Chapter 32 Kael #2
“Then you don’t answer,” I say without heat. “You hand it to me. Or you set it face-down and keep your hand on her.”
His gaze flicks to me like he’s measuring whether I’ll actually take it from him in the moment. He knows the answer. I won’t have to. He’ll want me to.
Finn knocks his heel against the cabinet and looks at the doorway again, drawn like a tide. “She’s really asleep?”
“Down enough,” I say. “She’ll cycle. If she wakes, she’s not waking alone.”
The word alone makes all three of us go still for a second. It’s the word we’re fighting, more than any name.
Finn clears his throat. “She told me one more thing last night.”
Atlas and I both look at him.
He wets his lips. “That he’s... believable. To other people. Charming in small doses. Works crowds. That’s how he gets the benefit of the doubt.”
I don’t let the anger pull my face tight; I let it cool. “So we don’t tell the story for her. We don’t try to convince anyone of anything. We build a record she owns. We help without replacing her voice.”
Finn nods, grateful that I said what he didn’t know how to ask.
Atlas’s mouth is a thin line. “If he shows up—”
“If he shows up,” I say, “he doesn’t get within ten feet of her.”
He digests the number. “Ten feet’s generous.”
“It’s legal,” I say. “And if he crosses it, the next number is zero.”
Finn lets out a breath that shakes on the way down. “I hate that this is already a plan.”
“I hate that she needed it months ago,” I say. “We’re late. We do it right to make up for the time.”
Silence again. Not empty. Not comfortable. Heavy with the shape of something turning into purpose.
I top off their glasses—half pours this time—and raise mine without ceremony. “To the plan. To the line. To not letting him own a single inch more of her life.”
Finn clinks lightly, mouth set. “To showing up when she asks.”
Atlas taps his glass against ours like a vow, not a toast. “To ending this when she wants.”
We drink. The burn is cleaner now, or maybe I’m getting used to it.
Finn slides off the counter and paces exactly three steps before he catches himself and stops. “You think she’ll keep the phone off?”
“Tonight,” I say. “Tomorrow’s her call. We make every option easy.”
Atlas tilts his head. “Easy?”
“Simple choices,” I say. “Turn it on with us in the room. Turn it on after practice. Leave it off until she’s ready. No pressure disguised as advice. No shame if she changes her mind five times.”
Finn huffs a breath that’s almost a laugh. “You practice being this sane?”
“I learned it,” I say.
Atlas looks at me for a long beat, something like understanding passing between us without touching. He drains what’s left in his glass and sets it down with care. “I’m taking first hallway shift.”
“You’re not sleeping there all night,” I say.
“I didn’t say I was sleeping,” he says.
Finn glances at the clock. “I’ll take the couch. If she wakes up and doesn’t want to call out, she’ll text me.”
“She’ll text the thread,” I say.
He nods, already pulling his phone and opening the group chat, dropping a simple message that means we’re awake if you are: Finn: Lights low, door cracked. I’m outside.
Three dots pop up, then disappear. They aren’t hers. They’re mine; I type Copy, then Atlas: Hall. The thread looks like a floor plan now. It calms me more than the scotch.
“Kael,” Atlas says, pausing at the doorway, “you going to sleep?”
“Eventually,” I say.
Finn looks between us. “He’s skating tomorrow at six.”
“I’ll skate at six,” I say. “I’m captain at two.”
He doesn’t argue because he knows the order of those truths in me.
Atlas nods once and moves into the hallway, presence filling a space that was too empty a half hour ago. Finn shoulders into the couch, pulls the throw to his chest, and stares up at the ceiling like it might give him instructions if he asks nice enough.
I rinse the glasses and set them upside down on the rack. The kitchen goes back to quiet.
When I turn to the doorway, the apartment feels different again. Not smaller. Not bigger. Aligned. Like the furniture shifted a quarter-inch where it always should have been.
On my way back to the bedroom, I stop at the hall and meet Atlas’s eyes. “Ten feet,” I say.
He nods.
“And soft,” I add.
He grimaces. “I heard you the first time.”
I let the corner of my mouth tilt. “You were listening to the part you liked.”
He snorts, almost a laugh, then sobers. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For saying the parts I don’t know how to say without breaking something.”
“Break the right thing,” I say. “We’ll point when it’s time.”
Finn’s voice drifts up from the couch. “If you two are done flirting, some of us are trying to stare the ceiling into behaving.”
Atlas flips him off without turning his head. I shake mine and step back into the bedroom.
Wren hasn’t moved much. One hand has crept toward the empty space where my palm was. I slide my fingers there again, not to wake her, just to let her body know that the promise from before wasn’t a temporary one.
Her breath evens out another fraction.
In the doorway, the hall light pools like a small moat—Atlas’s shadow on one side, Finn’s soft rustle on the other. The world doesn’t feel fixed. But it feels held.
Adrian Frost exists in the dark between rooms we haven’t locked down yet. He knows her number. He knows fear. He knows persistence.
He doesn’t know us.
Not like this.
I look at her sleeping face and don’t try to untangle what I feel. There’s time for that when the ground is steadier. For now, the equation is simple:
She asked.
We answered.
And we will keep answering until her body believes the question is gone.
I keep my hand where it is, count five of her breaths, and let the plan hum in my head like the rink lights do at two a.m.
First shift: Atlas, hall.
Second: me, chair.
Third: Finn, couch.
Morning: coffee, quiet, options.
If he calls—her choice.
If he texts—her choice.
If he shows—ours.
Ten feet.
Zero if he crosses it.
I sit. I don’t watch the door. I watch Wren’s shoulders rise and fall. The scotch warms my chest. The night holds.
And for the first time since she said his name out loud, I believe we can make it through to morning without giving Adrian Frost anything else that belongs to her.