Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
JUNIE
The routine developed without either of them acknowledging it.
Mornings: Junie stumbled into breakfast, slightly more dressed than that first disastrous day but never quite as polished as Leo.
He was always there first, always with coffee already poured, always watching her with that careful, controlled expression that she was beginning to recognize as his version of restraint.
They talked. About the investigation, mostly—the shell companies, the ley line pattern, the encoded recipes Junie was slowly reconstructing from memory.
But other things too. Little things. How she took her coffee (black, strong, enough to resurrect the dead).
His opinion on Dahlia’s experimental cinnamon rolls (favorable, though he’d never admit it out loud).
The way Glimmer had started tolerating his presence without hissing, which Junie privately considered a miracle.
She learned things about him during those mornings.
That he woke before dawn regardless of when he’d slept.
That he read news from three different cities before breakfast. That he had a tell when amused—a slight crinkling at the corners of his eyes, quickly suppressed, as if joy was a reflex that needed correction.
She learned other things too. The way his voice went rough on his first cup of coffee. The way he watched her hands when she gestured during stories. The way his attention felt like sunlight—steady and inescapable.
Afternoons: They worked separately. Leo had calls to make, contacts to pressure, the whole apparatus of Castellan Ventures to leverage in his hunt for Victor.
Junie met with Wyatt about the investigation, with insurance adjusters about her shop, with friends who brought food and concern and not-so-subtle questions about her temporary rooming situation.
“So,” Cassia said on day three, sprawled across Junie’s borrowed bed with her storm petrel preening on the windowsill, “you’re living with the hot lion.”
“I’m staying in the same building as the hot lion. There’s a difference.”
“Is there? Because Narla said his scent has been all over you lately.”
Junie threw a pillow at her. “His scent is not all over me. We share breakfast. That’s it.”
“Uh-huh.” Cassia caught the pillow with annoying ease. “And the coffee he leaves outside your door every morning?”
Junie froze. “How do you know about that?”
“Avine told me about the coffee.” Cassia’s grin was insufferably smug.
“That’s—” Junie searched for the right word. “That’s practical. He knows I’m useless before coffee. It’s efficiency, not… whatever you’re implying.”
“And the pastries you leave outside his door?”
“Dahlia brings too many. It would be wasteful not to share.”
“You are so full of shit.” Cassia threw the pillow back. “Admit you like him.”
“I don’t—”
“You dream about him. You told Avine.”
“In confidence! As best friends do!”
“She told Theo, who told Beck, who told me.” Cassia shrugged. “Pack communication. Nothing stays secret.”
Junie buried her face in her hands. “I hate all of you.”
“You love us. And you’re falling for the uptight lion. Both things can be true.”
The worst part was that Cassia wasn’t wrong.
Evenings: The library.
The Siren’s Rest had a small but well-stocked collection of magical texts, curated over decades by previous owners and expanded by Avine’s surprisingly eclectic tastes.
Junie and Leo had claimed a corner table as their workspace, spreading papers, notebooks, and the occasional ancient tome across its surface.
They researched sabotage methods. Ley line manipulation. Historical cases of magical infrastructure attacks. Anything that might help them understand what Victor was trying to accomplish and how to stop him.
And if they sat closer than strictly necessary… if their shoulders brushed when reaching for the same book… if Junie sometimes caught Leo watching her with an expression that made her stomach flutter…
Well. Neither of them mentioned it.
Day five. Late evening. The inn had gone quiet hours ago, but Junie couldn’t sleep. She kept seeing the ceiling beam in her mind, kept feeling the rush of air as it fell. Kept thinking about how close she’d come to becoming a cautionary tale.
But if she was being honest—and she tried very hard not to be, especially with herself—the near-death experience wasn’t what kept her awake.
It was the sounds from the room next door. Leo pacing. Leo’s voice, low and tense, on calls that went past midnight. The creak of his bed when he finally gave up on sleep, followed by the soft pad of footsteps heading toward the library.
She’d started listening for those footsteps. Started timing her own restless wandering to coincide with his.
She didn’t want to examine what that meant.
The library was empty when she arrived, or so she thought.
Leo sat in their usual corner, a single lamp casting golden light across his features. He’d abandoned his jacket somewhere, rolled his sleeves to the elbows, loosened his collar. His hair was slightly mussed, like he’d been running his fingers through it.
He looked almost human. Almost approachable.
Junie hovered in the doorway, suddenly uncertain. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He gestured at the papers spread before him. “Thought I might as well be productive.”
“Same.” She crossed to their table, curling into the chair across from him. Glimmer slithered down to coil on the surface near the lamp. “What are you working on?”
“Corporate records. Victor’s shell companies have shell companies. It’s like trying to untangle a knot made of lies.”
“Sounds frustrating.”
“It’s infuriating.” He leaned back, rubbing his eyes in a gesture of exhaustion she’d never seen from him. “He’s good at this. Hiding. Making himself invisible. I taught him some of it, back when I thought he was worth mentoring.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” Leo’s laugh was hollow. “I hired him. Promoted him. Trusted him with access to things he used to hurt people.”
“And then you fired him when you found out. You stopped him.” Junie leaned forward. “Leo. You can’t hold yourself responsible for every bad choice someone else makes. That’s not how guilt works.”
“How does guilt work, then?”
“Hell if I know. I’m very good at avoiding it.” She offered a rueful smile. “Deflection, remember? My signature move.”
His expression shifted. Softened, maybe. “You’re more than your deflections, Junie.”
“Please don’t psychoanalyze me before midnight. I don’t have the defenses for it.”
“That’s exactly when psychoanalysis works best.”
“Cruel.” She smiled, tension draining from her shoulders. “Is that the book about ley line manipulation?”
Leo reached for it at the same moment she did.
Their hands collided.
Not a brush. Not an accidental touch. Full contact—his fingers over hers, solid and very, very present.
Neither pulled away.
Junie stared at their joined hands, her pulse suddenly so loud, she was sure he could hear it. His skin was rougher than she’d expected, calloused in ways that didn’t match his pristine businessman image. His thumb moved—slightly—tracing a line across her knuckles.
“This is impossible,” Leo muttered.
Junie looked up. Found him watching her with an intensity that stole her breath.
“What is?”
He didn’t answer right away. He looked at her—really looked, the way he’d done that first morning in the breakfast room, the way that made her feel seen and exposed and terrified all at once.
“You,” he finally said. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s not—” She swallowed. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.” His voice had gone rough, scraped raw by what he wasn’t saying.
“Nothing about this makes sense. You’re chaos incarnate.
You’re everything I’ve spent my life avoiding.
You make jokes when you should be serious and you argue with me about things that don’t matter and you leave pastries outside my door like it doesn’t mean anything—”
“It doesn’t mean anything. They’re pastries.”
“They mean everything.” His thumb traced another line across her knuckles. “Everything you do means something, Junie. That’s the problem.”
The air between them had gone thick. Heavy. Charged with inevitability, like standing at the edge of a cliff and knowing you were going to jump.
“Leo—”
He pulled his hand back. Stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the lamp in his haste to put distance between them.
“I should go.” His voice was controlled again, that careful mask sliding back into place. “It’s late. We both need sleep.”
“Wait—”
But he was already at the door, already leaving, already rebuilding the walls she’d spent days watching him slowly dismantle.
“Goodnight, Junie.”
He left before she could respond.
Junie sat alone in the library, her hand still tingling where he’d touched her, Glimmer watching with eyes that saw too much.
You. You’re impossible.
He’d said it like it was a flaw. Like she was a problem he didn’t know how to solve.
But he’d also said it like it was a wonder. Like she was a marvel he couldn’t quite believe existed.
Junie had spent her whole life being too much. Too loud, too chaotic, too unwilling to fit into the boxes other people built for her. She’d learned to make it a joke, a performance, armor people laughed at instead of with.
But Leo didn’t laugh. Leo looked at her like she was a puzzle he wanted to spend years solving. Like her impossibility was the most interesting thing about her.
I’m in trouble. He’s going to break my heart.
But as she gathered the scattered papers and headed back to her room—past his door, where she could hear the sounds of someone definitely not sleeping—she wasn’t sure she cared.
Some cliffs were worth jumping off.
Even if you didn’t know where you’d land.
Glimmer coiled around her wrist, scales pulsing amber. The snake butted her head against Junie’s palm, and Junie sensed approval—or maybe resignation.
“Yeah,” Junie murmured to her familiar. “I know. I’m in trouble.”
Glimmer’s tongue flickered. Obviously, her expression seemed to say.
But maybe that’s not entirely bad.
The next morning, a cup of coffee sat outside her door. Black. Strong.
Junie smiled.
She left a pastry outside his—one of Dahlia’s honey-glazed croissants, still fresh from the kitchen, wrapped in a napkin she’d stolen from the breakfast room.
Neither of them mentioned it at breakfast. But when their eyes met across the table, understanding passed between them. An acknowledgment. A promise. A question that neither was ready to answer out loud.
This thing between them—undeniable, terrifying, inevitable—wasn’t going away.
And maybe, just maybe, that was okay.
At least, that’s what Junie told herself as she watched Leo read his reports and drink his coffee and pretend he wasn’t sneaking glances at her every thirty seconds.
She was probably lying to herself. That was, after all, another of her signature moves.
But for the first time in a long time, the lie felt hopeful.