Chapter 41 Wren
I wake up inside a cathedral made of breathing.
The first thing I register is weight: a forearm heavy across my waist, a thigh braced against mine, a palm cupping my knee like it’s a fragile thing someone taught him not to squeeze.
The second thing is the couch.
It shouldn’t be comfortable. It’s too short for more than one person to sleep on, and yet somehow three men turned themselves into furniture around me and made it feel like a bed.
My cheeks tip into a smile before my eyes even open.
I lift my lashes slowly.
Finn is behind me, nose tucked into my hair, breath a steady warm rhythm against the nape of my neck.
At some point in the night, he worked his arm beneath me and it’s there now, protective and possessive without trying to be either.
One of his hands is splayed over my stomach, fingers curved just enough to say stay.
Atlas is in front of me, half on the couch, half on the floor, massive frame contorted into a position that should be illegal and yet he looks.
.. peaceful. His hand is the palm cupping my knee, thumb resting in the hollow there like it belongs.
Kael sits on the rug with his back to the coffee table, long legs stretched out, head tipped back against the cushion near my hip.
His eyes are closed. His mouth is relaxed.
One of his fingers hooks loosely through a belt loop of my jeans like a tether he didn’t mean to tie.
No one warned me that safety looks like this.
I go very still and let my mind take a picture I can keep for the bad hours.
Finn breathes in, slow, a sigh that says awake before it says words. He doesn’t move his arm; he shifts his palm on my stomach like he’s easing a weight off my ribs. “Hi,” he whispers, voice sleep-rough and ridiculously tender.
“Hi,” I whisper back.
Atlas’s eyes open next—dark and clear immediately, like he never sleeps all the way.
He reads the room in less than a second: my face, Finn’s arm, Kael’s half-hooked finger, the windows, the door.
His gaze returns to me and softens enough that I feel it, a temperature change against my skin. “You okay?” he asks.
“I am,” I say, surprised by how true that is.
Kael doesn’t open his eyes. He speaks anyway, voice low. “Good.”
I stroke my thumb over the back of Atlas’s hand where it rests on my knee. His breath hitches almost imperceptibly. Finn’s fingers spread a fraction on my stomach, an unconscious claim. Kael’s hook loosens but doesn’t leave.
If I breathe too hard, I might cry.
Not because I’m overwhelmed—though I am.
Because I didn’t know I could feel this way and not be afraid of it.
Finn peels himself off the couch with exaggerated care, sliding his arm out from under me like he’s defusing a bomb.
He presses a kiss to the back of my head without thinking.
“Coffee,” he murmurs, and pads to the kitchen in socked feet like he’s lived here forever and knows where everything is, which he absolutely does not.
Atlas eases upright, stretches once, and winces. I reach out and touch the seam where his shoulder meets his neck, thumb working circles. He leans into it with a low sound that makes heat bloom in my chest. “I can’t feel my left leg,” he mutters, more amused than annoyed.
“That’s because you tried to fold yourself into furniture,” I say.
He grins, slow and crooked. “Worth it.”
Kael opens his eyes, blinks like he has to return to the world carefully, and pushes his hair back with his free hand. He doesn’t remove the finger from my belt loop until I sit up. Then he lets it fall.
“Bathroom?” he asks, practical.
I nod and slide carefully around Atlas’s knees. He stands as I do, like he’s ready to catch me if I wobble. I don’t. But the readiness lands anyway.
In the mirror, my hair is a disaster, my cheeks are flushed, and there’s a kiss-swollen softness to my mouth that makes me touch my bottom lip with the pad of my thumb and blush harder. For a second, guilt tries to climb up my spine—old training that says anything I want beyond safety is greedy.
I breathe.
Last night was safe.
Last night was wanted.
Last night was mine.
When I return, the room has shifted into morning.
Finn is at my counter humming, acting like the coffee maker is a mixer deck and he’s the headlining DJ at a love-fueled brunch.
Atlas is crouched by the baseboard heater with a screwdriver he found in my utility drawer, tightening the cover because one of the screws has been loose since I moved in and he noticed in the thirty seconds he walked past it.
Kael is standing at the window, two inches off the glass, blinds angled, eyes on the street with the kind of attention that steals guilt’s air and replaces it with gratitude.
My gratitude must be loud. Kael turns, registers my face, and relaxes the exact amount it takes to say everything here is fine.
Finn offers me a mug with two hands like it’s a gift he’s terrified I’ll refuse. “Warning: I guessed your ratio. If it’s wrong, I’ll throw myself out the window and try again.”
I take a sip. It’s perfect. I don’t know how he did that. “You’re insufferable.”
He lights up. “But accurate.”
Atlas slides the screwdriver back into the drawer with a clink. “Your latch was loose,” he says. “Fixed now.”
“Thank you,” I say, and mean more than the latch.
We eat toast and fruit at my tiny table, elbows bumping, knees brushing, the kind of quiet that doesn’t need to be filled.
Somewhere below my window a dog barks in short, insistent bursts.
Upstairs, Mrs. Rankin plays Sinatra too early and too loud.
The city is itself again and for once it doesn’t feel like a threat. It feels like the ground under my feet.
Finn tells a story about a youth-league tournament in Quebec and a bus that broke down on a bridge and a man named Lou in a reflective vest who saved them with a thermos of hot chocolate and a toolbox.
Atlas outlines a plan for rearranging my living room so my couch doesn’t block the heat like a criminal.
Kael checks his phone once and then face-downs it, a small defiance that reads as respect.
When the food is gone, I gather plates out of habit. Kael plucks them straight back out of my hands and sets them in the sink. “No.”
I blink. “No?”
“You don’t pick up after us in your own home,” he says, gentle but immovable.
I open my mouth to argue. Finn flicks water at me from the sink sprayer like a menace. “Captain’s orders.”
Atlas leans a hip against the counter, watching me with a look that makes arguing feel like refusing a gift I want.
I surrender with a laugh. “Fine.”
After dishes, the room slides into a late-morning laziness that makes my ribs expand all the way.
Finn sprawls on the rug and scrolls through the photos from our day—me in a scarf on the harbor, Kael pretending not to smile while Finn whispered something obscene, Atlas with snow in his hair pretending he didn’t care and caring anyway.
He picks the cannoli picture and sets it as his background.
“My lock screen is hot now,” he announces. “Rate it.”
Atlas pretends to scowl; his eyes are stupidly soft. Kael shakes his head. “Absolutely not.”
I take Finn’s phone anyway and look. The four of us in a rectangle of light: my mouth open midlaugh, Finn’s cheek pressed to my temple, Kael’s shoulder against mine so close it’s almost a lean, Atlas caught in profile like someone turned a statue human and taught it how to try.
I hand the phone back carefully, like it’s a fragile thing. “Ten.”
Finn’s grin could power a small city.
The clock nudges toward noon. The day has to happen eventually. Practice exists. Film sessions exist. The world doesn’t stop because I slept on a couch between three men and remembered how to be a person who wants.
Kael is the one who breaks the gentle spell without popping it.
“We need to make a plan,” he says, not to drag me back into fear, but to keep fear from sneaking back in on its own.
“Ops will send the crowd-camera packet before we head in. If there’s a match, we loop security.
If there isn’t, we treat it like a maybe until it’s a no. ”
Atlas nods, jaw flexing. “I’ll meet you at the rink early. I want a walk-through.”
“I’ll be with her,” Finn says immediately, like the words were waiting in his mouth for an opening. “We’ll go together.”
My instinct is to say I can go alone. My instinct is outdated.
“Okay,” I say instead. It surprises all of us a little.
Finn exhales like I just gave him permission to breathe.
Kael folds his arms, thinking. “Two practicals for you,” he says to me. “New number today. New phone if you want. We can have the team’s liaison set it up fast and port over what you ask for.”
I look at the drawer that holds the old one. The idea of turning it on makes my skin crawl. “New everything,” I say, quiet. “Please.”
“Done,” Kael says. He’s already texting, thumbs moving with quiet precision. “Second: tell your landlord maintenance needs to recheck the building fob system. We’ll get you a chain and door bar today. We’ll also run a quick pass through your fire escape and windows.”
“You’re not installing a camera in her bedroom,” Finn says, nose wrinkled at the thought.
Kael doesn’t blink. “No cameras inside. Common areas in the hall if the landlord agrees.”
Atlas’s gaze cuts to me. “And the door stays locked.”
I nod. “The door stays locked.”
It isn’t a rule that cages. It’s one that keeps a promise.
Finn stands and stretches, shirt riding up to show a sliver of skin that makes my brain go fuzzy for a dangerous second. “We should go in early,” he says, softer. “You want a ride, or you want us to meet you there?”
“Ride,” I say before I can overthink it.
Atlas retrieves my coat. Kael finds my scarf where I dropped it last night and wraps it around my neck with a care that makes my throat go tight. Finn disappears into the hall and returns with my tote bag because he noticed yesterday that I always forget it.
They move around my apartment like they’re part of how it works now.
Maybe they are.
We step into the hallway. Kael sweeps the stairwell with his eyes without making it look like a sweep. Finn takes the first step down backward just to watch me smile when I pretend to shove him. Atlas walks one pace behind, body big enough to make a shadow feel like a shield.
Outside, winter bites and I don’t flinch. The sky is pale. The air tastes like clean.
A kid in a Reapers knit hat recognizes Finn at the curb and practically vibrates out of his boots.
Finn signs his tiny glove and asks for the kid’s name like it’s the most important thing he’ll hear all day.
Atlas nods at the kid’s mom, a small and serious courtesy.
Kael scans plates and faces and then looks back at me.
“Ready?” he asks.
I am.
I didn’t plan to be.
At the SUV, Finn opens the back door and bows absurdly. “After you, Ms. Harper.”
I climb in, laughing. Atlas smothers a smile like he’s afraid it’ll get loose and break something. Kael mirrors Finn’s bow so dryly I snort.
We’re two turns from my block when my breath hitches.
Not because of a shadow.
Because of a thought that comes in so quietly I almost miss it.
I want this.
Not just the protection.
Not just the quiet.
Not just last night’s heat.
I want them.
All of them.
The realization swells, terrifying and gentle.
Finn glances back through the headrest gap, reading my face too easily. “Hey,” he says. “What’s that look?”
“Nothing,” I say, and then hear my own voice and try again. “Something good.”
Atlas makes a sound that lands between a question and relief. Kael’s mouth curves a millimeter.
By the time we reach the rink, my pulse is steady. My palms are dry. My heart does not try to crawl up my throat and escape.
Security holds the door for us. The building’s cold breath rolls over my face and whispers you belong here if you want to. I do.
In the trainer’s room, I wash my hands and set up my station. The drawer where the old phone sleeps is closed and will stay closed. The bottom of the cart holds tape, scissors, a spare hoodie I keep for players who forget theirs, and the new empty space where something heavy used to live.
Finn taps the glass from the ice—two fingers, quick, the new pattern that means hello, you okay, I’m here.
I lift my hand back. Atlas skates by, eyes finding mine, nod small but present.
He takes a lane where I can see him. Kael’s whistle slices the air and the machine of the morning shudders into motion.
I breathe.
The world is still big.
The fear is still real.
The past is still patient.
But today, the ground holds.
And I know who I’ll be looking for if it shifts.