Chapter 13
Vee
I open an eye to something being set on the nightstand.
Rhys is hovering next to the bed. All six-foot-something of him, barely fitting in the space between the nightstand and the wall, holding a glass of water with the careful concentration of a man defusing something.
He sets it down without a sound.
Looks up and finds my open eye.
"Morning," I say.
He nods and points at the water.
Then he leaves.
I lie there staring at the glass of water and the closed door trying to decide if I just dreamed that.
I didn't dream it. The water is right there.
I sit up, drink half of it and get out of bed.
The cabin is louder than it's been.
Not in a bad way. Just—fuller. More presence in every room, more scent layered into the air.
When I come downstairs Finn is at the counter making coffee with the dedication he brings to anything food or drink related, Malcolm is on the back porch visible through the glass door doing something with a stack of firewood, and Alex is at the kitchen table with his laptop open and his reading glasses on.
I stop on the last stair.
Alex in reading glasses is information I didn't have before and I'm not sure what to do with it. Apparently almost this entire pack has eye problems.
He looks up.
Takes in my expression.
Takes off the glasses.
"Don't," I say.
He pauses.
"Put them back on. I just wasn't expecting it."
His face morphs into amused. He puts the glasses back on with a careful neutrality that means he's trying not to look pleased about something.
"Coffee," Finn announces, holding a mug out to me. "Milk, one sugar."
"How do you always know when I'm on the stairs?"
"Sixth sense." He wiggles his fingers mysteriously. "Also the third step creaks."
I take the mug and wrap both hands around it.
"Where's Rhys?" I ask.
Finn and Alex exchange a look.
"He did the water thing again?" Finn asks.
"He did the water thing."
"He did it four times last night." Finn turns back to the coffee maker with the air of someone reporting a weather pattern. "Once at midnight, once at two, once at four, and once at six. Alex made him stop at six because we could all hear him on the stairs."
I look at Alex.
"He's very large," Alex says by way of explanation.
"He's outside," Finn says. "With Malcolm."
I move to the glass door.
Malcolm has apparently given up on the firewood and is now sitting on the porch steps. Rhys is beside him. This is notable because beside Malcolm, who is not a small man, Rhys looks like a different category of person entirely. Malcolm's shoulder comes to roughly Rhys's collarbone.
They're talking.
Or Malcolm is talking. Rhys appears to be listening with the patient quality of someone who has learned to let words happen around him without necessarily engaging with all of them.
Then Rhys says something.
Malcolm laughs an actual, full laugh, his head tipping back.
I didn't expect that.
"They've been out there for an hour," Finn says from behind me. "Malcolm was suspicious last night. This morning he went and found Rhys on the porch at sunrise and apparently that was enough to sort it out."
"Sort what out?"
"Malcolm's feelings about sharing." Finn says it neutrally. "He'll be fine, he just needed to adjust."
I watch them through the glass for another moment. Rhys notices me watching. He raises one hand in a brief acknowledgment. Not a wave exactly. Just a confirmation that he sees me.
I raise my coffee mug back.
***
Rhys brings me a blanket at nine-thirty.
I'm on the couch reading when he appears from the hallway with one of the thick ones from the linen closet folded over his arm. He holds it out.
"I'm not cold," I say.
He looks at the blanket, then at me, than sets it on the couch arm anyway and goes back to wherever he came from.
I look at the blanket for a minute, then I unfold it and put it over my legs.
At eleven he appears with an apple.
I'm at the kitchen table by this point, Finn across from me explaining something about registry documentation procedures that I asked about and am now slightly regretting asking about because Finn explaining things is thorough and detailed and my coffee has gone cold.
Rhys sets the apple next to my elbow without interrupting.
Finn doesn't miss a beat in his explanation.
I pick up the apple and look at it. Then I look at Rhys, who is already walking away.
"Does he do this with everyone?" I ask Finn.
Finn pauses his explanation. "Do what?"
"Bring things."
"Oh." Finn considers. "No. He mostly ignores everyone unless they talk to him first. Malcolm had to initiate seventeen conversations before Rhys started responding in full sentences."
"Seventeen?"
"He counted." Finn picks up his own coffee. "Rhys brought him a beer once, after month three. Malcolm nearly cried."
I look at the apple, then take a bite.
Lunch is a production.
Not because anyone planned a production, it just becomes one because there are five people in a cabin kitchen and four of them have opinions and one of them—Rhys—keeps keeps appearing at my elbow with things I didn't ask for.
A glass of water to replace the one I finished.
A second apple that I don't really want but accept anyway because the expression on his face when I take it is the closest thing to uncomplicated happiness I’ve seen in weeks.
A chair, at one point, dragged from the corner of the kitchen to the better spot near the window, positioned in front of me without comment.
"He's doing the thing," Malcolm says to Finn, not.
"What thing?" I ask.
"The nesting thing." Finn pulls bread from the cabinet. "Alphas do it sometimes when they're—" He makes a vague gesture. "Inclined toward someone. They gather resources, make sure their person is comfortable. It's instinctive."
"I'm not a nest," I say.
"No," Rhys says from behind me.
I turn.
He sets a plate of sliced cheese on the table in front of me, then moves back to the counter.
"He's not wrong though," Malcolm says under his breath.
"I heard that," Rhys says.
"I know," Malcolm says.
The two of them look at each other across the kitchen, something passing between them that I don't have the context for yet. Some established dynamic from years of being pack together that operates below the surface of everything they say out loud.
Then Malcolm picks up a slice of cheese from my plate and Rhys's eyes narrow.
"That's hers," Rhys says.
"There's more in the fridge."
"That's hers."
"Rhys." Malcolm holds the cheese up. "It's cheese."
"Malcolm." Rhys's voice drops into something that makes the air in the room feel slightly different. "Put it back."
I take the cheese from Malcolm's hand and eat it.
Both of them look at me.
"Problem solved," I say.
Finn makes a sound that is definitely a laugh disguised as a cough.
Alex appears in the doorway and takes in the scene. The cheese, Malcolm's expression, Rhys's expression, and me in the middle of it.
He goes back to his laptop without a word.
After lunch I find Rhys on the porch.
He's in one of the chairs, taking up considerably more of it than the chair seems designed for, looking out at the tree line.
There's a stillness to him when he's not in motion that I'm starting to recognize.
Not absence. More like the kind of quiet from someone who has learned to be comfortable with their own company.
I take the chair next to him.
He glances over. Doesn't say anything.
We sit for a while.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
He nods.
"The water. Last night. Four times?"
His expression shifts. The closest thing to sheepish I've seen on his face, which on his face looks like a very slight adjustment around the eyes. "You needed water."
"I was asleep."
"You would have needed it when you woke up."
"I had a glass on the nightstand already."
A pause. "I didn't know that."
"So you brought more."
"Yes."
I look at him. At the scars and the careful stillness and the brown eyes that give away more than the rest of him.
"You're going to keep doing this," I say. "The water. The apples. The blankets."
He considers.
"Yes," he says.
"Okay," I say.
He looks at me.
"I'm not going to fight it," I clarify. "I'm just noting that it's going to happen."
His face settles. Relaxes in a way that tells me he was waiting for the argument and is surprised not to get it.
We go back to looking at the trees.
After a while his hand appears on the armrest between our chairs. Palm up, not reaching, just there.
I put my hand in his.
His fingers close around mine with that same careful deliberateness from yesterday. He knows exactly how much larger he is and he compensates for it.
The porch is quiet.
Inside, Finn and Malcolm are arguing about something inconsequential. Alex's chair scraping. The sounds of a house that is full for the first time in a while.
My chest does something soft and complicated.
"Rhys," I say.
He looks at me.
"Thank you. For coming."
He's quiet.
"There was no version," he says slowly, "where I didn't."
I look at our hands. His wrapped around mine.
Inside, Finn laughs at something. Malcolm's voice rises in protest. Alex says something dry that makes them both go quiet for a second before they start up again.
I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of people who want me here.
I let myself be here.
Rhys's thumb traces the skin on the back of my hand.
I let that happen too.