Chapter 10 #2
"They're under your desk," he says. "Luca took the boys there when Samuel decided the footwell was the command center. I went for ice cream because the command center required supplies."
The floor steadies beneath me, but the relief comes with teeth. Grayson closes his eyes. Maceo lowers his phone. Rosalie pats Blake's cheek with sticky fingers and whispers that Samuel got vanilla on the rug, probably, but she didn't see it happen, so it might still be okay.
I go to my office.
The door's half-closed. The lights are low, the blinds drawn down to narrow strips of gray afternoon.
At first, all I see is my desk, the chair angled away from it, the merger packet still spread across the surface.
Then Samuel mumbles from somewhere below, sleepy and indignant, "It was dust. It had legs, but maybe dust can do that. "
I come around the desk and stop.
Luca's built the nest into the footwell.
Blankets are tucked into the narrow space under the desktop and layered out onto the rug.
A pillow braces one side, Rosalie's rabbit guards the other, and the blue blanket's pulled over James, who's asleep against Luca's thigh with his notebook open on his stomach.
Samuel's tucked on Luca's other side with ice cream on his nose, a plastic magnifying glass loose in one hand and the remains of a cone melting dangerously in the other.
Luca's half-awake, curls mussed, one arm around James and the other curved over Samuel's back.
He looks up at me with sleep-soft eyes and the tension of someone who's settled only because his body found a space it trusted.
I crouch because standing over them feels wrong.
Luca's hand comes from beneath the blanket and finds my knee. "Samuel found possible dust."
"It moved," Samuel mutters.
"It was near the baseboard," Luca says solemnly, though his mouth twitches.
Blake arrives behind me with Rosalie, Grayson just past his shoulder, Maceo in the doorway.
The room fills in layers. Rosalie leans out from Blake's hold and announces in a fierce whisper that Samuel's got ice cream on his nose.
Samuel says he knows. Luca tells him not to wipe it on the blanket.
Blake catches the drip sliding down Samuel's cone with a napkin before it reaches the rug.
Maceo looks at his phone and says he's recording the presence of ice cream during an unscheduled command-center event.
Luca's head lifts. "You're not logging emotional-support ice cream."
"I'm documenting context," Maceo says.
"It was for morale," Samuel adds without opening his eyes.
Blake sets the carrier on the corner of my desk. "Morale did improve."
Rosalie tries to lean farther out of Blake's arms to inspect the nest, and Grayson steps in automatically, napkins in one hand, blanket caught over his forearm, Luca's tea somehow balanced against his wrist. He steadies Rosalie with two fingers at her back, passes Blake a napkin, nudges the tea away from the desk edge, and reaches for the melting cone in Samuel's hand before it collapses.
He does all of it without seeming to notice that he's doing three things at once.
I lift Samuel before the cone can become a larger problem. He comes willingly, heavy and warm against my chest, his sticky cheek finding my shirt. When I tell him he did well with the command center and with saying what he felt about Dorian, his small fingers curl into my jacket.
"The shiny man wouldn't fit under your desk," he murmurs.
"No," I say, looking at the blankets Luca tucked into the safest hollow in my office. "He wouldn't."
Luca hears the promise beneath the answer.
His eyes move to mine and stay there until James shifts in his sleep.
Then the room starts moving again around us: Rosalie telling Maceo that Samuel's got nose cream, Blake saying there's no such thing as nose cream while wiping mint from her chin, Maceo taking Rosalie when Blake's arm dips with fatigue, Luca trying to free the blue blanket from where it's snagged under the desk leg, and Grayson holding the tea, the napkins, the cone, and the edge of James's notebook as if the whole room might tip if he puts anything down.
I take the tea from him first. Then the napkins. Then the blanket.
Grayson looks at his empty hands like he's not sure what happened to them.
"Look at me," I say softly.
He does.
Samuel is asleep between us now, gathered awkwardly against Grayson's chest, his cheek creased from the notebook spiral.
Samuel breathes vanilla into my collar. Rosalie's on Maceo's hip, whispering something serious about sticker rules.
Luca watches from the floor with one hand still on the blanket.
Blake stands near the desk, pale and quiet, his gaze flicking between all of us.
I step closer to Grayson and settle my hand at his waist, careful of James. He leans into me before he can hide it. The movement's small, but I feel it all the way through my chest.
"I've got him," Grayson says, meaning James, meaning probably all of them, meaning he always tries to.
"I know."
His throat moves. "Luther."
I kiss him there, in the middle of the mess, with James sleeping against him and Samuel half-asleep against me, with ice cream melting on my desk and Luca's nest still tucked under it.
The kiss is brief because the children are heavy and the day's still pressing at the door, but Grayson's hand catches my shirt when I start to pull back.
I stay.
His forehead rests near my jaw, and for once he doesn't immediately turn toward the next task. I keep my hand at his waist and my mouth near his hair.
"You keep trying to hold the whole room," I say.
His voice is low enough that the children don't hear it. "Someone has to notice where everyone is."
"I notice you."
That takes the rest of his answer from him.
His fingers tighten once in my shirt, and when he breathes in, it shakes.
He's tired. The truth's in the grip, in the lean, in the way he lets James's weight settle fully against him instead of adjusting, fixing, moving.
He doesn't need to say it for me to understand. He says it anyway, quiet and plain.
"I'm tired."
I press my mouth to his forehead. "I know."
No one makes a speech after that. Luca looks down at the blanket and wipes at Samuel's sleeve even though there's nothing there.
Blake turns his face away, jaw tight, guilt moving through his scent before he can bury it.
Maceo shifts Rosalie higher on his hip as the children fill the space the adults leave open.
Rosalie tells Maceo he's holding her wrong, Samuel mumbles that the command center needs a snack drawer, and James says something about corners without waking.
We get them out of my office in pieces, the way everything with children happens.
Luca carries the blue blanket because he refuses to leave it behind.
Blake gathers James's notebook and the ice cream carrier, then has to stop because Rosalie demands her rabbit from under the desk.
Maceo retrieves it without comment. Grayson carries James, slower now, his shoulder brushing mine as he passes.
I carry Samuel, whose fist stays tangled in my jacket until he's fully asleep.
At the doorway, I look back once.
The nest remains under my desk, dented by the shape of Luca and the boys. The rug's folded wrong. A pillow's wedged against the inner panel. Samuel's magnifying glass lies near the chair leg.
I leave it exactly as it is.
The rest room's only a short walk down the hall, and by the time we settle the children there, most of them are barely awake.
Rosalie curls between the boys and immediately complains that Samuel smells like ice cream.
Samuel says she smells like bossing. James opens one eye, tells them both that sleeping requires silence, and then falls back under before either of them can answer.
Luca tucks the blue blanket around them with careful hands.
Blake sits at the edge of the low bed for a moment, empty-handed and too still.
I rest my hand at the back of his neck as I pass. His pulse jumps beneath my palm. He doesn't tell me he's fine this time. That alone is progress.
When I return to my office, Grayson stays in the hall with Luca and the children, and Maceo resumes his place near the door without needing instruction.
The quiet in my office feels different now.
It's no longer the clean absence that sent panic through me.
It's the aftermath of bodies that chose shelter and left proof behind.
I sit carefully, keeping the footwell undisturbed, and pull the merger deck toward me.
The numbers are still bad. The timelines are still aggressive.
The projections still matter because Blake's right about what the deal could give us if it were clean.
But the language is where the intent lives, and once I read it with the nest beneath my desk, the polish starts to peel.
Family-forward trust. Sanctuary visibility.
Authentic recovery. Survivor-centered engagement.
Partnership narrative. The phrases sit in neat lines, professional and harmless until I measure them against Rosalie hiding her face in my jacket, James watching Dorian's hands, Samuel naming him shiny because that was the closest word he had for wrong.
Harmless until I remember Luca building a den under my desk and Blake's pulse tripping beneath his skin every time Victor routes authority around him.
I pick up my pen and begin cutting into the first page.
When Victor's assistant calls again, I let the phone ring until it stops.