Chapter Twenty-Five
DELANEY
Marc’s hands were tight on the steering wheel.
Not white-knuckled. They stayed firm. His hands at ten and two, no deviation. He sat ramrod straight, like even a fraction of a movement might change the trajectory of the future. That if he relaxed for a second and things fell apart, it would be his fault.
By the time we reached the end of the block, neither of us were talking. The noises from the class had fallen away, leaving only the quiet hum of the engine and the soft rhythm of our breathing.
He didn’t turn on the radio.
I didn’t reach for it, either. We travelled in the silence of two people who knew something the rest of the world didn’t.
Theo was probably already home now, likely replaying Tucker finding Mia and Marmalade finding Doug and Sienna, texting shelter staff who weren’t on duty tonight about it. Riding that specific high of watching something you believed in working out.
We hadn’t told him yet.
Marc had decided to let Theo have tonight. I was in agreement. The weight of next Friday could find him in the morning or on Monday.
If I had any remaining doubt about the kind of man Marc Kingsley was, that decision would have settled it.
“Tonight went really well,” I said.
“It did.” His answer was flat. Tired.
I laid my hand on his thigh. Felt the muscles beneath my palm tighten once and then release. “I know it feels like a week isn’t enough time.”
“It’s what we have.”
His thigh flexed again under my hand—once, twice—like his body couldn’t stay still.
His gaze stared straight ahead on the road, but had taken on that distant quality I’d started to recognize as his internal spiral.
His thumb tapped the steering wheel. Stilled.
Then started repeating the same pattern.
I knew what it meant.
He was running scenarios, step-by-step, variable by variable.
If this happened, or another thing failed, he could pivot and do something else. Every possible outcome, every weak point, every way this could go wrong next week, lined up and tested all in his head.
And he wouldn’t stop. Not until he’d run through all of it. Not unless I interrupted the loop and got him out of head.
“It is,” I said. “And we’ll do it together.”
A single stiff nod. His eyes stayed on the road. “Where do you want to go tonight?”
“My place, if that's okay.”
He flinched. “Of course. I’m in a terrible mood. You’re right to want to go home.”
I stared at him. “You can be a spectacularly dumb man when you put your mind to it.”
His head turned fast and the look of surprise on his face was genuine and unguarded. “What?”
“With me. I want you to be at my place. With me. Can your family check on Chaos?”
“Of course, I’m sure one of them will. I can text them. But we don’t have anywhere to sleep.” He stopped. Snapped his mouth shut. It didn’t matter that he only stated the obvious.
I winced.
“Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Marc.”
“I know. I—”
“Stop.” I squeezed his thigh. “I’m okay. You’re in your head. I get it. You didn’t mean anything by it.”
He exhaled through his nose.
Soon, we’d turned onto Main Street, then down the small alleyway beside my building to the tiny parking spaces in the back. He cut the engine and sat there with his hands on the wheel.
“Maybe I should—”
“Kingsley.”
His head snapped toward me, his attention hitting me all at once.
“Will you shut up and get your beautiful, tight ass up and into my apartment right this instant?”
His mouth tilted up in the corner. “Tight ass, huh?”
“That’s what you’re focusing on?”
“It’s a good detail.”
“Get out of the car.”
He got out, and the second I reached for the door handle, his voice cracked through the dark lot. The door opened from the other side. “I will open your door for you.”
“Can I get out now, sir?” I practically purred the last word.
His eyes went dark at the edges. His voice followed, deeper. “Fucking hell, Delaney.” A warning that wasn’t really a warning at all.
He took my hand to help me out of the car and used his other hand to adjust himself. I took great pleasure in knowing that one word got to him.
I kissed his cheek. “Thank you for being so sweet.”
“The thoughts I’m having about you are definitely not sweet,” he muttered beside my ear.
“Tell me about it later,” I said. “Come on.”
I hadn’t been here much this week, but as always, the smell hit me on the landing.
It always did. Every time I put my key in the lock and pushed the door open, the apartment exhaled—old wood, dried herbs, the particular warmth of a space that had been lived in full-time.
Aunt Jem’s smell. Not her perfume, not any single thing I could point to.
Just: her. The accumulated presence of someone who had loved a place and had been loved in it.
I stood in the doorway for one long breath. I’d missed being here.
Marc didn’t rush me. He waited on the landing with the patience that was just part of how he was built. His hand was on my lower back. Not pushing. Just there for support.
I went in.
He followed, taking in the space. Not commenting, not filling the silence with observation the way some people did.
He just looked around. The crystals on the windowsill caught the low lamp.
The stacks of books lined every surface because I hadn’t been able to bring myself to put them away with intention.
Two mugs sat on the counter because my hands had done it before my brain caught up, the same way they always did in this kitchen.
Muscle memory. Aunt Jem had that effect. Her kitchen trained you.
I filled the kettle, set it on the burner, and reached for the tin without looking at the label because I didn’t need to.
Chamomile. A little lemon balm. The dried lavender she grew herself on the kitchen windowsill that I’d been rationing because I had no idea how to grow it and the supply was finite.
“She made terrible coffee,” I said while watching a kettle that didn’t need to be watched.
Marc settled into a chair at the small table. “Yeah?”
“Refused to get a pod machine. Said the coffee wasn’t the point anyway.” The kettle ticked softly as it warmed. “She said it was the tea that actually helped. The coffee was just caffeine, but the right tea was medicine. She had knowledge about which ones were for which ailment.”
“Was she right?”
“Always.” I smiled at the tin. “It drove me crazy. I wanted to catch her being wrong, just once.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
The kettle reached its slow simmer, and I poured.
I brought the mugs to the table and sat beside him instead of across.
He curled both hands around the ceramic, and I watched his shoulders drop a fraction as the warmth moved into his palms. His eyes were starting to glaze.
The specific quality of a mind running too many calculations at once, losing the present to the logistics of next week.
“Marc.”
He surfaced.
“It was a good class,” I said. “We’ll make next week better. Everything that can be planned has been planned. There’s nothing left to organize.”
“You’re right.” He sipped his tea.
I gave him a soft smile. “I’m not trying to shut you down. Tell me what you’re most worried about.”
He looked at me, a small pause—just enough to tell me I’d caught him off guard, not by the question, but how directly I stated it. “Theo. And how disappointed he’ll be if this doesn’t go well. He asked me to help, and I said yes. I need that to mean something.”
I covered his hand with mine. “You showing up meant something the moment you said yes. That’s already done. It doesn’t depend on a committee to make it so.”
“You’re right. Logically, I know that. Getting my brain to slow down and accept it, not so much.”
“I get it.”
He was quiet. “Help me get out of my head,” he said.
“The table probably won’t be able to take a lot of rocking, but we could use the couch.” I glanced at my small living room. “Or the floor—”
When I stood he tugged me into his lap before I finished the sentence, one smooth motion, and found the curve of my neck with his mouth.
A shiver ran up my spine.
His arms wrapped tight around me as he nipped at the spot that made rational thought temporarily unavailable. I moaned his name.
“I want you,” he said against my skin.
“God, I want you too.”
He pulled back. Looked at me with those eyes that had always seen more than I’d given him credit for. “I don’t want to use you to drown this out. I don’t want it to be that.”
I blinked and tried to focus. “I’m genuinely okay with being used right now.”
“Delaney,” he growled as though his control might snap.
I grinned. “Marc.”
He stood, taking me with him, and landed one firm open-palmed swat on my ass that I was absolutely not going to admit I enjoyed. “Don’t be a brat.”
I widened my eyes in theatrical innocence and looped my arms around his neck. “Me?”
His forehead came down to rest against mine. “Tell me what you need. Something I can do for you.”
“I …” I thought about it seriously.“There’s a shelf that needs to be put up in the bathroom that I haven’t gotten around to.”
He pressed a quick kiss to my mouth and stepped back. “Done. If you don’t have tools, I have some in my car.”
“Theoretically, I do.”
He gave me a look.
“Half my toolbox may be missing,” I admitted.
“I’ll get mine.” He was already moving toward the door. “Now I know what to get you for Christmas.”
The words landed in a way that excited me.
Christmas. Seven months away. The casual certainty of it—the way he’d said it like it would simply happen, like he was already there in December looking back at this night—sat in the center of my chest and took up space.
The soft smile slipped through before I could rein it in, and I didn’t look away fast enough. His gaze shifted tracking the change. “As long as you don't get tired of me by then,” he said, half-serious, half teasing.
“I don’t think that’ll happen. You’ve got a lot of layers for me to unwrap, Kingsley. I figure I need at least that long to get through half of them.”