Chapter 13
Blake
Maceo hasn't sat down once. He keeps moving through the living room in a slow, methodical circuit, checking the locks, the alarm panel, the patio door, the narrow line where the blinds meet the window frame.
Nothing about him looks frantic. That'd be easier to stop.
Maceo doesn't panic in ways that ask to be interrupted.
He turns worry into procedure, into quiet hands and steady steps and the kind of silence people mistake for calm because they don't know how hard he's listening.
I'm on the sofa with a tablet balanced against my thigh, pretending to read code I stopped understanding ten minutes ago.
The words have blurred into blocks of light, and my heart gives one small, irritated flutter every time my body reminds me that rest isn't a negotiation I can win by ignoring it.
Luca sits at the other end of the sofa with both hands wrapped around a cup of tea that's gone cold.
He hasn't drunk it. I haven't commented.
Tonight feels full of things we're not commenting on because naming every wound would take more energy than any of us have left.
Maceo checks the patio door again.
Luca sees me watching him. His eyes move from my face to Maceo's hand on the lock, then to the hallway Maceo keeps tracking every few seconds.
The look Luca gives me is small, but I understand it immediately.
We've both seen Maceo hold a room before.
We've both watched him become a wall when danger gets too close.
This is different. He's not only protecting us.
He's standing outside the warmth he's trying to preserve, as if the safest place for him is still the edge.
"He hasn't stopped moving," I say, low enough that it stays between me and Luca.
Luca sets the tea on the table. The cup meets the coaster with a soft sound that makes Maceo's gaze flick toward us before it returns to the window. Luca's mouth softens, not into comfort exactly, and not into mischief either. Something gentler than both. "No," he says quietly. "He hasn't."
Maceo turns from the patio door before either of us can call him. He's heard the shape of his name in the room even without the word. "The west corridor lagged today," he says, as if the explanation's been waiting. "It was corrected, but I want the morning report before I stop tracking it."
"You supervised the correction," I tell him, setting the tablet facedown beside me. "You watched them run the test twice."
His jaw shifts, not quite stubbornness, not quite concession. "I want to be certain."
"You are certain." Luca rises from the sofa and crosses the room with the blanket still slipping from one shoulder.
He doesn't crowd Maceo. He stops close enough that Maceo has to look at him instead of the hall.
"You've checked the house. You brought me tea.
You made Blake eat half a sandwich before he noticed what you were doing.
You stood outside the children's rooms until Samuel told you the floor creaks less if you stand on the rug. "
Maceo's gaze moves to me for a second, and I see the faint tightening around his eyes.
He wants to turn this into logistics. He wants to say that the sandwich matters because my pulse was too fast and the children matter because Dorian scared them and the house matters because one wrong man got too close to Luca in a hallway where no one could prove a thing.
All of that's true. None of it changes the fact that Maceo's still standing.
"I'm making sure everyone's safe," he says.
I stand carefully, because Luca'll notice if I don't, and cross to them.
Maceo's attention snaps to my body before my face, the same way it has all evening, checking for a stumble, a hitch in my breath, a hand pressed too long over my chest. I hate that I love him for it.
I hate that he sees every weakness and turns it into a reason to stand farther from the bed.
When I stop in front of him, I set my hand against the center of his chest. His heartbeat's steady beneath my palm, controlled in the way Maceo controls most things about himself. It should reassure me. It doesn't. It only tells me how much he's holding down.
"The children are asleep," I say. "Luther's in his office. Grayson's resting. Luca's here. I'm here. The doors are locked."
Maceo looks at the hallway again.
Luca slips his hand into Maceo's, and the movement draws his attention back more effectively than my voice does.
Luca lifts their joined hands and presses his mouth to Maceo's knuckles.
It's a small kiss, gentle and almost painfully tender, but Maceo's shoulders move as if it reaches something under the bone.
"You keep making the room safe," Luca says. "But you're not in it with us."
Maceo's fingers close around his. "I'm here."
"No," I say, not sharp enough to cut, but firm enough to hold him where he is. "You're near us. That's not the same thing."
The words land. I feel the change through my palm before I see it on his face.
Maceo doesn't look wounded. That'd be easier.
He looks like a man who's been given an instruction in a language he understands but hasn't used on himself in a long time.
His hand comes up, covering mine against his chest, and for one breath all three of us are connected there: Luca at his hand, me over his heart, Maceo finally looking at both of us instead of past us.
"I'm not trying to leave you outside," he says.
"I know." Luca steps closer, his shoulder brushing Maceo's arm. "That's why we're coming to get you."
I hook my fingers into the front of Maceo's shirt and tug once.
It's not enough to move him unless he lets it be.
For a second, he only watches me, silver eyes tired and too awake, then he follows.
Luca keeps hold of his hand as we guide him down the hall toward the bedroom, not rushing, not making it a game.
The house is quiet around us. A faint strip of light shows beneath Luther's office door.
Somewhere upstairs, one of the children turns over in sleep, the floor giving a soft complaint under the shift.
Maceo hears it. I know he hears it because his body almost turns.
I stop walking and look back at him.
His mouth tightens. Then he stays with us.
The bedroom's dim, lit by the lamps Luca left on earlier when he came upstairs to breathe through what Dorian had done.
The bed's still unmade from where he'd curled under the blankets with Grayson's sweater and one of Luther's pillows, trying to bury the smell of floor wax and conference-room air under home.
It smells like cedar, clean sheets, Luca's sweetness, and the faint smoke of Luther's scent caught in the blankets.
Maceo pauses just inside the doorway, his gaze moving over the windows, the bathroom door, the shadowed corner near the dresser.
I close the door before he can begin another circuit.
The click's small. His eyes move to the handle anyway.
"Maceo," I say, and wait until his gaze returns to me. "Leave it closed."
His breath moves out slowly. "Blake."
"Don't make my name into an objection." I step close enough to touch him again, my hand settling at his waist. "You've spent all night making sure no one gets through the door. Now you're going to let the door do its job."
Luca moves behind him and sets both hands on his shoulders, his thumbs pressing into the tension there. Maceo's eyes close for less than a second before he forces them open. Luca notices. I notice. Neither of us lets it pass.
"You can stop listening for a little while," Luca says near his ear. "We'll hear what needs hearing."
Maceo gives the smallest shake of his head. "That's not how it works."
"Tonight it is." I guide him backward until the backs of his legs meet the bed.
He could refuse us easily. We all know that.
He could plant his feet and become immovable, and neither Luca nor I could do a damn thing about it.
But his hands settle at my waist and Luca's wrist, and when I press him down, he sits.
The sight of him there does something quiet and complicated to me.
Maceo's too large for uncertainty, or maybe that's only what people think when they've never been close enough to see the softness he keeps tucked beneath discipline.
He sits on the edge of the bed in his dark slacks and crisp shirt, shoulders broad, hands still ready to help, ready to catch, ready to be useful the second anyone gives him a reason.
He looks like he's waiting for our need to turn into his next task.
I step between his knees and take his face in both hands.
"You're not here to work," I tell him.
His eyes hold mine. "I know."
"You don't."
Luca's hands move over his shoulders, slower now, warming rather than kneading. "Let us want you without turning it into something you have to manage."
Maceo looks back at Luca, and whatever he sees there makes the hard line of his mouth falter.
Luca leans down and kisses the side of his neck, not as a distraction, not to hurry him toward anything, but because he can.
Because Maceo's seated in our bed and close enough to be kissed.
Because the man who touches everyone else with such steady care deserves to feel hands on him with no emergency attached.
I begin unbuttoning Maceo's shirt.
He immediately lifts his hands to help.
I catch one wrist and press it gently back to his thigh. "No."
His brows draw together.
I don't smile. I don't soften it into teasing. "Let us."
The words settle between us, and for a moment I think he'll argue.
Not because he doesn't want this. Want's already darkening his eyes, already changing the shape of his breathing.
He wants. He simply doesn't know where to put his hands when they're not protecting, fixing, steadying, carrying.
Luca solves that by taking one of them and placing it against his own cheek, turning his face into Maceo's palm.