Chapter 28
Maya
The first thing I notice is warmth.
Not just the blankets, though they’re heavy in the best possible way, layers of soft fabric that press down around me with a weight I’ve apparently been craving without knowing it.
The lack of light coming through the curtains feels wrong until I remember the blackout curtains.
My body feels so relaxed that I feel almost boneless.
The pressure that has been living under my skin is completely absent.
I take a deep breath and savor the feeling for a moment. The scent of cool minerals rests beneath every breath I take—a reminder that Elias is here.
He’s underneath me, one arm still wrapped around my shoulders beneath the blankets.
My head rests on his chest, rising and falling with the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing.
The warmth of him surrounds me from every side, the blankets tucked over both of us.
His hand rests lightly against my back. Even half asleep, the contact feels grounding and safe.
His expression is more relaxed than it ever is on set, the familiar distance missing entirely. He looks completely at ease.
I watch him for longer than I mean to.
I keep thinking I’ll feel something weird about this. The morning-after strangeness of sharing space with someone in the dark, the instinct to pull back and reassemble and pretend it wasn’t as intimate as it was. That reflex has been so automatic for so long that I keep waiting for it to arrive.
It doesn’t.
What arrives instead is something considerably more complicated.
Because I'm lying here watching him breathe, thinking about the first night he showed up at my apartment and settled in without ever making me feel like accepting help meant accepting a debt.
Then he did it again the next night.
And the night after that.
Every time I spiraled, he grounded me. He brought food. He drove me where I needed to go. He texted Nadia before I could. He stepped between me and situations that would have overwhelmed me without ever stepping in front of me in a way that took away my agency.
Looking at him now in the soft morning light, I understand something I hadn't fully seen before.
He built the bridge between me, Adrian, and Bash.
I was already terrified of how much I needed them, and Elias was the one who made that need feel manageable. He made it possible to take one step, and then another. He got me through the door.
And when I asked him to stay last night, he did. No hesitation. No expectation attached to it. He simply gave me what I needed.
And I slept.
Actually slept. The whole night through.
Elias is breathing softly beside me, and I find myself watching him with fascination.
Then his eyes open.
Not gradually. Not the slow blink of someone surfacing reluctantly. Just closed, then open, and immediately present. His gaze finds the ceiling first, then shifts to me, and whatever he sees on my face makes his expression soften.
“You slept,” he says. His voice carries the roughness of early morning, lower than usual.
“Yeah,” I say.
He holds my eyes for a moment, seeming to gauge my mood. Then, satisfied: “Good.”
He doesn’t rush to get up or reach for his phone.
He stays where he is while the room settles around us, and I appreciate that he doesn’t immediately make the morning functional.
There’s something about the unhurried quality of those few minutes—the soft gold light, the layered warmth, his steady breathing—that I want to hold onto a little longer.
“I keep expecting this to feel strange,” I say, not quite meaning to say it out loud.
He tilts his head. “Does it?”
I think about it. “No.”
The corner of his mouth moves. It’s small enough that someone else might miss it. “Then stop expecting it,” he says.
I huff a soft laugh and sit up slowly, pushing hair back from my face.
The room opens around me, familiar already in a way that shouldn’t be possible after one night but is.
The rug accepts my feet when I stand, that deep plush gives, and I pull the heaviest blanket around my shoulders and carry it with me to the window to pull the curtain back a few inches.
Morning light spills across the side garden, green and still, while the city hums somewhere beyond the fence line, softened by distance.
Behind me, I hear the mattress shift as Elias sits up.
I take one last look at the garden before letting the curtain fall closed.
“Ready to go to the kitchen?” he asks.
“Yep.” I drop the blanket around my shoulders on the bed and follow him toward the door.
The smell hits before we even reach the bottom of the stairs.
Coffee, strong and already brewed. Something warm is baking in the oven, and beneath it is a faint sweetness that feels familiar even if I can’t quite name it.
Adrian is at the stove with his back to the doorway, and the ease with which he moves through the kitchen at seven in the morning is somehow deeply unsurprising.
He’s already dressed, which tells me he’s had enough time to run through his whole routine before I came down.
Bash is at the counter beside the sink, wiping something dry with a kitchen towel, his sleeves pushed up, his attention on the mug he’s cleaning.
Both of them look up when we appear.
Adrian’s expression shifts into something warmer immediately. “Morning,” he says and then turns back to the stove. “Eggs?”
“Please,” I say.
Bash sets the mug down and opens the cabinet beside him, already reaching for a coffee cup.
He pours it without asking me how I take it.
The oat milk comes from the back shelf. He slides it across the island toward me like this is something we do every morning.
I curl my hands around the mug and let the warmth sink into my skin.
Elias takes the stool at the corner of the island, and I settle onto the one beside him. The kitchen settles into the sounds of morning: the soft hiss from the stove, the clink of plates, Bash and Adrian moving back and forth.
Adrian sets a plate in front of me and pulls up the stool on my other side, and for a few minutes nobody says much. Just the ordinary sounds of four people eating in a warm kitchen.
It’s Adrian who changes the atmosphere. He sets his fork down and folds his hands on the counter in front of him before speaking.
“I need to ask you something,” he says. “And I want you to hear that it’s a genuine question, not a setup.”
I look at him nervously.
“Do you want us to walk away from the production?”
The words sit there for a moment while I process them.
“Both of us,” he continues. “Bash and I. We can pull out, cite scheduling conflicts, let the studio scramble. They’ll manage.
It’ll cost us professionally, but we don’t care.
” He holds my gaze. “If you need us to do that, we do it.” He means every word.
I can see it in the set of his jaw, in the unwavering determination in his gaze.
This isn't an impulse. He's already thought through the consequences and decided they're worth it.
I glance at Bash.
He’s leaning against the counter with his arms crossed loosely, watching me. “Just say the word.” he says.
My chest does something complicated. “No,” I say. “Absolutely not.”
Adrian starts to speak, and I keep going.
“Finish the movie. Both of you. I mean it.” I wrap my hands tighter around the coffee mug.
“If you walk off a production mid-shoot because of me, that story follows me everywhere. The omega who disrupted everything. The liability. I’ve been trying to stop that exact narrative from attaching itself to my name, and you pulling out would hand it to every person in this industry who’s been looking for a reason. ”
“I know,” Adrian says. “Which is why I’m asking, not deciding for you.”
“And I’m telling you no.” I look at him. “I appreciate it. I appreciate it more than I can explain right now. But finish the film.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then resignation passes over his expression. “Okay then,” he says. “We will finish the film.”
Bash unfolds his arms and picks up his coffee. He doesn’t say anything else, but his expression has settled, like a decision that was already leaning in a direction has finally found its ground.
I sit with the warmth of being asked. Not managed, not decided for, not arranged around.
Asked. Given the choice and trusted with it.
That’s the part that sits heaviest, because nobody has ever cared for me that openly before.
I should probably find a more practical place to put that realization.
Instead, it stays lodged right in the center of my chest.
Adrian goes back to eating. The kitchen mood normalizes.
Then bash breaks the silence. “I’m not needed on set today, so I will stay here with you.”
My stomach flips at his words.
Thirty minutes later, Adrian and Elias are by the front door pulling on their jackets. Adrian stops beside me in the hallway and touches my face briefly, his thumb brushing my cheekbone.
“Call me if anything changes,” he says. “And I mean anything.”
“I know,” I say, looking up at him and finding it difficult to focus on anything except how close he is.
He holds my face a moment longer, like he’s checking for something, then drops his hand and picks up his bag.
Elias catches my eye from the doorway, and something passes between us.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. The look says he’s already calculated every possible thing that could go wrong and determined that Bash is adequate coverage. I’m the only person who would find that particular stony expression reassuring.
The door closes behind them, and I miss them immediately.
Bash is already back in the kitchen when I turn around.
I find him at the counter, rinsing off the breakfast dishes. He finishes them, stacks them in the drying rack, then moves to wipe down the stove top. He does it with an intense focus that I can’t help but watch. When the stove top is done he starts in on cleaning the island counter.
I lean against the door frame.