Lily
Chapter twenty-two
Iwake up alone. The sheets still smell like burnt sugar.
The ghosts of last night’s comfort. Sometime while I was half out of it, Gabriel came in.
I only sort of remember Miles going limp as Gabriel scooped him up, his weight and warmth leaving my back.
Gabriel’s voice was a low murmur, so soft I couldn’t catch words, and then they were out the door and gone, swallowed by the dark hallway.
I watched them leave through barely open eyes.
But hours before that, it was me and Miles.
Him pressed up against my back, arm slung around my waist, nose nuzzling my neck in those gentle, careful passes that made the pain back off enough that I could finally unclench my jaw and breathe.
He nipped behind my ear. Under the edge of my hair.
At the slope of my throat. It wasn’t the same as an alpha’s touch, but it helped.
I slept through for once, no nightmares or waking every hour to a head that felt like it was splitting in two.
I lie still, running the inventory: How bad is the headache? Is the room spinning? Can I get out of bed or is my stomach going to turn on me? Today, the headache is there but not screaming, just humming quietly. My stomach’s not in revolt. My hands are steady as I grab my meds off the nightstand.
I feel better today. Like maybe I could pass as a person instead of a patient.
I take the pills, drink the water, and get dressed. Clean clothes which shouldn’t feel like a victory but they do.
The second I step into the hallway, the smell hits me: coffee, and bacon. For half a second, it’s like I’m only a person on my way to breakfast. Not an omega walking on eggshells in someone else’s house. I try to hold onto that feeling, but it slips away fast.
The pack’s already at the table. Gabriel at the head, coffee in hand. Cyrus to his left, eating with that silent focus he brings to everything. Garrett across from him, head down over his phone and a plate of eggs. Miles at the far end, toast mostly untouched, sketchbook open already.
Gabriel clocks me first. His eyes narrow, measuring. He doesn’t look angry. I think he’s doing the math on whether me being here is going to make things worse. I’m already tensing, ready to turn around and go back to my cave of a room.
But he says, “Sit down, Lily. Eat.” No room for argument. Fine by me.
I take the empty chair between Garrett and the end of the table.
The food spread is definitely Garrett’s doing: scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, a bowl of cut fruit.
It all smells amazing and my stomach actually growls, which is a weird feeling after days of being sick.
But I don’t trust it. I grab a banana and peel it slow.
Nobody says anything. The elephant in the room is so big it’s practically balancing on top of the table: what Gabriel saw last night, me and Miles tangled up together, Miles asleep in my arms. They all know.
I feel it in how they’re avoiding eye contact with each other.
But nobody brings it up, and honestly, the silence is the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in days.
Then it’s the goodbye show, and I can’t help watching. It’s the closest I ever get to feeling like I belong.
Cyrus goes to Miles first. His hand finds the back of Miles’s neck—the same spot yet again—and he leans in, pressing his lips to Miles’s temple.
Miles melts into it, eyes closed, whole body soft and loose under Cyrus’s touch.
Cyrus whispers something I can’t hear, and Miles gives a tiny, secret smile.
Garrett’s next. He ruffles Miles’s hair, same as every morning, and kisses the top of his head. “Try not to burn the house down,” he says, and Miles rolls his eyes, but there’s warmth there. A real smile, not the brittle ones I get.
Gabriel goes last. He cups Miles’s jaw, kisses him slow and steady. When he pulls away, his thumb brushes Miles’s cheek, and they look at each other for a moment. Years of history in that look. Love and fear and all the things that come from actually being chosen.
It’s the same ritual as usual. They found the rhythm that works for them a long time ago and stuck with it. Everyone gets what they need before they split off. It’s a beautiful thing.
The wanting hits me hard. That’s what it looks like when you’re someone’s first choice.
When you’re wanted instead of barely tolerated.
Meanwhile, I’m three feet away, eating a banana, wearing the same sweater as yesterday because everything else is still shoved in the suitcase Miles packed while he was screaming at me.
Garrett catches my eye on his way out. His look is soft, almost pitying. I focus on my banana until he’s gone.
Gabriel’s the last. He stands at the door, keys in hand, looking between me and Miles. “Behave,” he says. “Both of you.” Then he’s gone. Trucks start up, tires crunch on gravel, and the house goes quiet.
Me and Miles.
We look at each other across the living room. Yesterday hangs between us—everything we went through. The things we said and didn’t say. They sit there like a third person neither of us wants to deal with.
Miles grabs his sketchbook and heads straight to the couch. I get it. I clean up my breakfast, wipe the counter, and sit at the other end of the couch with the TV remote.
I put on one of those cooking shows where people make pastries that look like art and race against the clock. Miles draws. I half-watch, half-zone out. We exist in the same room and nobody’s bleeding.
It’s not exactly comfortable. But it’s not war, either. It’s the quiet after a storm, when you’re not sure if you survived it together or if you’re both still standing because neither of you knows what else to do.
I’m absorbed in a cat food commercial where the cat is meow-singing for its food when the doorbell rings.
Miles looks up, kind of startled. I look at the door. We both look at each other.
I start to get up.
“I’m not supposed to answer the door when the alphas are out,” Miles says.
“That’s why I’m doing it.”
“Lily—“
“It’s just a door, Miles.”
He starts to argue, then shuts it down. I go to the door and open it.
A beta stands there in a delivery uniform, clipboard in hand, big box at his feet. “Lily Ashworth?”
“That’s me.”
“Sign here.”
I sign and try to take the package. The box is heavier than I thought, so the delivery guy helps me drag it inside and sets it on the kitchen counter. I thank him as he leaves.
My brows furrow. I didn’t order anything. I don’t have any money to order anything. Nobody told me there would be a delivery.
“What is it?” Miles calls from the couch. He sounds like he’s trying—and failing—to sound uninterested.
I check the return label. My heart flips. “It’s from Jeremy Carr.”
Miles makes a face. “Of course it is.”
I open the box.
It’s paints. Real paints. Gorgeous acrylics in every color you could want.
A watercolor set that looks professional.
Brushes in every size, thick watercolor paper, stretched canvases.
At the very bottom, a little wooden easel with shiny brass hinges.
This isn’t the cheap stuff. This is real, good-quality art supplies—the kind I used to drool over in stores and never buy.
Tucked between the canvases, there’s a card. Simple and neat: Lily, you mentioned painting on our date and I could tell it mattered to you. I hope you can find some use out of these. No pressure. I thought it might help pass the time until we can see each other again. —Jeremy (and pack)
I don’t even know how to describe the feeling I get next.
It’s like all the clouds in my life break open and there’s suddenly sunlight.
Stupid, fizzy, ridiculous joy. I’m grinning, actually grinning, picking up each tube of paint, reading the names (cerulean blue, burnt sienna, titanium white), stroking the bristles of the brushes, running my fingers over the canvases.
I almost squeal. I actually have to bite my lip to stop the noise, which is embarrassing, but whatever.
This is the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in ages.
And it doesn’t come with strings or rules.
Jeremy sent me paints because he remembered I liked painting and wanted to do something nice for me. That’s it.
“That is so cheesy,” Miles says.
I ignore him. I’m already setting up the easel at the end of the table, lining up the acrylics by color, filling a jar with water, tearing off a paper towel.
My hands remember every part of this. I used to do it all the time at my mom’s kitchen table, teaching myself from library books and whatever cheap supplies we could find.
I pick a canvas and set it up. Then I squeeze out paint—dark blue, lighter blue, gray, white, orange, red. Too much red. I wipe some of it off on the edge of a paper towel and smear it anyway.
I grab a flat brush and start.
It turns into a city skyline without me really deciding on it. Buildings stacked on buildings, darker at the bottom, fading out the higher they go, like the whole thing’s trying to disappear into the sky. I don’t sketch first. I never do. If I think about it too long, I won’t start at all.
The brush drags a little where the paint’s too thick. I kind of like it.
I get lost in it. Not the way I used to before everything went to hell, but enough that the headache dulls down to something I can ignore if I don’t poke at it.
I don’t notice Miles until his shadow cuts across the canvas.
My shoulders go tight automatically. I wait for it.
“Your horizon line’s too high,” he says. “Drop it an inch and the buildings will pop more.”
I blink at the painting, then at him. He’s still looking at it, not me.
“…okay. Thanks.”
“Don’t make it weird.” He’s already drifting back to the couch, sketchbook still in hand.
I lower the horizon line. He’s right. The buildings pop, the sky opens up, the whole thing breathes better.