” he added. “Badly.”
Grayson nodded once. “Phantoms don’t give you any space,” he said. “We play like we did last game, they’ll shut us down before we even get going.”
No one argued with that, because they all seemed to know it was true. Tomorrow’s game against the Hudson River Phantoms was a big one. Huge one, actually.
I leaned back a little, cradling my now warm mug, watching as the conversation evolved into something constructive. The guys switched seamlessly into game mode. They began talking lines, matchups, adjustments. All things I could work on. All things I understood, and could help control.
Across the table, Ares finally looked at me. Just for a second, but long enough. His expression was measured, and totally unreadable. His eyes shifted away just as quickly, as if unwilling to give me another thought.
Grayson, however, didn’t look at me at all.
And that, I realized, was its own kind of attention.