EtherealxMuses

Adrian did not look at Samantha right away.

His eyes stayed on Charlotte instead, held there by something he did not care to examine too closely. She had already turned toward the newcomer with that bright, polished warmth of hers, greeting them as if she had not just stood in the middle of his lobby and challenged Adrian Mercer with the kind of fearless insolence that usually required either tenure, desperation, or a truly astonishing lack of self-preservation. The stranger smiled back at her instantly. Of course they did. Charlotte had one of those faces and one of those voices, he was beginning to realize. The kind that invited ease without asking permission. The kind that made people respond before they’d thought better of it.

And she had just used both of those weapons on him like a woman casually testing the sharpness of a blade.

The fact that he was not angry about it was, frankly, the most irritating part. He should have been furious. Offended, at the very least. She had questioned him publicly, corrected him with a sweetness so deliberate it bordered on theatrical, and done it all on her first day with the kind of poise most people in this office still lacked after years. He had spent too long building an atmosphere where things ran cleanly, efficiently, without disruption, without people feeling emboldened enough to make a spectacle of him in his own front lobby.

And yet the only spectacle here was Samantha’s face. Poor woman looked one breath away from dissolving into office dust. “Mr. Mercer,” Samantha said, hurrying over with the expression of someone attempting to outrun disaster in sensible shoes. Her smile was thin enough to cut. “I am so sorry. I had no idea she would behave like this.” Her gaze darted sharply toward Charlotte, full of pleading and mortification. “I can absolutely have her removed.”

Removed.

The word was wrong immediately.

Adrian felt the shape of his own reaction before he quite named it. Irritation, yes, but not directed where Samantha clearly expected. He knew the rhythm of offices like this. One sharp woman unsettles the room, and suddenly everyone wants to rush in with apologies, smoothing cloth over the edges, sanding her down into something easier to manage. Something quieter. Something more comfortable.

He had seen too many versions of that game in too many rooms run by too many mediocre men. And for reasons he would absolutely not be unpacking today, the idea of Charlotte being “removed” from the lobby because she had refused to fold beneath pressure landed badly in him.

So he said, “No.”

Quietly.

Flatly.

Enough to stop Samantha’s next sentence dead where it was trying to form. The room responded the way it always did when he used that tone. It tightened. Stilled. Somewhere in the offices behind the glass, movement faltered. Even the air felt as if it had paused to listen. Adrian adjusted the folder beneath his arm, his gaze finally sliding from Charlotte to Samantha. “You will not have her removed. You will not do anything dramatic. Miss Charlotte appears perfectly capable of handling reception.” Samantha blinked at him, confusion and relief warring visibly with horror. “Mr. Mercer, I just thought perhaps, after the way she spoke to you, that you might prefer someone a little more…”

She hesitated. Wise. Careful choice. Adrian lifted one brow. The poor woman went paler. “Submissive?” he supplied. The word dropped between them with surgical neatness. He did not miss the faint flicker from Charlotte at the desk. Not surprise exactly. More like sharpened attention. She was listening now without pretending not to, and the knowledge of that moved through him in a way that was entirely too present. He could feel her awareness from across the room like a hand at the back of his neck.

“No,” he continued, his voice calm enough to qualify as dangerous. “I find most people in this building are already far too eager to disappoint me in that department.”

There it was.

The tiniest ripple through the room. Someone somewhere half-choked on their own shock. A junior associate very abruptly found a reason to examine a stack of papers upside down. Samantha looked as though she’d just witnessed him set fire to the employee handbook and then compliment the flames.

Charlotte, however, did not look shocked.

That was the problem.

She looked pleased.

Only a little. Barely enough for anyone else to notice. But Adrian noticed. He noticed everything about her now, irritatingly enough. The tiny satisfaction that flashed across her face before she hid it. The way one shoulder eased. The way her fingers settled on the desk as though some tension she had not intended to show had finally loosened. And beneath all of that, something in him answered with a low, reluctant pulse of approval.

He hated that.

He hated, too, that he understood her instinct.

Some private, buried corner of him recognized the stance she had taken. The refusal to apologize first. The bristling at authority wielded without courtesy. The immediate suspicion of men who expected obedience simply because the room had arranged itself around them. It was not his favorite mirror to glimpse unexpectedly in another person.

He had spent years turning that part of himself into something colder. Cleaner. Controlled enough that no one would ever mistake the old bruised anger beneath it for vulnerability.

Charlotte, apparently, still carried hers in brighter colors.

His eyes found her again.

She was behind the desk now, pretending to sort something, but the set of her mouth told him she was very much aware of being looked at. There was a kind of spark in her that did not belong here. Not in this polished mausoleum of glass and stone and expensive restraint. She looked like someone had dropped a lit match into a steel filing cabinet and then acted surprised there was smoke.

It would have been easier if she were merely pretty. Pretty was manageable. Pretty belonged to a category he understood and could dismiss without difficulty. Women had been beautiful around him for years, and beauty on its own had never posed much of a threat. It asked nothing of him. Required nothing. Passed through galas and meetings and dinners in elegant dresses and left no mark.

Charlotte was beautiful in a way that had very little to do with safety.

Not because of her face, though he would have had to be blind not to appreciate that. It was the rest of her that made her dangerous. The nerve. The warmth. The reckless little spark that made her push instead of retreat. The fact that she had walked into this office in clothes she clearly disliked, into a job she likely needed more than wanted, and still found enough steel in herself to challenge the most powerful man in the building before noon.

That was not flirtation.

That was character.

And character, Adrian knew from bitter experience, was the sort of thing that got under your skin before you were wise enough to protect yourself from it.

“Carry on,” he said at last.

It could have been directed at Samantha. At Charlotte. At the office at large. He left it intentionally vague because that was easier than acknowledging how specific his attention had become. Then he turned and walked away. The lobby remained quiet behind him. It was only when the glass doors to the executive wing shut at his back that the building finally seemed to breathe again.

Adrian did not.

He moved through the rest of the morning with the clean brutality of habit. Two meetings. Three calls. One partner who should have retired years ago but persisted out of spite and billing power. A financial review complicated by a client whose understanding of disclosure obligations was best described as criminally imaginative. Ordinarily, work had a way of flattening everything else. That was one of its uses. Perhaps its most useful one. Work reduced people to information, problems to angles, the day to a sequence of fires requiring measured extinction. It left very little room for distraction.

And yet.

Charlotte kept returning.

Not in any sentimental sense. Adrian would have rejected that notion on principle. No, she returned like an unfinished thought. Like a line in a brief that looked straightforward until he found himself rereading it because something about the wording refused to sit properly. She appeared in flashes. The precise lift of her brow. The sweetness she weaponized so elegantly. The way she’d looked at him when she said, I would assume the man who signs my paychecks has enough manners to acknowledge his receptionist when she greets him.

He had heard harsher things. Much harsher. From opposing counsel, from clients in crisis, from the mirror on his worst nights. But almost none of them had landed with quite the same peculiar force. Because Charlotte had not been trying to wound him. She had simply expected better. That was somehow worse. By lunchtime, Adrian caught himself glancing toward the lobby when passing the interior corridor. Ridiculous. He corrected course immediately, annoyed enough with himself that he nearly doubled the length of a research memo out of sheer displaced irritation. By midafternoon, he told himself the fascination would fade. It was novelty, nothing more. A disruption to routine. An unusual employee with a reckless mouth and enough charm to disguise the recklessness as principle. The office would sand her edges down soon enough, as offices always tried to do.

He did not like how little he wanted that to happen.

The next morning was worse.

There were flowers at reception.

Not elaborate ones. Nothing ostentatious. Just a small arrangement in a low glass vase that had not been there before, softening the edges of the desk without making it frivolous. Somewhere along the line, the seating area looked less like a place where people awaited legal ruin and more like somewhere a human being might survive ten minutes without losing all hope. Two junior assistants were actually smiling over something Charlotte had apparently said when Adrian crossed the lobby, and the moment they noticed him, they snapped upright so fast they nearly gave themselves whiplash.

Charlotte, meanwhile, only looked up.

“Good morning, Mr. Mercer.” The words were perfectly professional. Perfectly calm. There was nothing in them except courtesy. And yet he heard the thread beneath them all the same. There. Was that so difficult? He answered, of course. “Good morning, Miss Charlotte.” Her mouth twitched. That should not have felt like winning something. It did. By the third day, Adrian had exhausted every sensible excuse not to notice her.

That realization arrived sometime just before ten-thirty, when he found himself standing in his office holding a file he did not need to hand-deliver, a question he could have asked Samantha over email, and an increasingly thin excuse for why he was even considering taking either one to reception personally. He stared at the folder in his hand. This was absurd. If he needed the vendor packet confirmed, Samantha could do it. If he wanted to know whether the courier had arrived, his assistant could check. If he wanted to ensure the afternoon client schedule had been printed and organized, there were at least four people between his office and the front desk whose jobs could facilitate that outcome without requiring Adrian Mercer himself to make a personal appearance in the lobby.

And yet he was already halfway to the door.

He stopped.

Turned back.

Set the folder down.

Picked it up again.

The sheer stupidity of the exercise irritated him enough that he almost stayed put out of spite.

Then he heard laughter drift faintly from the far end of the floor.

Charlotte’s.

That decided it, which annoyed him even more.

Adrian told himself, as he stepped into the corridor, that he was simply maintaining visibility. That managing partners occasionally appeared outside their offices and confirmed that things were functioning. That there was value in understanding how the front of house was being run, especially after a new hire, especially after such a memorable first interaction.

All of that was technically true.

It was also the sort of truth lawyers used when the whole truth was less flattering.

By the time he reached reception, he had almost convinced himself.

Almost.

Charlotte was alone at the desk, sorting through a stack of envelopes and courier slips with surprising efficiency. There was a pencil tucked behind one ear, and the sleeves of her blouse had been pushed back just slightly, as if she had already grown tired of pretending corporate polish was comfortable. A loose strand of hair had fallen near her cheek. She had not noticed it. Adrian noticed it immediately and resented himself for doing so.

She looked up when his shadow crossed the desk. For the briefest second, genuine surprise flickered across her face before it smoothed away beneath that now-familiar composure. “Mr. Mercer,” she said. “To what do I owe the honor?” The line was polite. The line was also absolutely not polite. He felt the shape of a response gather in him before he let it out. “I was under the impression reception handled incoming deliveries.”

Charlotte glanced at the folder in his hand, then back to his face. Her eyes sharpened just enough to make it clear she understood at once that this was not a man who personally ran his own paperwork downstairs unless something else was at play.

Dangerous woman.

“We do,” she said. “Have we suddenly fallen short of your standards?” There was no heat in it now. Just that same quicksilver teasing, bright at the edges, impossible to mistake for deference. Adrian set the folder down on the desk, slower than necessary. “I haven’t yet decided.” Her mouth twitched. He became absurdly aware of the quiet around them. The assistants nearby had found reasons to vanish. Samantha, blessedly or suspiciously, was nowhere in sight. Even the phones seemed to have chosen this moment for silence Charlotte rested one hand lightly beside the folder. “Should I be concerned?”

“Yes,” Adrian said.

That brought her eyes fully to his.

He let the pause stretch one beat too long before adding, “If this vendor packet goes missing, the afternoon becomes intolerable for everyone.”

A small laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

He had wanted that.

The realization landed with immediate, humiliating clarity.

He had wanted her amusement. Wanted to be the reason for it. Wanted to watch the way it changed her face, softening some of the challenge without erasing it. That was unwise enough on its own. Worse was the quiet satisfaction that answered inside him the moment he got it. Charlotte opened the folder, scanned the first page, then looked back up. “You came all the way down here yourself for a vendor packet?”

There it was.

He should have expected it. He had. He just had not expected it to be so annoyingly direct.

Adrian slid one hand into his pocket. “I like to ensure things are handled properly.”

“Of course you do.”

The words were smooth as satin and every bit as dangerous. Charlotte lowered her gaze again, though not before he caught the smile pressing at the corners of her mouth. She knew. Maybe not all of it. Not the precise shape of his curiosity or how thoroughly she had threaded herself into his attention in under seventy-two hours. But she knew enough to see through the excuse.

He should leave.

Instead he heard himself ask, “How are you finding the office?”

Charlotte looked up again, and for the first time since he’d approached, her expression shifted into something more openly surprised. Not because the question was intimate. It wasn’t. It was harmless. Polite. The sort of thing an employer could ask a new employee without scandal. But that was precisely the problem. It was a normal question. Asked by a man who did not, in Samantha’s increasingly reverent opinion, do normal.

“It’s…” Charlotte glanced down at the papers in front of her, then back up at him. “Different.” He could have laughed at that. Different. A wonderfully diplomatic word for the polished cage they both knew this place could be. He leaned one shoulder very slightly against the desk, the shift subtle enough that only someone already watching him closely would notice it. “An eloquent review.” “I’m trying to be kind.” “I noticed,” he said dryly. “It’s not your strongest instinct.”

That earned him another one of those quick, startled laughs.

God help him.

Charlotte set the papers down. “It’s quieter than I’m used to,” she admitted. “A little stiff.” Her eyes flicked meaningfully toward the glass offices. “Everyone looks like they’re afraid to breathe too loudly.”

Adrian followed her glance, then returned his attention to her. “And yet somehow, you’ve managed.”

Her smile deepened. “I’ve always been talented.”

He should not have enjoyed this so much.

He really, truly should not.

But there was something almost indecently easy about sparring with her. Most people around him filtered themselves until conversation became a chore of omissions and performance. Charlotte, by contrast, seemed to arrive in the room whole. Even when she was careful, she still felt real. Alive. A little reckless, perhaps, but real in a way he had almost forgotten could exist in environments like this.

And because Adrian Mercer’s life was apparently taking a brief detour through irony, that authenticity made him want to know more.

What she did when she wasn’t here. Why she wore discomfort like armor. Why there was always the faintest suggestion that some brighter, messier life waited just outside the clean lines of this place. What she smiled like when she was not aiming it like a blade.

All deeply unnecessary questions.

All suddenly present.

Charlotte tapped the folder lightly. “Anything else, Mr. Mercer? Or did you only come to inspect the savage at reception?” The line landed so cleanly he almost smiled outright. Instead he let his gaze settle on her, slow and deliberate. “I came,” he said, “to confirm that the front desk could survive its first week.” Her brows lifted. “And?” He looked around reception theatrically, taking in the flowers, the orderly stacks, the softening edges that hadn’t existed before she arrived. Then he returned his gaze to her. “Against all odds,” he said, “it appears to be thriving.”

Charlotte stared at him for half a second, clearly caught between suspicion and amusement.

Then she smiled. Not sweet this time. Not weaponized. Just genuine for a flicker before she tucked it away, and the sight of it struck him with an immediacy he did not enjoy. Too dangerous. Adrian straightened before he could linger in that moment and make matters worse. “See that the courier copies are brought up before noon.”

“Yes, Mr. Mercer.”

He took a step back.

Then another.

And because apparently he had abandoned all commitment to making good decisions where Charlotte Hall was concerned, he paused and added, “And Charlotte?”

Her eyes lifted again.

“If you intend to judge my manners,” he said, “try not to look so pleased when I improve them.”

The silence that followed was small, taut, electric.

Charlotte’s smile returned slowly, like sunlight moving across glass.

“I’ll do my best,” she said. 

Adrian inclined his head once, a gesture too restrained to be called a smile and too softened to be called indifference.

Then he walked away.

Halfway down the corridor, he became aware of two things at once.

The first was that he had, in fact, gone to reception with an excuse so thin even he didn’t respect it.

In the days that followed, the atmosphere in the office began to feel different. Or maybe Charlotte was the one who felt different. Each morning, when Adrian Mercer passed her desk, she greeted him the same way she greeted everyone else—with a bright smile and a cheerful good morning. And each morning, without fail, he greeted her back. It was never much. Sometimes, only a clipped, “Good morning, Miss Charlotte.” Sometimes, a brief nod, his eyes lingering on hers for half a second longer than necessary. But it was enough. Enough that Charlotte found herself smiling a little wider every time.

Then came the excuses. Small ones at first. A question about a meeting room. A file he could have easily asked Samantha for. A package that somehow required him to stop by the front desk himself. Charlotte noticed, of course. She noticed everything when it came to Adrian Mercer.

But she never pointed it out.

Somehow, her thoughts had begun to circle him more often than she cared to admit. He was still controlled, still impossible to read most of the time, but he wasn’t nearly as terrible as she had first decided. Not once she learned how dry his humor could be. Not once she caught the rare flicker of amusement in his eyes. Not once she realized that beneath all that polish and authority, there was something almost human.

The rest of the office noticed, too.

People watched with quiet fascination whenever Adrian went out of his way to speak to her, as if the sight itself defied nature. A few teased that Charlotte must have bewitched him somehow, because no one else could explain why the untouchable Adrian Mercer had suddenly developed a habit of lingering at reception.

Charlotte always rolled her eyes when they said it. But she never quite managed to stop smiling.

Still, Charlotte began to notice little things about Adrian. He drank coffee, certainly—too much of it, in her opinion—but never water. She never saw him eat lunch, either. Not at his desk, not in the break room, not during the long hours he spent locked away in his office with contracts, calls, and whatever else managing partners buried themselves under.

At first, she told herself it was none of her business. Then she noticed the untouched glass someone had left on his desk one morning. The faint pinch of exhaustion around his eyes by late afternoon. The way he loosened his tie when he thought no one was watching.

And before she could talk herself out of it, Charlotte found herself walking toward his office with a bottle of water tucked beneath one arm and several protein bars clutched in her hands.

She knocked once.

“Come in,” Adrian called from the other side.

Charlotte stepped inside, offering him a bright smile as she walked toward his desk with her hands hidden behind her back. “Mr. Mercer.”

His eyes lifted from the papers in front of him, narrowing slightly with suspicion. “Miss Charlotte.”

Without another word, she placed the water and protein bars on his desk. “Drink. Eat.” Adrian stared at the items. Then at her. Charlotte planted both hands on her hips. “Everyone needs water and food in their body,” she said firmly. “Even terrifying lawyers who think coffee counts as a food group.” His expression remained unreadable, but something in his eyes shifted. “Drink,” she repeated, pointing at the bottle. Then to the protein bars. “Eat.” It was not a suggestion. It was an order.

“Finally,” a voice said from the doorway, “someone with the sense to order him to drink water and eat something.” Charlotte turned just as Scarlett stepped into the office, her expression full of amused approval.

Adrian’s gaze shifted toward her, unimpressed.

Scarlett ignored it completely. “He’s stubborn,” she continued, walking farther into the room, “and has a terrible habit of forgetting mundane little things like food, water, and basic human survival.”

Charlotte turned toward Scarlett and smiled. “Miss Sinclair, I can do the same for you, if you’d like,” she said, nodding toward the water and protein bars on Adrian’s desk. “Water, food, basic survival necessities.” Her smile softened, though her hands remained firmly planted on her hips. “I wouldn’t mind getting something for everyone. You all seem so busy that I’m starting to wonder if anyone in this office remembers to eat.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Adrian said, his attention returning to the papers on his desk. “We usually order through DoorDash.”

Scarlett’s smile only widened. “No, let’s have Charlotte do it,” she said brightly. “Besides, DoorDash has been getting my orders wrong lately.”

Adrian’s eyes lifted, narrowing slightly. He knew that tone.

Scarlett ignored him with the grace of someone who had been ignoring Adrian Mercer for years. In truth, she had seen the effect Charlotte had on him lately—the way he lingered at reception, the way his expression changed around her, the way he seemed almost human whenever she challenged him.

And Scarlett, unfortunately for him, had always enjoyed a little matchmaking. “Oh,” she added casually, glancing at Charlotte, “and he’s allergic to nuts.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened. Scarlett’s smile turned innocent. “You know. Since you’ll be feeding him now.”

Charlotte, however, immediately reached for the protein bars on Adrian’s desk. “These have nuts,” she said, already gathering them back into her hands. “Let me get you something else.” She flashed Adrian and Scarlett a quick smile before turning and leaving the office, the door clicking softly shut behind her.

For a moment, Adrian only stared after her.

Then he slowly lifted one brow and looked at Scarlett.

Scarlett smiled like a woman who had just won something.

“What?” Scarlett asked, settling into the chair across from his desk with an all-too-knowing smile. “Everyone knows you have a soft spot for her.” Adrian’s expression remained carefully blank, but Scarlett had known him far too long to be fooled by it. “You’ve shown more emotion since Charlotte arrived than you have in a very long time,” she continued, her teasing softening into something gentler. “It’s refreshing.” She leaned back in her chair, studying him with warm amusement. “I missed this side of you.”

Rowan laughed the second she said it, the sound bright and helpless, like he couldn’t quite believe she was standing here in his arms talking about moving in and decorations and waking up beside him like this was real, like this was actually happening and not something he’d spent the last few months trying not to think about too hard in case he jinxed it. “A woman’s touch?” he echoed, grinning so hard it was a wonder his face didn’t hurt.

“Baby, this place has had a woman’s touch for months.” His hands stayed warm at her waist, thumbs moving in absent little sweeps like he couldn’t stop touching her now that she’d said yes, now that the word was out there between them and glowing. She said yes. She said yes. Do not start visibly beaming like a lunatic. Don’t do it. Be cool. Be normal. People move in together all the time. This is a regular thing that regular adults do. Why are you one second away from sprinting around the penthouse?

He failed immediately. Spectacularly.

His grin only widened as he gestured vaguely around the apartment like a man presenting evidence before a jury. “I found one of your socks in my gym bag two weeks ago,” he informed her, deeply serious in a way that was completely undercut by the fact that he looked absurdly delighted by the memory. “Your face wash has annexed half my bathroom counter. I’ve got candles now. Candles, Charlotte. Multiple. And they all smell like forests, old bookstores, and…” He paused, wrinkling his nose as he searched for a description that made even a little sense. “Emotional support cinnamon.” He nodded once, as if that was settled science.

That’s not a phrase. You’ve invented a phrase. Great. Keep going. Somehow this is working for you, so don’t touch it. “I still don’t know what emotional support cinnamon is supposed to smell like,” he added, “but I know which one is your favorite, because it’s always the one you light first.”

That came out softer than the rest, and he felt it as soon as he said it. Not in a bad way. Just in that dangerous, open-chest kind of way Charlotte always seemed able to drag out of him without even trying. Because he did know those things. He knew which candle she reached for first. Knew which mug she liked best. Knew the blanket that had absolutely taken over his couch and half his life. Knew the exact shape of her presence in his apartment so well now that the place had stopped making sense without it.

Okay. Great. Wonderful. You’re getting sincere again. Pull it back. Make a joke. Quick. “And don’t even get me started on the blanket,” he said, latching onto the safer topic with visible enthusiasm. He pointed toward the living room with mock betrayal. “That thing didn’t just end up on my couch. It staged a full hostile takeover. I haven’t sat down in my own living room in months without being informed I am sitting on your blanket.”

Charlotte laughed, and Rowan’s entire chest practically lit up.

There it is. That sound. Fantastic. You’re done for. You were done for a long time ago, but now it’s official. Clinically, spiritually, embarrassingly done for.

He was smiling so openly now there was no saving himself, no corralling any of this back into something cool or detached or remotely dignified. He leaned closer instead, forehead nearly brushing hers, and said more quietly, “So no, you’re not bringing a woman’s touch into my apartment.” His grin softened into something warmer, fuller, the excitement still all over him but threaded now with something steadier. “The invasion already happened.” Barely a second passed before his mouth curved again. “I’m just signing the surrender papers.”

When she mentioned hearing him mumble in the mornings, Rowan groaned on instinct, letting his head tip back for half a second like this was somehow the most devastating revelation of the day. “I do not mumble,” he protested, though he was already laughing again, and Charlotte’s face made it painfully clear she was not buying a second of it. “I don’t,” he insisted, even as his grin kept trying to break through. “I mumble important things. Thoughtful things. Possibly life-changing things.” Then she reminded him about the toaster, and Rowan paused, blinked once, and said with complete sincerity, “…that was a fair question.”

Her laugh hit him again, and if he’d had any hope at all of pretending he wasn’t wildly, stupidly happy, it died right there.

His hand lifted to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, the gesture gentler than all the rest of him, and for a second the energy in him settled into something softer. “You know what’s unfair?” he murmured, looking at her the way he always did when his heart got ahead of his ability to guard it. “I don’t get to watch you fall asleep. I’m usually out first.” He gave a tiny shrug, mouth quirking. Like an old man. Or a sedated bear. Strong image. Very alluring. But then his gaze drifted over her face again, affectionate and unguarded. “But I wake up before you sometimes. And I just…” He huffed a laugh under his breath, suddenly shy about the confession even though it was obviously too late now. “I look at you. For way longer than is probably normal.”

The words came easier once they started, and that was dangerous too. “You’re all curled up, stealing ninety percent of the blanket you keep insisting belongs to both of us now, your hair’s a mess, you’re holding onto one of my pillows like you filed adoption papers for it…” His smile turned helpless, fond, so openly adoring it would have been embarrassing if he had any interest left in hiding it. “And every time, I think the same thing.”

He paused just long enough to feel his own heart lurch.

Don’t say it too big. Don’t make it weird. Don’t make it weird. You’re absolutely making it weird.

But when he looked at her, there was no point pretending.

“How the hell did I get this lucky?”

The question left him in a quiet rush, honest and amazed and so thoroughly full of feeling it made his own ears burn. That was too much. Way too much. Rowan knew it immediately, felt the vulnerability of it settle over his skin, and did the only thing he could do when he got too sincere to survive it. He bumped his nose lightly against hers, grinning again, all that bright, impossible excitement leaking back through the cracks. “Though I should warn you,” he said, voice warm with amusement, “once you’re officially moved in, I’m buying a second closet.”

He let the pause hang just long enough to be suspicious.

Then his grin widened.

“A woman’s touch?” Rowan echoed, “Baby, this place has had a woman’s touch for months.” 

Charlotte couldn’t help but giggle, because he wasn’t wrong. She had been decorating his apartment piece by piece without even realizing it, leaving little traces of herself behind until his space had started to feel a little like hers too.

“I found one of your socks in my gym bag two weeks ago,” he informed her, “Your face wash has taken over half of my bathroom counter. I’ve got candles now. Candles, Charlotte. Multiple. And they all smell like forests, old bookstores, and…” he pauses, “Emotional support cinnamon. I still don’t know what emotional support cinnamon is supposed to smell like,” then he added, “but I know which one is your favorite, because it’s always the one you light first.” 

Her head tipped back as she laughed. “Well, Emotional Support Cinnamon is supposed to smell like cinnamon,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Have you even picked up the candle and smelled it?”

Charlotte couldn’t help but look at him in awe. He wasn’t complaining about the little changes that had slowly taken over his apartment. He wasn’t pointing them out like they bothered him or like he wanted things put back the way they had been. He was simply acknowledging them — the soft, unmistakable touch of her presence that had begun weaving itself into his space from the moment they started dating.

And somehow, that made her heart ache in the sweetest way.

So she just stared at him, full of quiet fondness, taking in the way his eyes seemed to brighten whenever they settled on her. Like every little piece of herself she had left behind hadn’t been an intrusion at all.

Like it had been welcome.

“You know what’s unfair?” He murmured, “I don’t get to watch you fall asleep. I’m usually out first. But I wake up before you sometimes. And I just…” he huffed and laughed under his breath, “I look at you. For way longer than is probably normal. You’re all curled up, stealing ninety percent of the blanket you keep insisting belongs to both of us now, your hair’s a mess, you’re holding onto one of my pillows like you filed adoption papers for it…” His smile became fond. “And every time, I think the same thing.” 

Her heart skipped a beat, her breath catching at his next words. “How the hell did I get this lucky?” he whispered. The softness in his voice made something warm bloom in her chest, stealing whatever teasing remark had been waiting on her tongue. Then his mouth curved slightly. “Though, I should warn you — once you’re officially moved in, I’m buying a second closet.”

She stared at him for a moment before laughing softly. “Oh, come on. You like those decorative pillows,” she said, her eyes bright with amusement. “I’ve seen you hugging one while you watch TV.” Her smile widened, playful and knowing. “And you like my candles too. Last time, you said one of them smelled ‘manly’ and told me to buy more.” A quiet laugh slipped from her as her hands trailed up his chest, then settled at the back of his neck. Her fingers curled gently there, drawing him down toward her as she looked up at him with fondness. “So don’t act like my little touches haven’t grown on you.”

Adrian’s gaze dropped first to her hand.

It was such a simple thing, really. A hand offered in introduction. Polite. Ordinary. The kind of gesture exchanged a hundred thoughtless times a day in offices like this one, between people with nothing at stake and no real reason to remember one another afterward.

This did not feel ordinary.

Perhaps because nothing about the woman attached to it had been ordinary so far.

He let his eyes travel from her hand back to her face and found her still standing there exactly as she had a moment ago, chin lifted, expression composed, that dangerous little smile still in place as if she had not just challenged him in his own lobby, corrected his manners, refused to be intimidated, and all but asked whether arrogance came tailored with the suit. Samantha looked one frightened breath away from dissolving into dust somewhere behind her. Across the office, the silence had become theatrical. People were pretending not to listen with the sort of devotion usually reserved for prayer.

And Charlotte, apparently, was waiting.

For his name.

The absurdity of it almost made him laugh.

Almost.

He should have put an end to it. That was the reasonable move. The expected one. He could have looked at her hand, then at her, and let the silence do what silence so often did for him, reduce the other person to discomfort until they stepped back and corrected themselves without his having to waste a word. He could have reminded her, coolly and cleanly, that familiarity was not a privilege granted on first days and certainly not after open insolence in front of half the office.

He should have done any number of sensible things.

Instead, he found himself standing there, regarding her hand as if it were some unexpected piece of evidence introduced halfway through a trial, and thinking with a slow, unwilling clarity that this woman had managed in under ten minutes what entire boardrooms failed to do in years.

She had become interesting. That was not a compliment. It was, in fact, a deeply inconvenient problem. Interesting people required attention. Attention bred familiarity. Familiarity invited carelessness. Carelessness opened doors Adrian had spent most of his life learning how to bolt shut from the inside. And yet there she stood, hand extended, eyes on his, waiting for him to either meet her where she stood or reveal himself exactly as she’d already begun to suspect he was. Rude. Important. Used to being deferred to. Not entirely inaccurate, which irritated him more than it should have.

A faint breath slipped from him through his nose. Not a sigh. Certainly not a laugh. Something quieter than either, edged with disbelief and a reluctant kind of amusement he did not care to name. Then, before he could overthink it into something colder, Adrian shifted the leather folder to one hand and reached out.

He took hers.

Her hand was warm.

That registered first, annoyingly enough. Warm and smaller than his, though the grip she gave him was steady. No flutter of nerves, no immediate retreat, no attempt to soften what she’d done now that she had his full attention. She shook his hand like an equal. Like a challenge. Like a woman who had decided that if she was going to stand in a room built to make her feel small, she would at least do it at full height.

His fingers closed around hers, firm and deliberate.

“Adrian Mercer,” he said.

He watched the name land.

There it was, that near-imperceptible shift people always had when recognition arrived. Sometimes it came with nerves. Sometimes apology. Sometimes outright panic. He saw Charlotte understand the weight of the name, saw the pieces click into place behind her eyes. CEO. Managing partner. The man Samantha had probably warned her about in tones usually reserved for weather disasters and tax audits.

And still, she did not pull her hand away.

Well.

That made two of them making poor decisions.

“And,” he continued, his voice low and even, “since we’re apparently correcting each other this morning, allow me to return the favor.”

His gaze dipped once to where their hands remained joined, then rose back to her face. “If you’re going to challenge a man in his own lobby,” he said, “you should at least know whether he signs your paychecks first.” The line should have cut sharper than it did. He knew that the moment it left him. It carried the shape of a warning, certainly, but the blade of it had been dulled by something more dangerous than anger. Interest. Not open interest. Never that. Nothing so careless. But enough of it had bled through to alter the texture of the moment, to make the words land less like reprimand and more like a darkly amused observation he had not intended to share aloud.

He felt that immediately and disliked it on principle. Because the truth was, he was not offended. He should have been. Her tone had been bold to the point of insubordination. Her refusal to retreat bordered on reckless. Her “I’m not really an ass-kisser” still echoed somewhere in the back of his mind with a kind of bright, insolent life of its own. Any other employee, any other morning, and Adrian might have shut the entire exchange down with one glance and a curt directive to Samantha to remind staff where the line was.

But Charlotte was not cowering. She was not scrambling. She was not trying to recover ground or excuse herself. She was simply there, meeting him word for word, look for look, as if none of the invisible architecture of power in this building applied to her. He found that… refreshing. God help him, he found it attractive. Not in the shallow, immediate way men often meant when they noticed a beautiful woman. Charlotte was beautiful, yes. He was not blind. But beauty alone had never been enough to unsettle him. Beauty was easy. Beauty asked for nothing of him. Beauty came and went through charity galas, courtrooms, elevator rides, client dinners, and never once breached the walls he kept so carefully maintained.

This was different. This was a woman in clothes she clearly hated, in a job she likely needed more than wanted, standing in the polished heart of his firm and refusing, with maddening calm, to be made smaller by it. That sort of nerve did not come from vanity. It came from something with more bone in it. His thumb shifted, barely, against her knuckles before he stilled it. Dangerous. The word moved through him with the crisp certainty of legal language. Not because she meant him harm. Nothing so dramatic. No, dangerous because she had already managed to pull him half an inch off balance, and Adrian Mercer did not like being moved by anyone, least of all a receptionist he had met all of three minutes ago.

He held her gaze. “Most people,” he said after a beat, quieter now, “realize who I am before they insult me this thoroughly.” There. Better. Drier. More controlled. A little of the steel restored. Except even that was ruined by the faint, traitorous curl threatening the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Certainly not. Adrian did not smile in these moments. But there was enough of something near it to make the air between them feel subtly altered, like the first hairline crack appearing across winter ice.

He became aware then, suddenly and acutely, that he was still holding her hand.

Too long.

Not scandalously long. Not enough for anyone else to mark it, perhaps, unless they were already watching far too closely. But Adrian knew the exact length of a professional handshake, and this had crossed the line by a breath or two. Long enough to feel intentional. Long enough to suggest he had not quite wanted to let go. That realization irritated him with immediate precision. He released her hand then, though not abruptly. Slowly enough to keep the moment from looking like retreat. Deliberately enough to make it seem like choice.

Everything had to look like choice.

Even when it wasn’t.

Especially then.

His hand fell back to his side, fingers tightening once around the leather folder. Grounding himself. Resetting the shape of the room. Samantha was still staring like a woman one bad heartbeat away from haunting the building. He could feel the office straining not to look in their direction. He could also feel Charlotte, still directly in front of him, still warm in the space where her hand had been, still far too composed for his comfort.

He should end it. He knew that. He should nod once, turn, and let the machinery of the day swallow him again before this became anything more than an odd little disruption in the morning. Because that was all it was. A disruption. A flicker. A woman with more mouth than caution and more spark than this place deserved.

Instead, Adrian heard himself say, “Nice to know reception has standards.”

The words slipped out smoother than they had any right to.

Dry. Controlled. Not kind, exactly, but no longer cold enough to be mistaken for dismissal. Enough to acknowledge her point without surrendering ground. Enough, perhaps, to let her know that somewhere beneath the frost and authority, he had indeed understood every word she’d thrown at him and had chosen not to punish her for it. That alone would send half the office into cardiac arrest. He ignored that thought. His eyes moved over her once more, slower this time, not leering, not crude, simply taking stock. Charlotte. New receptionist. Reckless mouth. Steady hands. No talent whatsoever for self-preservation. Or perhaps too much talent for knowing when something was worth the risk.

He could not tell which yet.\ What he could tell was that he would remember her. That annoyed him most of all.

Because Adrian had built an entire life around careful distance, around moving through rooms without leaving pieces of himself behind in them. He did not collect people. He did not invite orbit. He did not pause in lobbies and trade sharpened banter with beautiful receptionists while half his staff nearly fainted into the carpet. And yet… He looked at her and thought, with a clarity that felt almost like foreboding, You are going to be a problem. Not a catastrophe. Something subtler. More persistent. A crack in routine. A splinter in the mind. A voice that would return to him later when the office was dark and the meetings were over and he ought to have been thinking about contracts instead of the exact tilt of her brow when she’d said, I assumed yours were simply misplaced.

Adrian inclined his head a fraction. The gesture was small enough to be missed by most people, but not by her, he suspected. “Miss Charlotte,” he said, the title deliberate now, almost tailored for her, “for the sake of office morale, perhaps don’t make a habit of humiliating the managing partner before lunch.” Then, because he was apparently determined to make a bad situation worse, because some reckless and long-neglected part of him had woken up long enough to enjoy the sound of her pushing back, because he wanted to see whether that sharp mouth of hers knew what to do with something less than a threat and more than politeness, he added, very quietly:

“Unless, of course, this is how you intend to introduce yourself.”

The line rested there between them, low and dangerous and just shy of flirtation, wrapped too neatly in composure to be called open interest but carrying enough heat beneath it to change the temperature all the same.

And that, Adrian knew with immediate and silent disgust, was far more revealing than anything he had meant to say.

He held her gaze anyway. Let her do with it what she liked. Then, because if he stayed one second longer he might say something even less wise, Adrian stepped back just enough to reclaim the room around him, tucking the folder more securely beneath his arm. But the damage, he suspected, had already been done. Not to his authority. That remained intact. To his peace.

“Adrian Mercer,” he said at last, finally introducing himself.

The name landed with all the weight Charlotte had suspected it would. CEO. Managing partner. The sort of man whose silence probably made entire rooms nervous.

Wonderful.

Charlotte still didn’t lower her hand. Nor did she offer an apology. If anything, learning exactly who he was only made her lift her chin a little higher.

“And since we’re apparently in the business of correcting each other this morning,” Adrian said, “allow me to return the favor.” His eyes dipped to her offered hand, lingering there for a fraction of a second before returning to her face. “If you intend to challenge a man in his own lobby,” he said, each word measured and deliberate, “you should first make sure he isn’t the one signing your paycheck.”

A soft chuckle escaped Charlotte before she could think better of it.

After that, there was no stopping the rest. “I would assume the man who signs my paychecks has enough manners to acknowledge his receptionist when she greets him,” she said, her smile turning sweet enough to be dangerous. “Not everyone is eager to roll over and show their belly the moment someone important walks in.”

Charlotte had met men like him before. Cold. Controlled. Untouchable in the way only people with money, status, and a title printed on a door seemed to be. The kind of people who held themselves above everyone else simply because their career had placed them higher on some invisible ladder.

In truth, Charlotte had always clashed with people like that. She couldn’t help it. Something in her bristled at arrogance, at the quiet expectation that everyone around them should bend first and ask questions later.

Usually, one of her friends was there to step between her and the consequences—an apologetic laugh, a hand on her arm, a whispered Charlotte, stop talking.

But this time, there was no one close enough to save her.

No one to soften the blow.

No one to stop her sharp mouth before it cut too deep.

Adrian held her gaze. “Most people,” he said after a beat, his voice quieter now, “usually realize who I am before they insult me quite this thoroughly.”

Charlotte gave a small, helpless shrug. “Well,” she said, her smile sweet enough to be dangerous, “it’s hardly my fault someone woke up this morning and forgot his manners.”

A faint ripple of movement stirred through the office.

“Your partners were perfectly polite,” she continued. “They greeted their receptionist like civilized people and, remarkably, managed not to feel insulted by it.” By then, nearly everyone in the office had begun peeking out from behind glass walls and half-open doors. Conversations had gone quiet. A few assistants hovered near their desks, pretending not to listen while very obviously listening.

Charlotte could feel every pair of eyes on her.

The new receptionist. Talking back to Adrian Mercer. On her first day. And somehow, despite the horror settling over the room, Charlotte still couldn’t bring herself to regret it.

The fire slowly building between them snapped the moment Adrian released her hand. It happened almost too quickly, as if he had only just realized they were still touching. His fingers slipped from hers, leaving behind a strange, lingering warmth Charlotte hated noticing.

“Nice to know reception has standards,” he said. His voice was dry, but there was something beneath it now—something edged with amusement. Then he leaned in slightly, just enough that his words were meant for her more than the audience pretending not to watch.

“Miss Charlotte,” he continued, “for the sake of office morale, perhaps don’t make a habit of humiliating the managing partner before lunch.” A beat passed. His gaze held hers, steady and unreadable. “Unless, of course, this is how you intend to introduce yourself.”

Charlotte caught her bottom lip between her teeth for the briefest moment, as if considering whether she should finally behave.

Then she smiled.

Turning away, she walked back to her desk with slow, deliberate steps, letting it look—for one dangerous second—as though she had accepted defeat in their little tug-of-war. But before she sat down, she glanced back at him and held his gaze. “Of course not,” she said lightly. A beat passed. “Only to rude people.” Her smile widened, sweet and teasing. “That includes you, Mr. Mercer. Though I suppose it depends on how you greet me next time.”

Somewhere down the hall, Charlotte was fairly certain Samantha had died on the spot.

This time, Charlotte was the one to look away first. Not because Adrian had won, but because someone else had entered the office. Her expression shifted instantly, the sharpness melting into something warm and practiced as she turned toward the newcomer with a bright smile.

“Good morning,” she greeted them.

The person smiled back and returned the greeting without hesitation. Only then did Charlotte glance back at Adrian, one brow lifting ever so slightly.

See? That was how civilized people greeted one another.

And for the first time that morning, Charlotte realized she might not mind working in this office after all. Not if it meant she had someone like Adrian Mercer to challenge.

Spaghetti.

He hadn’t expected that to be the thing that got through.

Not the mention of captivity. Not the sun. Not even the question sitting quietly between them like a wound neither of them was pretending not to see. Spaghetti, of all things, hit him out of nowhere and lodged somewhere under his ribs before he could brace for it.

For half a second, he was somewhere else.

At a kitchen table too small for comfort and too familiar to forget. His mother moving around the stove. Rebecca laughing at something he’d said. Steve there too, thinner then, stubborn and sharp-eyed and trying to act like he didn’t need to be fed twice over. The warmth of it came fast, bright as the flame of a match, vanished just as quickly, leaving behind the old ache it always did.

Jesus.

Bucky’s jaw tightened faintly. The memory was gone in a blink, but it left a pull in his chest all the same, that strange, bitter thing he never quite had words for. He never knew whether to be grateful for the reminders or resent them. They came like ghosts with good timing, these flashes of who he’d been before everything split open. Sometimes they felt like proof he was still in there somewhere. Sometimes they just made the distance between then and now feel meaner.

Then she said blueberries, and something in her face lit up. A real smile. Soft and sudden and unguarded enough that it caught him off balance more than the ice had.

Bucky looked at her for a second, really looked, and saw the person underneath all of it. Not the file. Not the trauma. Not the thing everybody else in the building seemed determined to reduce her to. Just Charlotte, remembering stained fingers and a grandmother who let her steal fruit from the basket and called it nothing at all. He couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips, small and real. “Blueberries,” he repeated, voice low. “That’s a good one.” There was a quiet kind of fondness in the way he said it. “I used to steal plums off carts in Brooklyn when I was a kid,” he admitted after a beat, eyes drifting somewhere past her shoulder for a moment. “Got caught more than once. Never learned much from it, apparently.”

The words faded as the breeze moved through the courtyard again, lifting the hair from her face as she tilted it toward the sun. Bucky watched the way she closed her eyes for those few seconds, the way she let herself have the warmth even with all that hauntedness still moving under her skin, and something in him went quiet.

Then she asked him.

Did it feel like that for you?

Bucky didn’t answer right away.

His gaze dropped to his hands. One flesh, one metal. Both still for the moment. He stared at them like they might offer him a version of the truth that didn’t scrape on the way out, but there wasn’t one. There never was with this. Tell her the truth. Just don’t drown her in it. He exhaled slowly through his nose and leaned back a fraction against the bench.

“Yeah,” he said finally.

The word came out rougher than he meant it to.

“Yeah, it did.”

His eyes lifted back to hers. There was no performance in his face now, no guarded dry humor to soften the edges. Just the plain, worn honesty of someone answering because she deserved that much.

“For a long time,” he said, “every quiet place felt temporary.” His gaze flicked toward the trees, the building, the open sky above them, then back to her. “Didn’t matter if the door was unlocked. Didn’t matter if nobody was in the room with me. Part of me kept waiting for somebody to come through it anyway.” His expression tightened, defenses fighting to come up and shield him from yet another memory; albeit one more recent. “I’d wake up and have to figure out where I was before I even opened my eyes all the way. Took me a while to stop sleeping like I was expecting a fight.” A humorless breath left him. Not quite a laugh, not quite a huff. Just recognition. “Still working on that one.”

He glanced down again, thumb dragging once against the edge of his metal palm before going still. The gesture looked unconscious, but it wasn’t. More like habit. Grounding. Something to do with his hands besides remember what they’d been trained to do. “The worst part wasn’t even the fear,” he said quietly. “It was how normal it felt.” That landed heavier than he intended, but he didn’t take it back. “Looking over your shoulder. Listening for footsteps. Bracing every time somebody moved too fast behind you. Getting used to freedom like it was something borrowed instead of yours.” His eyes met hers again, steady and direct.

“So yeah,” he said. “I know that feeling.” Then, more quietly, “And nobody gets to tell you you’re crazy for it.” The wind stirred the leaves again. Somewhere in the distance, a car passed beyond the perimeter, ordinary and far away. Bucky let the silence breathe for a second before he spoke again. “First time I was outside by myself after…” He stopped, jaw working once. He didn’t need to finish it. After HYDRA. After the chair. After all the years that had taught his body to belong to everybody but him.

He tried again.

“First time I was outside and nobody was following me, I still couldn’t enjoy it.” His mouth twitched faintly, but there was no humor in it. “Spent the whole time waiting for somebody to decide I’d had enough.” His gaze moved over her face then, careful and quiet, taking in the softness still there, the hauntedness underneath it, the way she held herself like she was trying not to ask for too much by wanting sun and air and a bench that wasn’t inside a locked room. “You’re not wrong for feeling it,” he said. “Doesn’t mean this is a dream. Doesn’t mean it’s safe either. Just means your body remembers.” He let that escape before adding, softer now, “Mine did too.” For a moment, he looked like he might leave it there.

Then his eyes drifted back toward the courtyard doors, to the agents keeping their distance, to the whole polished machine of the place they were sitting outside of. When he spoke again, there was that same quiet steel in his tone directed at the agents. “But if anybody here tries to make that feeling worse instead of better,” he said, “they can deal with me.” That one was met with the small sound of one of the agents shifting- uncomfortable with the not-so-veiled threat.

“Yeah,” his voice sounded rough. “Yeah, it did.” His eyes lifted back to hers, “For a long time, every quiet place felt temporary.” Then his gaze shifted towards the trees, the building, the open sky above them, then back to her. “Didn’t matter if the door was unlocked. Didn’t matter if nobody was in the room with me. Part of me kept waiting for somebody to come through it anyway. I’d wake up and have to figure out where I was before I even opened my eyes all the way. Took me a while to stop sleeping like I was expecting a fight.” A humorless breath left him. Not quite a laugh, not quite a huff. Just recognition. “Still working on that one.”

Charlotte glanced down at his hands, watching his thumb drag across the edge of his metal palm before his thumb became still. “The worst part wasn’t even the fear, it was how normal it felt.” His words sounded heavier than before, but he didn’t stop; he continued. “Looking over your shoulder. Listening for footsteps. Bracing every time somebody moved too fast behind you. Getting used to freedom like it was something borrowed instead of yours.” His eyes shifted back to her, “So yeah. I know that feeling. And nobody gets to tell you that you’re crazy for it.” 

The air between them felt heavy and comforting all at once. Heavy with everything neither of them had said outright. Heavy with memories that didn’t need to be explained because, somehow, he already understood the shape of them. But comforting, too. Because for the first time, Charlotte wasn’t standing alone inside that feeling. Someone else understood. Someone else knew what it was like to mistake quiet for danger, open doors for traps, sunlight for something that could be taken away.

And Bucky wasn’t lying to her.

She knew that now.

She could hear it in the roughness of his voice. See it in the way his eyes didn’t flinch from the truth. Feel it in the silence he let sit between them without trying to cover it up. He understood. Not because he pitied her. Because he had lived through his own version of it.

“And for the record,” he added, the softness coming back in his voice. “If I get you blueberries and somebody tries to call it a medically unsanctioned fruit situation, I’m gonna become real unpleasant for them.” Charlotte saw the corner of his mouth curved into a smile. Then he glanced at her hands, then back at her face. “Your grandmother make anything with them?” he asked. “Or were you usually too busy stealing half the supply first?” 

At that, Charlotte couldn’t help it.

She laughed.

Not a quiet breath of amusement. Not something small and carefully controlled. A real laugh, bright and startled, rising from somewhere deep in her stomach before she could think to stop it. “How did you know I’d steal half the blueberries before the basket ever made it back to the house?” she asked, still smiling. And for the first time, Charlotte smiled like that. Wide. Unrestrained. Almost disbelieving. Like she had forgotten her face could do that without consequence.

Like no one was going to punish her for making noise, for taking up space, for letting happiness show before she could hide it away again. For one brief moment, she didn’t look like someone waiting to be hurt.

She just looked free.

Then Charlotte nodded, her smile softening as she looked down at her hands. “She used to make blueberry muffins,” she said. "Blueberry pancakes. Blueberry pies. Jam. Syrup. Anything a blueberry could possibly be turned into, she found a way to make it.”

A quiet chuckle slipped out of her, and for once, it didn’t sound guarded.

“I had a serious obsession with blueberries.” Her smile grew, almost embarrassed now. “Enough of one that I went as a blueberry for Halloween.” She paused, then quickly lifted a finger before he could say anything.

“And before you ask—yes. I did trip.” Her mouth twitched. “And yes, I rolled all the way down the hill in the costume.” A hand came up to cover her laugh, but it escaped anyway, soft and bright against her palm. The image of herself as a little girl—round, blue, tumbling helplessly down the grass—seemed to play out in her mind, and for a moment, the memory was too ridiculous not to laugh at.

Not painful.

Not ruined.

Just hers.

“I must’ve looked ridiculous,” she said, still laughing under her breath. “My grandmother laughed so hard she cried before she even helped me up." A beat later, "That was the last time I saw my grandma.” The words came out softer than the rest, almost too quiet for the open air around them.

Charlotte’s smile faded little by little, the warmth of the memory dimming beneath something heavier. Her gaze dropped to her hands, and for a moment, she looked smaller beneath the sunlight. “The following month, my parents took me back,” she said. “They gave me to Trask.” Her throat tightened, but she forced the words out anyway. “They said he could make me normal again.” The bitterness in her voice was faint, worn down by time and exhaustion rather than anger. Like she had carried that sentence for so long, it had stopped cutting cleanly and only ached instead.

For a few seconds, Charlotte sat with it.

Then she shook her head, as if physically pushing the memory away before it could pull her under. She didn’t want to stay there. Not now. Not when the sun was warm, and Bucky was sitting beside her like he understood the danger of old ghosts. So instead, she leaned slightly toward him, her gaze drifting to his metal hand. “Can I touch it?” she asked quietly. There was no fear in the question. No disgust. No morbid curiosity.

Only carefulness.

Respect.

The office went still with him, or perhaps people only imagined it did. That happened sometimes. He had long since learned that silence followed him in the same way perfume followed other men, lingering after he passed, settling into corners, making people straighten without quite knowing why. Normally, he did not notice. Normally, he did not care.

His mind was still half inside the call he’d just left, turning over figures, liabilities, and the particular stupidity of wealthy men who believed a polished statement could erase bad judgment. One of Hart’s clients had spent the better part of forty minutes insisting the board would “settle down on its own,” which, in Adrian’s experience, translated quite neatly to 'I have made a catastrophic mistake and would now like the adults to fix it quietly.' He was already rearranging the day in his head, moving meetings like chess pieces, calculating damage, deciding who was competent enough to handle what.

So when he’d walked past reception without answering, it had not been deliberate.

He simply had not registered her.

That in itself was not unusual. Reception changed often enough that he rarely bothered to look too closely. The front desk functioned, or it did not. If it did, the machine kept moving. If it did not, someone solved it before it reached him. Then came her voice again. “Good morning.” Louder this time. Not shrill. Not uncertain. Clean. Direct. Just enough edge to make it clear she knew precisely what she was doing.

Adrian stopped.

Very slowly, he turned his head, already feeling the first shape of a reprimand gathering behind his teeth. It was instinctive by now. A tone like that in his lobby, directed at him, usually earned one cool sentence and a very educational silence afterward. He was already deciding how severe to be when he looked at her properly for the first time.

And just like that, the reply died.

Well. That was inconvenient.

She was new. Obviously. He would have remembered her otherwise, and not only because unfamiliar faces tended to stand out against the carefully curated neutrality of the office. No, he would have remembered her because she did not look like she belonged to the gray machinery of the place. She looked too alive for it. Too expressive. Too irritated. That last part caught him more than it should have. Most people in this building were nervous around him. Overly polished. Too eager to please, too careful, too trained in the art of making themselves smaller in his presence. Sensible, really. Adrian had cultivated that atmosphere on purpose. Distance was useful. Distance kept things efficient.

This woman, however, looked at him as though he were not the CEO of Mercer, Vale & Hart, not the man whose name made partners triple-check their numbers before speaking, but simply a rude man in an expensive suit who had failed the most basic test of manners. It was, he had to admit, a little refreshing. His gaze settled on her fully now. Satin blouse. Pencil skirt. Posture just a touch too stiff in clothes she clearly hated. There was nothing soft about the way she held herself, though. Unfamiliar, yes. Uncomfortable, probably. But not soft. Her chin was lifted the slightest bit, her brows faintly drawn, and there was enough annoyance in her expression to make the corner of his mouth almost move.

Almost.

Adrian turned the rest of the way toward her, leather folder still in one hand, and let a beat of silence stretch between them. Long enough to make most people second-guess themselves. Long enough to remind them who he was. She did not look away. That, too, was inconvenient. “Good morning,” he said at last. His voice came out low, clipped, and precise, though not as cold as it had been a moment earlier. He watched her carefully as he spoke, waiting for the usual flicker of apology or embarrassment. It did not come. Interesting.

“You must be the new receptionist.”

It was not a question. Of course she was. No one established in this office would have called after him like that unless they were suicidal, indispensable, or Eleanor from finance, and Charlotte was clearly none of those things. Not yet. His eyes moved over her face once, measured and unreadable. Pretty, yes, but that alone never interested him much. Beauty was common. Nerve was not. Beauty with nerve was rarer still. He should have ended it there. Let the weight of his attention do what it usually did. Move on. Continue the day. Instead, against his better judgment, Adrian heard himself continue. “That was either very brave,” he said, one brow lifting, “or very poorly considered.” There it was. The first faint crack in the ice. Not warmth exactly, but something less sharp than the blade he had originally intended to hand her. Something almost dryly amused. Almost. Because the truth was, he was amused. Not only because she had done it, but because she seemed to think she was justified. And worse, because she was.

He had ignored her. Unintentionally, yes, but the distinction rarely mattered to anyone but the guilty party. Adrian was used to being misunderstood in colder ways than that. Used to people seeing his silence and filling it with whatever version of him they preferred. Arrogant. Cruel. Indifferent. Untouchable.

He had spent years finding those misconceptions useful.

But now, standing in his own lobby with a woman who looked equal parts irritated and unimpressed, he found himself oddly resistant to being dismissed by her so quickly.

A ridiculous instinct. Still there it was.

His eyes flicked to the desk, then returned to her with measured calm. “And here I was hoping to leave a better impression.” It was a dangerous kind of line, too restrained to be called charm and too dry to be kindness, but it carried just enough of both to betray that her reaction interested him more than it should have. That should have been where he left it.

Instead, Adrian lingered. A second too long, maybe two.

Long enough to notice the color rising faintly along her neck. Long enough to wonder whether she was more embarrassed now or more annoyed. Long enough to become aware, with no small amount of irritation, that he wanted to know which.

He almost asked her name, then stopped himself. He did not ask receptionists their names. Not usually. Not because they were unimportant, but because he had learned long ago that familiarity invited things he had no interest in encouraging. Personal details. Attachment. The slow erosion of clean boundaries.

And yet, he found himself looknig at her again, more directly this time, and thought, against his will, You are going to be trouble. Not disaster. Not chaos. Something worse. A distraction.

Something about her tugged at him in a way he disliked on principle. It was not only her face, though he would have had to be blind not to appreciate that. It was the spark in her. The refusal to shrink. The fact that, dressed in clothes she so clearly despised and standing in an office that likely felt like a cage, she had still found enough fire in herself to call him back and demand basic human acknowledgment.

He respected that. He also did not trust his interest in it.

Adrian’s fingers tightened almost imperecptibly around the folder in his hand. “For future reference,” he said, and now there was the faintest trace of something more dangerous beneath the composure, something that might almost have been flirtation if either of them were foolish enough to name it, “if you intend to get my attention again, there are easier ways.”

Charlotte watched as he turned the rest of the way toward her, a leather folder still held loosely in one hand. He said nothing at first, letting the silence stretch between them as if he expected her to shrink beneath it.

She didn’t.

Instead, Charlotte lifted one brow and held his gaze, refusing to look away. The air between them tightened, the quiet office suddenly feeling too still around their small standoff.

Finally, he spoke. “Good morning,” he said, his voice low, clipped, and precise.

His eyes moved over her briefly, assessing. “You must be the new receptionist.”

“Yes, I am,” she replied, her tone deliberately clipped and precise, mirroring his own.

He was inspecting her. Charlotte could feel it in the slow sweep of his gaze, the quiet assessment behind his eyes. It told her immediately that he wasn’t just another employee passing through the office. There was something about him—an air of importance, of authority—that made the space around him seem to adjust.

She expected him to turn away and continue on with his day.

Instead, he stayed.

“That was either very brave,” he said, one brow lifting slightly, “or very poorly considered.” And there it was.

Not warmth, exactly—but not coldness either.

“I’d say very brave.” Charlotte placed one hand on her hip, refusing to back down beneath his stare. “It’s rude to ignore someone after they’ve greeted you,” she said. “Everyone else who’s walked into this office this morning seems to have remembered their manners.” She tilted her head slightly, one brow arching.

“I assumed yours were simply misplaced.”

In the back of her mind, Charlotte could practically hear her friend warning her to behave. Don’t cause trouble. Don’t make waves. Especially not on your first day.

But honestly, how was she supposed to ignore rudeness that obvious?

Charlotte was used to people who welcomed kindness, who appreciated a smile or a simple good morning. Since arriving, she had already managed to coax a little warmth into the dull office—softening a few stiff expressions, brightening the heavy silence that seemed to cling to the place.

And she refused to believe manners were too much to ask for.

“And here I was hoping to leave a better impression,” he said. The words were too restrained to be called charming, though there was something almost amused beneath them.

“Perhaps other people would have found your silence impressive,” Charlotte replied, keeping her voice polite despite the sharpness in her words. “Given that you seem to be someone important around here.”

From across the office, she caught sight of Samantha, the office manager, staring at her with wide, horrified eyes. One hand moved sharply across her own throat in a silent warning.

Stop. Talking.

Charlotte saw it. Unfortunately, seeing it and listening to it were two very different things. Perhaps some small, reckless part of her wanted this to be the excuse that got her fired. Then she could go back to her studio, pick up her brushes, and pretend painting was enough to keep the lights on.

“For future reference,” he said, drawing her attention back to him. This time, Charlotte felt her stomach give an inconvenient little flip at the faint trace of flirtation beneath his controlled tone. “If you intend to get my attention again,” he continued, one corner of his mouth barely shifting, “there are easier ways.” His gaze held hers for a beat longer than necessary. “Though I suppose that was effective.”

Irritation flared through Charlotte before she could stop it, sharp and immediate. “I’m sorry,” she said, though her tone suggested she wasn’t sorry at all, “but I’m not really an ass-kisser.”

A strangled sound came from somewhere behind her—possibly Samantha dying on the spot—but Charlotte ignored it. Instead, she stepped out from behind the desk and crossed the short distance between them, lifting her hand in a deliberate offer.

Bucky watched the last trace of frost disappear from her hand and didn’t flinch. Didn’t stare, either. He just looked at it, then back at her, his face settling into that quiet, guarded stillness he wore when he was thinking too much and saying too little.

For a second, he said nothing. Get it right. Too many people had talked around pain like it was a thing to manage, not survive. Too many had looked at damage and started asking the wrong questions. How dangerous is it. How useful is it. How do we contain it. He wasn’t about to do that to her. Not after the room. Not after the way she’d looked at the open door like she didn’t trust it not to slam shut. Not after she had shown him something real and waited to see if he’d turn into one more person measuring her against a file.

“Yeah,” he said finally, voice low. “I know.”

His metal hand shifted once against his knee, fingers flexing before going still. The movement was small, but it grounded him. Kept him here. His gaze cut briefly toward the agents in the courtyard, then back to Charlotte. “I know what it’s like when what was done to you is the first thing people see. They look at you and make up their minds before you say a word.”

Threat. Weapon. Problem.

He didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t need to. It was all over the way they watched her. It lived in their posture, in the measured distance they kept, in the way every conversation about her had probably started with risk before it ever reached person. He knew that look too well. Had lived under it long enough to recognize the shape of it before it even settled on a room.

“And I know what it’s like when surviving it changes you,” he went on. “When your body learns things you never asked it to learn. When people start acting like the damage tells them everything they need to know about you.”

His jaw tightened. He glanced once at her hand. “What they did to you, that’s theirs. The experiments. The pain. The parts they forced on you because they thought they had the right.” His eyes lifted back to hers. “But the fact that you’re still here after it? That part’s yours.”

“I’m not gonna tell you I know exactly how your version of this feels,” he said. “I don’t. But I know enough.” His mouth twitched faintly. “Enough to know people get real comfortable confusing what was done to you with who you are.”

That landed heavier than the rest of it. He held her gaze just long enough for her to see he meant it, then eased back a fraction, giving her room. Space without abandonment. He was still learning how to give that.

“You showed me because you chose to,” he said. “I know what that costs. So I’m not gonna treat it like a test. Or a threat.” His eyes flicked toward the agents again, flat and warning-cold. “And I’m not gonna let them do it either.”

They can call it protocol all they want. A cage with good lighting is still a cage.

When he looked back at her, his expression had softened by a degree. Barely. Enough. “For what it’s worth, I think the part of you that still misses grass and rain and trees says a hell of a lot more about you than anything Trask ever did.”

That one came from somewhere quieter in him. Somewhere older. He understood missing ordinary things in a way that still made his chest ache when he thought about it too long. The smell of coffee. The weight of a decent blanket. A street with nobody following. A room where the door locked because you turned it, not because someone else did. People didn’t realize how much of a life was made up of small freedoms until every last one of them got stripped for parts.

“You don’t have to explain every part of yourself to make me stay sitting here,” he said. “And you don’t have to prove you’re safe to deserve being treated like you are.”

“You want to sit out here and talk, we do that. You want quiet, we do quiet. You want food brought out here so you don’t have to go back inside, I’ll make it happen.” A faint, dry edge touched his mouth. “Might hate every second of dealing with the cafeteria, but I’ll survive.”

The trace of humor faded, but the steadiness stayed. He could feel the agents out there, still watching, still pretending distance made them less a part of this than they were. Let them watch. Let them learn something for once.

“Far as I’m concerned,” Bucky said quietly, “nobody gets to put you back behind glass just because they’re scared of what somebody else did to you.”

Then he went still again, shoulders squared toward the courtyard, attention split between her and everyone else. Watchful. Solid. No performance in it. Just the simple refusal to let this become one more place that treated her like a problem before a person.

Not while I’m here.

“You don’t have to explain every part of yourself to make me stay sitting here,” he said.

“And you don’t have to prove you’re safe to deserve being treated like you are. You want to sit out here and talk; we do that. You want quiet, we do quiet. You want food brought out here so you don’t have to go back inside. I’ll make it happen.” A faint, dry edge touched his mouth.

“Might hate every second of dealing with the cafeteria, but I’ll survive. Far as I’m concerned,” Bucky said quietly, “nobody gets to put you back behind glass just because they’re scared of what somebody else did to you.”

Warmth spread through Charlotte’s chest at his words, unexpected and gentle, and she couldn’t quite stop the smile that tugged at her lips.

It felt unfamiliar.

Not forced. Not nervous. Just… real.

Her hand lifted almost shyly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she glanced away.

“A favorite food?” she repeated, like the question itself was something precious.

For a moment, she thought about it, searching through memories that felt dusty from disuse.

“I used to love spaghetti,” she murmured.

Then her expression brightened, sudden and soft.

“Oh—blueberries.” A real smile bloomed across her face this time. “I loved blueberries. I remember picking them with my grandmother. Wild blueberries. We’d come home with our fingers stained purple, and she’d pretend not to notice when I ate more than I put in the basket.”

The memory lingered between them, fragile but warm.

Charlotte’s gaze drifted away as a breeze moved through the courtyard, brushing against her skin and lifting strands of her hair. She tilted her face toward it, eyes closing for a breath.

“This feels like a dream,” she whispered. “Feeling the sun like this. Breathing fresh air.”

For a few seconds, she let herself have it.

Then her eyes opened, and she looked back at Bucky. The softness was still there, but something more haunted had slipped beneath it.

“Did it feel like that for you?” she asked quietly. “After everything?”

Her fingers curled lightly against the bench.

“Like if you stopped looking over your shoulder, even for a second… someone would come and take you back?”

Bucky went very still when Charlotte stepped toward him.

Not because he thought she would hurt him.

Because she had chosen to.

That was the part that caught under his ribs and held there, sharp and strange. She was not being pulled forward by a medic with a careful voice. Not guided by an agent with a hand hovering too close to her elbow. Not ordered. Not maneuvered. Not coaxed into position by people who had already decided what was best for her before she opened her mouth.

She moved because she wanted to.

And Bucky knew, better than most, how enormous a thing that was.

Choice could feel impossible after captivity. Not poetic impossible. Not dramatic impossible. Real impossible. The kind that lived in your muscles. The kind that made a man stand in front of a breakfast counter for ten minutes because nobody had told him what he was allowed to eat. The kind that turned an open door into a question sharp enough to draw blood.

So he let her have it.

He did not step closer. Did not reach for her. Did not soften his posture into something fake and harmless, because harmless had never looked real to people like them. Harmless was what men in clean coats pretended to be before they tightened the straps.

Instead, Bucky stayed where he was, angled partly toward her and partly toward the agents, one shoulder set between Charlotte and the nearest person who might decide fear was an invitation to interfere. His hands remained visible at his sides. The metal fingers flexed once, a faint mechanical click in the warm air, before going still again.

Her words landed between them.

Because you’re the only one who’s actually seen me.

For a second, he looked down.

A breath left him through his nose, almost a laugh, but there was no humor in it. Just disbelief, maybe. Not at her. At all of it. At the courtyard. At SHIELD. At himself. At the fact that somehow, out of everyone standing there with badges and radios and protocols stacked behind their teeth, he had become the person she was choosing to trust.

That seemed like proof the universe had a vicious little sense of irony.

“I don’t know if I’m good at seeing people,” he said quietly.

His voice was rougher than he expected. Honest in a way he had not planned. Honesty still felt like walking barefoot over broken glass some days, but lying to her would have been worse.

“I spent a long time being told where to look.”

The confession sat there in the sunlight, ugly and plain.

He had not meant to offer it in front of agents.

He had not meant to offer it at all.

But Charlotte was watching him like his answer mattered, and something in him refused to hand her another polished sentence with nothing living inside it.

So he lifted his gaze again.

“But I know what it feels like when nobody sees you,” he said. “When they only see what you can do. What you might do. What they’re scared you’ll become if they don’t keep you under somebody’s thumb.”

His eyes flicked toward the agents.

“That part, I know.”

One of them looked away first.

Good.

Bucky returned his attention to Charlotte, careful not to trap her in it. He let himself look only long enough to mean it, then shifted his gaze slightly aside, giving her room inside the conversation. People forgot that eye contact could become another locked door if someone had spent long enough being studied.

“I’m gonna be honest with you,” he said. “I’m winging this.”

A faint, dry edge touched his mouth.

“First real conversation I’ve had with authority where I’m not being questioned, restrained, pardoned, threatened, evaluated, or told to stop glaring.”

His eyes slid briefly toward Morales.

“Still might get told that last one.”

Then back to Charlotte.

“But I can tell them no. I can stand here. I can make sure they don’t touch you.”

His jaw tightened faintly, the line of him hardening again as his awareness swept over the courtyard. Every agent. Every hand. Every shift of weight. Every nervous glance toward a radio or holster.

Then his voice lowered.

“And I can listen.”

He swallowed once.

“That’s what I’ve got.”

It was not much, maybe. It was not gentle speech from Steve or clean strategy from Natasha or Sam’s steady hands built for pulling people out of their own heads before they drowned. It was only Bucky, standing in the sun with old ghosts under his skin, trying not to become the sharpest thing in the room unless someone made it necessary.

But it was what he had.

Agent Morales took one careful step forward.

Bucky’s head turned before she finished moving.

She stopped.

“Barnes,” she said, calm in the way people were calm when they wanted everyone around them to remember they had authority. “We still have to do our jobs.”

“Then do them from there.”

“She has to be medically cleared.”

“No.”

The word landed flat and final.

Charlotte wanted no cages.

Fine.

Bucky could be one for everyone else.

Morales’s eyes narrowed. “That isn’t your decision.”

Bucky’s expression did not change.

“It’s hers.”

The silence after that stretched thin and bright beneath the open sky.

Somewhere behind Morales, one of the younger agents shifted like he wanted to argue. Bucky did not look at him. He did not need to. His body changed by degrees, shoulders settling, stance grounding, the threat returning without spectacle.

“She gave you terms,” he said, voice still low. “You can respect them or leave.”

Morales exhaled through her nose. “This is not standard intake protocol.”

“No,” Bucky said. “It’s treating someone like a person.”

That one made the courtyard go quiet in a different way.

Not softer.

Worse.

Necessary.

Bucky let it sit there.

Then he looked back at Charlotte, and the hard line of him eased by a fraction. Not gone. Not while they were still surrounded. But enough that his words, when they came, belonged to her more than to them.

“You talk to me if you want,” he said. “You stop when you want. You sit, stand, pace, yell, freeze the damn fountain, I don’t care.”

His mouth twitched faintly.

“Actually, Stark might care about the fountain. I don’t.”

The humor was small. Dry. There and gone like a match struck in bad weather.

Then his face sobered again.

“No examination room,” he said. “No glass. No locked door.”

He glanced toward the nearest bench, sitting half in sunlight and half in shade, then back to her.

“You want one conversation where nobody puts you in a cage first?”

He nodded once.

“Then that’s what this is.”

For a moment, Bucky thought he might have said too much. The instinct to retreat rose immediately, sharp and familiar. He was not built for this. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Words had never been the cleanest tool in his hands. They came out too blunt, too scraped, too full of old bruises pretending to be wisdom.

But he could stand.

He could watch.

He could make his body into a line no one crossed.

He could give Charlotte the one thing no one had known how to give him at first: space without abandonment.

So he stepped slightly aside, opening the path toward the sunlit bench without guiding her, without touching her, without deciding for her.

“After you,” he said.

Then, quieter, his eyes briefly meeting hers before he let the contact go. “And you don’t have to tell them everything just because you said you would.” His voice softened in the rough, uneven way of something dug out from under rubble.

“You can tell them what you choose. You can stop when you choose. You can say no. You can change your mind.” His gaze flicked back toward the agents, making sure the words landed where they needed to.

“People forget that part when they’re scared.”

Another breath passed.

Then, lower, meant only for her if the world was kind enough not to steal it.

“I believe you,” he said. “That you’re not trying to run.”

His eyes moved briefly to the sunlit stretch of pavement beside them.

“But even if all you wanted was to stand here and breathe, that’d be enough too.”

He waited a moment, then added, almost awkwardly, because softness still felt like speaking a language he had learned from overhearing other people through walls, “You don’t owe anyone proof that you deserve this.”

His jaw worked once.

“You already do.”

Bucky shifted his weight, settling back into that quiet, watchful place beside her. Close enough to be there. Far enough to leave her room. His eyes returned to the agents, to the doors, to the whole polished machine of SHIELD pretending not to bristle at being told no.

He did not know what he was doing.

But he knew what not to do.

For now, that would have to be enough.

“I don’t know if I’m good at seeing people,” Bucky said quietly. “I spent a long time being told where to look.” 

Charlotte watched him carefully, studying every shift in his expression, every pause before he spoke. His answers mattered to her in a way no one else’s had. Because Bucky wasn’t guessing. He wasn’t offering empty comfort or pretending to understand just to make her easier to handle. He knew. Maybe not every detail. Maybe not the exact shape of her pain. But he knew what it was like to be trapped inside something other people had made of you. To be watched. Controlled. Feared. Treated like a weapon before anyone bothered to see the person underneath. And because of that, when he spoke, Charlotte listened.

“But I know what it feels like when nobody sees you,” he continued. “When they only see what you can do. What you might do. What they’re scared you’ll become if they don’t keep you under somebody’s thumb.” His gaze shifted towards the agents. “That part, I know.” Then his attention was returned back to Charlotte, “I’m gonna be honest with you,” he exhaled. “I’m winging this.” 

Charlotte watched him closely, and for a moment, she realized this probably wasn’t something he was used to either. Being trusted. Having someone listen to him. Having anyone believe that he could be the safest person in the room. Maybe the agents had never really trusted him before. Maybe they still didn’t. Maybe, to them, he was only useful as long as he stayed under control too. The thought made something tighten in her chest. Then Agent Morales took one careful step forward.

Charlotte’s breath hitched immediately. Her body went tense, muscles locking as if bracing for hands, orders, restraints—anything. Her eyes snapped to the agent, tracking the movement before she could stop herself. Morales noticed and slowed, lifting one hand slightly as if to show she wasn’t reaching for her. “Barnes,” the agent said, voice measured but firm, “we still have to do our jobs.”

“Then do them from there.” He replied.

“She has to be medically cleared.” 

“Why?” Charlotte asked, the word coming out sharper than she meant it to. She looked from Morales to the other agents, her jaw tight and her chest rising a little too fast. “Why do I have to be medically cleared before anyone treats me like a person?” Her voice cracked around the anger, but she didn’t stop. “Do I look sick?” she demanded. “No. I look like this because I haven’t felt the sun on my skin in years. I look like this because I haven’t had enough food, enough rest, enough anything that makes a person feel alive.” Her hands curled at her sides. “And yet, up until this very hour, no one has shown me a comfortable room. No one has offered me real food. No one has asked me what I need without making it sound like another test.”

A bitter laugh escaped her, hollow and exhausted. “Why not? Because I have to be medically cleared first.” The words tasted like poison. Charlotte shook her head, sunlight catching against her face as she looked back toward the building. “That’s always the excuse, isn’t it? Clear me. Study me. Check me. Make sure I’m safe enough before I’m allowed to be comfortable.” Her eyes returned to Morales, hard and wounded all at once. “But no one ever asks if I feel safe.”

“This is not standard intake protocol.” The agent exhaled through her nose. 

“No,” Bucky said. “It’s treating someone like a person.” The way he said it made everyone go quiet, not softer. Worse. Necessary, and Bucky let it sit there. Then he looked back at Charlotte, “You talk to me if you want,” he continued. “You stop when you want. You sit, stand, pace, yell, freeze the damn fountain, I don’t care.” 

Then, despite herself, Charlotte felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward at his next words. It wasn’t much. Barely even a smile. But after everything, it felt almost strange on her face. “Actually,” he said, glancing toward the fountain, “Stark might care about the fountain.” His gaze shifted back to her, dry and unreadable. “I don’t.”

She licked her lips, then moved toward one of the benches he had pointed out. Every step was careful, as if some part of her still expected someone to tell her she wasn’t allowed. But no one stopped her. No one reached for her. So she lowered herself onto the bench slowly, settling beneath the sunlight like it was something fragile she was afraid to lose.

For a moment, Charlotte only tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting the warmth touch her face, her throat, her hands. “I used to lay in the grass when I was little,” she said quietly. “I’d just stare up at the sky and watch the clouds move.” A faint, distant softness passed over her expression. “I spent so much time outside that my hair started changing color from the sun.” Her fingers brushed absently against a strand of it, like she could still remember what that felt like. “I didn’t even notice it happening back then. It was just… normal. Being outside. Feeling warm. Coming home with dirt on my hands and grass stuck to my clothes.” Her gaze drifted back to him. “That’s what I missed the most,” she admitted, voice quieter now. “The sun. The smell of the soil after it rained. Flowers. Trees. The forest.” She swallowed, looking away again before the ache in her eyes became too obvious. “All the things people don’t think about until they’re gone.”

Charlotte hesitated for a moment before reaching out, her fingers brushing against the empty space on the bench beside her. It wasn’t much of a gesture. Just her hand resting there, quiet and uncertain. An invitation. She didn’t look at him right away when she spoke. “I’m what people call… a mutant.” The word felt strange on her tongue, not because it was new, but because so many people had used it like an accusation. Like a warning label. Like it explained everything they thought they needed to know about her. “My DNA changed when I was little,” she continued, her voice low. “That’s why Trask took me. He wanted to know how it happened.”

Her jaw tightened, and her gaze dropped to her hands. “So he experimented on me. For years.” After a moment, she lifted one hand, palm facing up. At first, there was nothing. Then the air above her skin began to shimmer with cold. A delicate layer of ice formed across her palm, thin and crystalline, catching the sunlight in pale, fractured colors. It spread over her fingers like glass, beautiful and dangerous all at once. Then, just as quickly, it broke apart into frost, dusting her skin in white before melting into nothing.

“I can create ice,” she said quietly. “In different forms. I can heal myself. I can heal other people.” Her fingers curled slightly, as if she were trying to hide what he had already seen. “My body can turn into ice too.” She swallowed. “My abilities changed over the years. Some of it came from the experiments. Some of it came from surviving them.”

Finally, Charlotte looked back at Bucky. There was something raw in her eyes now. Not fear exactly, but recognition. A careful, aching kind of hope.

“You know that feeling…” she said softly. “Don’t you?”

Bucky did know.

That was the worst part.

He knew so well that the answer did not come right away. It caught somewhere low in his chest, caught between old memory and present sunlight, between the girl standing in front of him with her face turned toward the sky and the ghost of himself standing in another place, another time, breathing air that no longer belonged to HYDRA and still waiting for someone to call him back inside.

Freedom did not feel like freedom at first.

People never seemed to understand that.

They imagined escape as relief. As tears. As collapsing into safety with grateful hands and trembling smiles. They imagined the cage opening and the animal inside knowing what to do with open ground.

But Bucky knew better.

Sometimes the open door was the most terrifying part. Sometimes sunlight touched your face and your body still waited for the alarm. Sometimes there was no chain around your throat, no command in your ear, no hand forcing your head down, and still you stood there expecting punishment because every soft thing had once been bait.

Charlotte stood beneath the sun like she was afraid it might disappear if she breathed too hard.

Bucky stayed a few feet behind her.

Not too close. Never too close.

The light caught along her face, warming the edges of all that exhaustion, all that tension, all that fear she had not let anyone name for her. She did not look healed. She did not look safe. She looked like someone who had clawed her way out of one nightmare and had not yet decided whether this world was simply another version of it wearing cleaner clothes.

His jaw worked once.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

The word came out rough, almost scraped from him.

His eyes lowered for half a second, not because he could not look at her, but because he could. Because he understood the tremor in her shoulders. Because he understood the stillness. Because he understood what it meant to stand outside and still feel walls pressed against the inside of your skin.

“I know.”

For a moment, that was all he had.

It was not enough. It was the only honest thing in him.

Behind them, someone moved.

Bucky felt it before he properly saw it. A shift of weight. A quiet step. The faint whisper of tactical gear and a gloved hand lifting with the kind of stupid, trained confidence that came from someone deciding fear needed to be managed instead of understood.

The agent was reaching for Charlotte from behind.

Bucky moved.

There was no warning in it. No visible decision. One second he was standing in the sun behind her, silent and still, and the next his metal hand had fisted into the back of the agent’s tactical vest and collar, dragging him backward so fast his boots scraped hard against the pavement.

The agent choked on a startled sound.

Bucky spun him away from Charlotte and shoved him against the wall beside the doors with enough force to knock the breath out of him, but not enough to break anything.

That restraint mattered.

The fact that Bucky wanted to break something mattered too.

The courtyard went still.

Every agent froze.

Bucky leaned in just enough that the man pinned against the wall could see exactly what kind of mistake he had almost made.

“Put one hand on her,” Bucky growled, voice low and lethal, “and I’ll make sure you remember why that was stupid.”

The agent swallowed.

Bucky did not blink.

For a second, the old machine inside him stirred. Efficient. Cold. Ready. Every line of the man’s body became information. Balance. Breathing. Weakness. Threat level. Distance between weapons. Number of agents. Possible exits. How fast he could drop the first three before anyone got a shot off.

No.

Not that.

Not here.

Not for them.

Bucky forced his fingers to loosen, though the metal joints clicked with the effort. He shoved the agent back one last inch before letting go.

The man stumbled, one hand flying to his own collar as if checking whether Bucky had left bruises there.

Bucky turned slowly.

His gaze cut across every agent in the courtyard.

Nobody had drawn a weapon yet, but several hands hovered close. Too close. Their bodies had shifted into formation without fully committing to it, creating a loose half-circle around Charlotte and the door as if they could pretend that was not exactly what it was.

A cage with sunlight in it.

Bucky’s expression went flat.

“She said outside,” he said, each word quiet enough to make the silence sharpen around it. “She didn’t say surrounded.”

No one answered.

Good.

He stepped away from the wall and placed himself a little behind Charlotte, not blocking her path, not crowding her back, but standing at an angle that put his body between her and the worst of them.

A barrier, if she wanted one.

A shadow, if she did not.

His hands lowered to his sides. His metal fingers flexed once, then went still.

“Back up,” he said.

Agent Morales stood near the entrance with her jaw tight, looking between Bucky and Charlotte like she was trying to decide which one of them was the larger problem.

“Barnes,” she said carefully. “We need to maintain visual contact.”

“You’ve got eyes,” Bucky replied without looking away from the agents. “Use them from over there.”

“She just came out of a containment incident.”

His mouth twitched, but there was no humor in it.

“Funny how fast rescue starts looking like custody.”

Morales exhaled. “That is not what this is.”

Bucky finally looked at her.

The look was enough to make her stop.

Maybe he should have said something better. Something diplomatic. Something Steve would have said, all firm moral spine and impossible patience. Something Sam would approve of later instead of rubbing both hands over his face and muttering, Man, I leave you alone for five minutes and you threaten federal employees in a courtyard.

But Bucky did not know how to do this.

That was the ridiculous, ugly truth of it.

Everyone looked at him like he had some authority here because he had survived something adjacent. Because he had the file, the arm, the history, the particular haunted look that made people assume suffering came with wisdom instead of just damage and poor sleep.

He did not know what he was doing.

He knew how to survive.

He knew how to recognize a cage no matter what polite name people painted over the bars.

Maybe that had to be enough.

“Move back,” he said again.

This time, they did.

Slowly. Reluctantly. With enough tension in the air to make every inch feel like a negotiation, but they moved. The circle widened. Hands dropped from weapons. The space around Charlotte opened by several feet.

Bucky watched until he was certain they understood.

Only then did his attention return to her.

Not fully. Not heavily. He knew better than to make her feel observed when the whole damn building had already tried to swallow her in surveillance and concern. So he looked at the agents, at the perimeter, at the doors, at everything except her face for too long.

“You keep looking at the sun,” he said quietly. “I’ll watch them.”

The words came out before he could decide whether they were too much.

Maybe they were.

Maybe he did not care.

His throat worked once. He could still feel the heat of adrenaline under his skin, the old readiness trying to convince him that the only safe room was one where every threat had been put down and every exit had been secured by his own hands. He hated that part of himself. Hated how easily it rose. Hated how useful it still was.

But Charlotte was still standing in sunlight.

No one had taken her back inside.

That had to count for something.

Bucky let out a slow breath through his nose.

“Nobody taught me how to be free either,” he said after a long moment.

His voice was lower now. Less warning. More confession, though he did not look at her when he gave it. It was easier to say it to the open air, to the line of trees beyond the courtyard, to the gold light spilling over the concrete like the world had the nerve to keep being beautiful after everything people had done inside locked rooms.

“I kept waiting for someone to tell me where to stand,” he continued. “Where to look. What to say. What I was allowed to want.”

His mouth tightened faintly.

“First time nobody did, I just stood there like an idiot.”

There was the barest breath of humor in it, dry and wounded and gone almost as soon as it appeared.

Then he glanced at her, carefully, briefly.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now.”

It was not advice. Not an order. Not another person trying to shape her fear into something easier for them to manage.

It was permission.

Or as close to permission as he could offer without making himself one more person granting her access to her own body.

“You don’t have to decide if this place is safe. You don’t have to decide if you trust me. You don’t have to decide what happens next, or what you tell them, or whether you ever step foot in medical again today.”

His gaze shifted back to the agents.

“You wanted outside. That’s enough.”

For another moment, he said nothing.

The sun warmed the side of his face. The breeze moved through the courtyard, soft against the hard angles of SHIELD architecture, making the whole place feel less like a facility and more like something the world had not fully given up on yet.

Bucky stood there, silent and watchful, with no real plan beyond keeping the space open around her.

It was absurd, really.

James Buchanan Barnes, former Winter Soldier, current SHIELD-affiliated walking security concern, apparently assigned by no one and approved by absolutely nobody to stand between a traumatized mutant woman and a bunch of anxious agents because he had taken one look at her and recognized the shape of the cage.

He almost wanted to laugh.

Instead, he kept his eyes on the courtyard.

“If you wanna stand here awhile,” he said, quieter still, “we stand here awhile.”

His metal hand flexed once, then settled.

“And if they’ve got a problem with that…”

He looked toward the agents again, expression going flat enough to empty the air around him.

For one brief moment, there was a sliver of freedom.

She stood beneath the sun and let it wash over her face, soaking in the warmth like it was something sacred. Like if she stayed still enough, breathed deep enough, she could pretend this was real. That the open air meant safety. That the sky above her meant she belonged to herself again.

But she knew better.

She wasn’t free.

The movement behind her proved it.

Her eyes opened slowly, and she turned just enough to look over her shoulder. One of the agents had stepped too close—too fast—and before she could even tense, Bucky had him pinned hard against the wall.

Every agent around them froze.

No one moved. No one breathed too loudly.

Bucky’s forearm was pressed across the agent’s chest, his body a solid barrier between her and everyone else. His expression had gone cold in a way that made the air itself feel sharper.

“Put one hand on her,” Bucky growled, his voice low and lethal, “and I’ll make sure you remember why that was stupid.”

The agent swallowed, hands raised slightly in surrender.

She stared at Bucky for a moment, the sunlight still warm on her skin, and realized something that made her chest ache. He wasn’t just giving her space, he was making sure everyone else did, too.

For the first time, something stirred in Charlotte’s chest. It was small. Fragile. Almost painful. The feeling of being seen. Not watched. Not studied. Not handled like a problem waiting to happen.

Seen.

Like maybe she was worth standing in front of. Worth protecting. Worth someone risking the anger of every agent around them just to make sure no one touched her without permission. Her gaze moved slowly over the agents surrounding her, taking in their stiff postures, their wary eyes, the hands that hovered too close to weapons and radios.

Then Bucky spoke. “She said outside.” Each word was quiet, but it cut through the silence like a blade. No shouting. No wasted anger. Just a warning so cold and controlled it made the air around them sharpen. “She didn’t say surrounded.”

No one answered. 

And then he was moving again, returning to his place just behind her. Not close enough to crowd her. Not close enough to make her feel trapped. Just close enough to make it clear. He had put himself between Charlotte and the agents once more, his body a quiet warning that no one would get to her without going through him first.

“Back up.” Bucky stated before the other Agent that stood near the entrance spoke, “Barnes,” the agent said carefully. “We need to maintain visual contact.” 

“You’ve got eyes,” Bucky replied without looking away from the agents. “Use them from over there.” 

“She just came out of a containment incident.” 

She saw Bucky’s mouth twitch, “Funny how fast reuse starts looking like custody.” 

The agent exhaled. “That is not what this is.”

Charlotte had been right. She wasn’t free. This was just another facility. Another set of walls. Another leash wrapped around her throat, dressed up to look kinder than the last. “Is it?” she asked the agent, her voice quiet but edged. “Is it really different?” She turned to face them fully, sunlight warming her back while the bitterness in her chest rose like bile.

“Because to me, it feels like I’ve just been transferred to another facility.” Her eyes flicked over the agents, the building, the careful distance they all kept from her like she was something that might detonate. “Just another building full of people doing the same damn thing to me.”

Her jaw tightened.

“Trying to understand what I am. Watching me. Testing me. Keeping me caged because I’m a threat.”

The word left her mouth like it tasted rotten.

A scoff slipped past her lips, bitter and exhausted, and she turned away from them before they could see too much on her face. Once more, she stepped into the sunlight, lifting her chin slightly as if the warmth alone could hold her together.

But even beneath the sun, she could still feel the leash. Finally, she felt the agents begin to move back.

The pressure around her eased as they gave her more space, the air no longer so crowded with bodies and suspicion. She could breathe a little easier now. She could stand without feeling like every step, every twitch, every breath was being measured as a threat.

But the feeling from before was gone. That small, fragile sliver of freedom had vanished the moment she remembered what this really was. Even when Bucky told her she could keep looking at the sun, even when his voice stayed low and steady beside her, it didn’t feel the same anymore.

The warmth still touched her face.

The sky was still open above her.

But Charlotte knew better now.

Sunlight didn’t mean freedom.

Not when there were still people deciding how much of it she was allowed to have.

“Nobody taught me how to be free either,” he said after a long moment. His voice had changed. It wasn’t a warning anymore. It wasn’t sharp or lethal or meant for the agents lingering too close. It was lower now. Quieter. More like a confession.

“For a long time, I kept waiting for someone to tell me what came next,” he continued, his eyes fixed somewhere ahead of them. “Where to stand. Where to look. What to say.” His jaw tightened slightly. “What I was allowed to want.” The silence that followed felt heavier than before, but not cruel. Just honest. Then he looked at her again.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now,” he said. “You don’t have to decide if this place is safe. You don’t have to decide if you trust me. You don’t have to decide what happens next, or what you tell them, or whether you ever step foot in medical again today.”

His gaze shifted briefly toward the agents, and though his voice stayed calm, something protective hardened beneath it.

“You wanted outside,” he said.

Then his eyes returned to Charlotte.

“That’s enough.”

Charlotte turned her head to look at Bucky, her expression hardening with a determination that hadn’t been there before. “I don’t want to be checked by medical,” she said firmly. “I’ll answer their questions. I’ll tell them everything they want to know. I’ll sit here for hours if that’s what it takes.”

Her eyes flickered toward the building behind them, and her jaw clenched. “But I’m not going back in there.” The words came out sharper than she intended, carrying years of frustration and exhaustion behind them. “I’m done with examination rooms. I’m done with people staring at me through glass and taking notes while they try to figure out what I am.” She shook her head. “Every place says it’s different. Every place says they’re trying to help.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “And somehow it always ends with me in a room with no windows.” She looked away from him and back toward the open sky above them. The sunlight warmed her face, and for a moment she simply stood there, letting herself feel it.

“I’ve spent my whole life being locked away,” she said quietly. “Being watched. Being studied. Being treated like something dangerous that needed to be contained.” Her voice cracked slightly before she forced it steady again. “I’m tired of being treated like a prisoner.” For a long moment, she said nothing else. Then, almost reluctantly, she added, “I’m not asking to leave. I’m not trying to run.” Her eyes shifted back to Bucky. “I just want one day—one conversation—where nobody puts me in a cage first."

For a moment Charlotte only stood there beneath the sun, breathing through the ache in her chest, trying to understand the strange, fragile feeling his honesty had left behind. Then, slowly, she took a step toward him. Not because she had to. Because she chose to.

@etherealxmuses gets a blast from the past; Bucky -> Charlotte

The alarms had stopped twenty minutes ago.

Bucky still heard them.

Not literally. Not in the way the rest of the building would register noise, with decibels and diagnostics and whatever neat little report FRIDAY would spit out for Stark’s morning review. No, the headquarters had gone quiet again. Lights had returned to their normal glow. The emergency shutters had lifted from the windows. The agents in the hall had lowered their weapons from ready to resting, though not far enough for Bucky’s liking.

Everything had slipped back into procedure.

That was the part that made his skin crawl.

Procedure had always been the clean word people used after something ugly happened. Procedure meant files. Reports. Incident summaries. Statements written in passive voice so nobody had to admit who had done what. The subject became agitated. The subject resisted medical evaluation. The subject displayed hostile abilities. Containment measures were considered.

He knew those words.

He had been those words.

Now Charlotte was becoming them too.

She had been at SHIELD headquarters less than a day, maybe less than that. Time had blurred since she arrived. Bucky knew only the pieces people had handed him in clipped, careful tones: escaped from a Trask-linked facility, mutant, cryokinetic abilities, defensive response under stress, severe trauma indicators, unknown medical history, proceed with caution.

He had listened.

Then he had watched.

And watching had told him more than any briefing ever could.

Charlotte did not move through headquarters like someone who had been rescued. She moved like someone waiting for rescue to become another trick. Every hallway had too many cameras. Every kind voice had a hook hidden under it. Every open door was only open because someone else had decided it should be.

Then medical intake happened.

Someone had shut the door too fast.

That was all it took.

Not an attack. Not a threat. Not some grand explosion of power. Just the clean metallic click of a lock sliding into place, sharp and final in a room that smelled too much like disinfectant and latex and the cold brightness of people with needles.

Bucky had not been in the room when it started.

He had been halfway down the hall when the temperature dropped.

The lights had flickered. Someone had shouted. A tray hit the floor with a crash that made every trained body in the corridor tense at once. Then came the alarm, shrill and merciless, and a bloom of frost spreading beneath the medical bay door.

By the time he reached it, three SHIELD agents had weapons drawn.

“Lower those,” Bucky said.

No one did.

Inside, Charlotte had backed herself into a corner, breath coming too fast, one hand pressed against the wall like she was trying to hold herself upright through sheer stubbornness. Frost had crawled over the floor in jagged veins. The exam bed was overturned. A cabinet had cracked down the side from the sudden ice blooming across its hinges. One medic stood near the opposite wall with both hands raised, pale but unhurt. Another agent kept repeating her name like repetition could pass for comfort.

“Charlotte. Charlotte, you need to calm down. We’re not going to hurt you. You’re safe.”

Bucky had almost laughed.

Safe.

God, he hated that word when it came from people standing between someone and the door.

The situation ended only because someone finally had enough sense to stop crowding her. Or maybe because Bucky’s glare made continuing seem like a poor career decision. Either way, they moved her afterward, not back to medical, not yet, but into one of the smaller rooms two corridors down.

A safe room, they called it.

Bucky hated the name immediately.

Safe room. Holding room. Observation room. Recovery suite. Containment-adjacent wellness chamber, if Stark wanted to get particularly insufferable about it. People could dress cages in every polite word they liked. They were still cages if the person inside did not believe they could leave.

Now he stood outside that room while three agents argued in low voices about sedation.

“No,” Bucky said.

The word cut through the hallway cleanly enough that all three of them turned.

Agent Morales, the senior one, exhaled through her nose. “Barnes, this isn’t your call.”

He looked at her.

“It is now.”

“She’s a danger to herself and potentially to staff.”

“She’s scared.”

“She froze half the medical bay.”

“Nobody died.”

“That is not the standard we use here.”

Bucky’s jaw shifted once.

It would have been easy to get angry. Easier than breathing. Easier than remembering he was not back there, not under fluorescent lights with men speaking over him as if the body on the table belonged to them by right of proximity. Easier than standing in a hallway and listening to the same old logic put on a SHIELD badge.

Instead, he kept his voice low.

“You sedate her now, you prove every fear she has about this place.”

One of the younger agents glanced toward the door. “She needs to be contained until we know what she can do.”

Bucky turned his head toward him slowly.

The agent stopped talking.

For a second, Bucky saw the reflection of himself in the observation glass beside the door. Metal arm. Dark hair. Tired eyes. The kind of stillness people mistook for calm because the alternative made them nervous.

“Contained,” he repeated. The word tasted like rust. Nobody answered him. Good. He stepped toward the door. Morales moved as if to stop him. “Sergeant-" Bucky did not raise his voice. “Open it.” Then, reluctantly, she keyed in the code.

The lock released with a soft mechanical click. Bucky saw Charlotte flinch through the narrow window before the door even opened. Something in his chest twisted hard enough to hurt.

He pushed the door open, then stopped just inside the threshold. He did not let it close behind him. That mattered. It mattered more than anything he could say.

The room was small, softly lit, and cold enough that his breath came faintly visible in the air. A couch sat against one wall, untouched. A blanket had been placed over the back of it, too neatly folded to look comforting. A small table held a bottle of water, a sealed snack packet, a tablet someone had probably thought was helpful, and a box of tissues that made Bucky want to throw something.

Charlotte was in the far corner.

She had one shoulder pressed against the wall, knees slightly bent like she was ready either to bolt or fight, though there was nowhere to go and no one in the room she could safely hit without confirming every ugly thing they already feared about her. Her hair was messy from whatever had happened in medical. Her borrowed SHIELD sweatshirt hung off one shoulder. Frost clung to the wall behind her in a spreading halo, delicate and vicious all at once.

Her eyes snapped to him. Bucky stopped moving. He kept his hands visible. For several seconds, neither of them spoke. He could feel the agents behind him hovering near the doorway. He did not have to look back to know one of them still had a hand near their weapon.

Bucky turned his head slightly, eyes still on Charlotte. “Back up,” he said. Morales muttered something under her breath, but the footsteps retreated. Bucky waited until the space behind him emptied. Then he shifted his body just enough that Charlotte could see the open door past him.

Her gaze flicked to it instantly.

There.

He saw the moment she noticed. The door was open. Not locked. Not sealed. Not yet another mouth waiting to swallow her whole. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.” His voice sounded rougher than he meant it to. Too much memory in it. Too much recognition. He took one slow step to the side, clearing more of the doorway.

“I’m not gonna close it.”

Charlotte said nothing.

That was fine.

Silence was allowed. He wished more people understood that. Silence did not mean defiance. It did not mean instability. Sometimes silence was the only piece of yourself no one had managed to take yet.

Bucky lowered himself carefully, not all the way to the floor, but into a crouch near the opposite wall. Far enough away that she had space. Low enough that he was not standing over her.

His metal hand rested on his knee, palm open.

“I’m not medical,” he said. “Not psych. Not command.” His mouth twitched faintly, humorless. “Not much of a welcome committee either, unless SHIELD’s standards have gotten worse.” The joke landed softly between them and went nowhere. That was fine too.

Bucky looked down for half a second, gathering the next words from somewhere old and ugly inside him. “They’re outside talking about sedation.” He heard movement in the hall at that, but ignored it. “I told them no.” His gaze lifted back to her.

“I’m telling you because I hated when people made decisions about my body in the hallway and then came inside pretending I didn’t already know.” The cold air bit at his lungs. Frost crept another inch along the wall near Charlotte’s shoulder. Bucky did not look at it for too long.

“I know what locked doors can do,” he said.

The words came quieter this time.

Not gentle in the way SHIELD tried to be gentle, polished and careful and rehearsed until it became its own kind of lie. His voice was rough. Plain. Almost clumsy. Real because he did not know how to make it pretty.

“I know what it feels like when people say they’re helping, but they’re still between you and the exit. I know what it feels like when a room’s too clean and somebody says your name like they own it. I know what it feels like when your body reacts before you can explain why.”

He swallowed.

His fingers flexed once against his knee.

“And I know everybody wants you calm because it makes them more comfortable.”

His eyes stayed on her face.

“I’m not asking you for that.”

Outside, someone shifted impatiently.

Bucky did not move.

“You don’t have to talk to me,” he said. “You don’t have to trust me. You don’t have to tell me what happened at Trask, or what they did, or what set you off back there.”

“But nobody comes in unless you say so.” He let that sit for a moment, solid and simple. Then his jaw tightened, just slightly. “Nobody touches you. Nobody sedates you. Nobody decides you’re easier unconscious because they don’t like being scared.”

His gaze flicked toward the open door, then back. “And if anybody tries, they’ll have to get through me first.”

For the first time since entering, he saw something shift in her expression. Not trust. Not relief. Nothing that simple. But maybe recognition. Maybe the faint, wary understanding of one prisoner seeing the old chain marks on another.

Bucky stayed where he was, crouched across the room from her, one former weapon sitting in the cold with another person everyone was already trying too hard to classify. After another long silence, he nodded toward the bottle of water on the table. “They gave you that?” he asked.

His tone had changed. Not casual exactly, but smaller. Less like a promise carved into stone and more like an ordinary question a person might ask another person.

Then, because he could not help himself, because apparently nearly dying several dozen times had not cured him of poorly timed dry humor, he added, “Or is it part of the interrogation aesthetic?” The corner of his mouth lifted barely.

Her breath hitched when her gaze landed on the open door, no agents in the way, if she wanted she could have escaped and yet she was curious about the stranger at the opposite wall. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.” His voice sounded rough, “I’m not gonna close it.” To that she didn’t respond but she allowed herself to sit on the floor, “I’m not medical,” he said. “Not psych. Not command.” She sees his mouth twitched faintly, humorless. “Not much of a welcome committee either, unless SHIELD’s standards have gotten worse.” A beat later he spoke again, “They’re outside talking about sedation. I told them no.” His gaze lifted back to her.

Charlotte hated sedation, she hated not having a choice over her body, “I’m telling you this because I hated when people made decisions about my body in the hallway and then came inside pretending I didn’t already know.” He shifted and looked at the door, “I know what locked doors can do,” his words came quieter this time. 

And for a moment her shoulders grew tense and her gaze shifted to his, “I know what it feels like when people say they’re helping, but they’re still between you and the exit. I know what it feels like when a room’s too clean and somebody says your name like they own it. I know what it feels like when your body reacts before you can explain why.”

She licked her lips, then slowly lifted her head so she could see him better. For the first time, she actually believed him. Believed that when he said he knew how it felt, he wasn’t just saying it to calm her down.

“You know…” Her voice was quiet, rough around the edges. “You’re the first person I actually believe when you say that.”

She was still tense, her shoulders tight and her body ready to bolt, but something in her eased. Just a little. Enough that she let her head fall back against the wall behind her.

“Everyone says they know how it feels,” she murmured, her eyes dropping for a moment. “But I know they’re lying.”

After a beat, she pushed herself to her feet. The movement was slow, careful, like she was afraid someone might take it as a threat.

“I don’t want to be checked by medics. I’m done being poked and prodded.”

Her gaze flickered toward the open door, then to the mirrored window. She knew there were other agents standing on the other side, watching, listening, waiting. The thought made her jaw tighten before she forced her eyes back to Bucky.

“I’ll only talk to you,” she said firmly.

Then, after a hesitant pause, her voice softened.

“And… I want to talk outside. Under the sun.” She swallowed, glancing around the room like the walls were closing in again. “I’m tired of being held in rooms like this.”

Then her gaze shifted back to the door.

This time, she didn’t stop herself.

She moved before fear could pin her in place again, before the weight of the mirrored glass and the unseen eyes behind it could make her hesitate. She didn’t run when she stepped out of the room, but every agent in the hall reacted as if she might. Their bodies shifted, shoulders going tight, hands hovering near weapons they didn’t draw but clearly wanted to.

She noticed.

Of course she noticed.

But she didn’t look at them. She didn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing whether they scared her. Instead, she kept walking, her focus fixed on the doors at the end of the hall.

Behind her, Bucky followed.

Not too close. Not close enough to make her feel trapped or chased. He stayed a careful distance back, giving her space without leaving her alone, and somehow that mattered more than she wanted to admit.

Every step toward the exit felt unreal. Like at any second someone would shout for her to stop. Like hands would grab her arms and drag her back. Like the door would lock before she reached it.

But no one stopped her.

When she pushed through the final doors, the world opened around her.

Sunlight touched her face.

She froze.

For a moment, all she could do was stand there as the warmth spread over her skin. Her breath caught, and slowly, she tilted her head up, closing her eyes against the brightness. It had been so long. Too long. So long since she had felt the sun without glass between them. So long since she had stepped outside without someone forcing her forward or dragging her back.

No alarms. No restraints. No orders.

No one stopping her.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, she wasn’t running away.

She was simply standing beneath the sun.

Her shoulders trembled with a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Then, without opening her eyes, she spoke softly.

“I have a feeling you know how I feel right now.”

For a moment, Rowan just looked at her.

Really looked at her.

Charlotte was standing in his kitchen, close enough that he could still feel the warmth of her against him, talking about decorations and throw pillows and all the ways she would inevitably take over his space like she hadn’t already done it by sheer force of being herself.

His throat tightened.

God.

He loved her.

The realization still hit him sometimes like it was brand new, sharp and ridiculous and almost rude in how thoroughly it knocked the air out of him. He could stare down a defensive line without blinking. He could take a hit, get back up, call the next play, keep moving. But Charlotte smiling at him like that? Charlotte looking at him like he had just handed her something precious?

Absolutely lethal.

His nose wrinkled as he glanced away, cheeks already dusting pink. Worse than that, he could feel the heat crawling up into his ears, which felt like a personal betrayal. His own body had no respect for him.

“Quite a few months,” he murmured.

Charlotte’s smile grew.

Rowan immediately groaned.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.” He looked back at her, narrowing his eyes despite the fact that his face was still getting warmer. “You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“That thing where you look happy and smug and beautiful and somehow I’m the one in trouble.”

Her laugh slipped out soft and bright, and Rowan’s chest did something deeply embarrassing in response.

He shook his head, though his hands stayed on her, fingers resting at her waist as if she might disappear if he stopped touching her. “I think it started around the time you stopped bringing overnight bags.”

“I still bring bags.”

“Charlotte.”

She blinked up at him with entirely too much innocence.

Rowan gave her a look. “You bring a phone charger, one lip balm, and whatever emotional support object you’ve decided is essential to survival that week. That is not an overnight bag. That is a loose collection of evidence.” Her smile widened again, and he sighed like she had personally wounded him. “But then you started leaving things here,” he admitted, quieter now. “Little things at first. Stuff you probably thought I wouldn’t notice.”

His mouth twitched.

“Which is offensive, by the way. I notice everything… Except apparently when the fridge becomes a pickle sanctuary. That one got away from me.”

The joke faded as quickly as it came.

His thumbs brushed lightly over her sides, his gaze moving over her face with something softer now, something he couldn’t hide behind a smirk even if he tried.

“The first time you left something here, I didn’t want you to take it home,” he said. “Then it became two things. Then ten. Then half my bathroom counter was yours, and your blanket was on my couch, and your mug was in the dishwasher, and I started buying the snacks you like even when you hadn’t asked for them.”

His expression shifted, vulnerable despite the stubborn little frown still tugging at his mouth. “And somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like I was letting you into my life.” His voice lowered. “It started feeling like you were supposed to be there.” For a second, he just held her gaze. Then he huffed, almost embarrassed by his own honesty.

“And then Connor, because apparently his only purpose in life is to be loud and inconvenient, asked why I kept calling it my place when half of it looked like you lived here.” Rowan rolled his eyes, but there was no real bite behind it. “Which was rude. Invasive. Horrible timing.”

His mouth softened. “And also impossible to argue with.” He swallowed, his hands tightening just slightly at her waist. “So yeah,” he murmured. “Quite a few months.” His nose wrinkled again, this time with something almost boyish. “I just took forever to catch up.”

Her arms slid up around his neck, fingers brushing lightly against the hair at his nape as she looked up at him with a smile she couldn’t quite hide.

“Rowan,” she murmured, her voice warm with amusement, “when did you become such a romantic?”

The tease was gentle, almost fond enough to soften the sharpness of it completely. Her eyes moved over his face, taking in the quiet seriousness still lingering there, the way he wasn’t trying to cover it up or laugh it off. That alone made something inside her ache in the sweetest way.

“‘It started feeling like you were supposed to be there,’” she repeated softly, her smile turning tender around the words.

She could feel them settling in her chest all over again.

Supposed to be there.

There was something about that — something so simple and honest — that made her heart feel too big for her body. Because she knew exactly what he meant. She felt it too, in all the tiny, ordinary ways that had somehow become everything. Her blanket on his couch. Her mug in his cabinet. Her lotion beside his sink. Her shoes near his door. The way she no longer felt like a visitor when she walked into his apartment.

The way leaving had started to feel more unnatural than staying.

Charlotte leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips, lingering there for a moment as if she could pour all the things she didn’t know how to say into it. Her smile brushed against his mouth when she pulled back just enough to whisper, “Very romantic.”

And she meant it.

Even with the teasing. Even with the playful glint in her eyes.

It was romantic because it sounded like him. Not polished, not rehearsed, not overly dramatic. Just honest. Just Rowan, saying something that managed to be devastating because it was true.

Her thumbs stroked idly along the back of his neck as she stayed close, unable to bring herself to move away now that the air between them felt different. Fuller somehow. Like the entire apartment had shifted around them, no longer his place with pieces of her scattered through it, but the beginning of something shared.

“Then maybe,” she said, her voice light again though her chest was still warm, “we should bring all my stuff over when it stops raining.”

Her gaze flicked briefly toward the window, where the rain blurred the glass and softened the world outside. The sound of it made the apartment feel even cozier, like they were tucked away from everything else, wrapped up in this moment that belonged only to them.

“Or,” she added, her smile widening, “maybe I’ll just hire a moving company and spare us both the tragedy of carrying boxes up and down stairs.”

She laughed quietly, already picturing it despite herself. Boxes stacked in the hallway. Clothes spilling out of half-zipped bags. Rowan pretending not to be overwhelmed by how much stuff she owned. Her books finding a place beside his. Her decorations slowly taking over corners of the apartment until it looked less like his and more like theirs.

Theirs.

The word glowed softly in the back of her mind.

Her fingers tightened slightly behind his neck, and for a second her teasing expression softened again. Moving in sounded practical when she said it out loud — boxes, movers, furniture, rain delays — but underneath all of that was something much bigger.

She wasn’t just bringing her things here.

She was choosing this. Choosing him. Choosing mornings in the same kitchen and nights under the same blankets. Choosing to stop leaving pieces of herself behind and finally bring the rest.

Charlotte tilted her head, eyes shining with a quiet kind of happiness.

“You should probably prepare yourself,” she murmured, brushing her nose lightly against his. “I have a lot of stuff. And very strong opinions about where things should go.”

Her smile turned playful again, but her voice stayed soft.

“And just so you know,” she added, leaning in until her lips hovered near his, “once my decorations are here, there’s no getting rid of me.”

She kissed him again, slow and sweet, her arms still looped around his neck like she had already decided exactly where she belonged.

Charlotte could already see it.

The moment the idea settled fully in her mind, her thoughts began racing ahead of her — soft curtains, warmer lighting, throw pillows Rowan would absolutely pretend to hate, maybe a few framed pictures on the walls so the place didn’t look quite so much like he had moved in and simply decided that was enough.

Her smile grew slowly, bright and impossible to hide.

“Your apartment is finally going to have a woman’s touch,” she teased, her voice warm with amusement.

But even as she said it lightly, the thought made her chest flutter. His apartment. Her things. Their life, slowly blending together in visible ways. Her candles on the coffee table. Her favorite blanket staying on the couch for good. Her books tucked between his. Her mugs in the cabinet. Maybe flowers on the counter whenever she felt like buying them. Maybe little pieces of herself in every room, no longer left behind by accident, no longer pretending they were temporary.

She could picture it too easily.

Maybe that was how she knew she wanted it.

“You’re going to have to make room in your closet,” Charlotte added, lifting a brow as if that part alone might be the true challenge. “And I’m warning you now, I own more clothes than any reasonable person should.”

Her fingers reached up before she thought better of it, slipping gently through Rowan’s hair. The movement softened her teasing, turning it into something more intimate. She combed through the strands slowly, her smile fading into something quieter as the weight of it all pressed sweetly against her ribs.

Moving in with him.

Not just staying over. Not just leaving a bag by the door or stealing space in a drawer. Not just waking up beside him and then eventually having to leave.

Actually staying.

The realization made her throat tighten.

“Waking up next to you will be permanent now,” she whispered.

The words came out softer than she meant them to, almost like a secret. Her fingers stilled in his hair for a moment, and her eyes searched his face, taking in the closeness between them, the warmth of him, the strange and beautiful certainty settling inside her.

Permanent.

It should have scared her more. The word was big, heavy with meaning, with responsibility, with all the little unknowns that came from choosing someone not just in the romantic moments but in the ordinary ones too.

But with Rowan, the thought didn’t feel like a trap.

It felt like relief.

Like no longer having to divide her mornings between two apartments. Like not having to wonder if she packed the right sweater or left her charger behind. Like brushing her teeth beside him when they were both still half-asleep. Like grocery lists with both their favorites on them. Like lazy Sundays tangled in sheets, rain tapping against the windows, nowhere else she needed to be.

Her smile returned, smaller this time but softer around the edges.

“You know,” she murmured, her fingers moving through his hair again, “you mumble when you start to wake up.”

The memory made her laugh under her breath. Those quiet, half-formed sounds he made before he was fully conscious. The way his face softened with sleep, all the sharpness gone from him. The way he sometimes reached for her before his eyes even opened, like his body knew she was there before his mind caught up.

She loved that.

She loved knowing those small things about him. The private things. The sleepy, unguarded things no one else got to see.

And soon, she would get to know even more.

She would know how he moved through the apartment in the morning when he thought she wasn’t watching. Which mug he reached for first. Whether he left cabinet doors open. How long he could tolerate her decorations before pretending to complain. How he looked coming home at the end of the day and finding her there, not as a guest, not as someone passing through, but as part of the place itself.

Charlotte’s heart squeezed.

“I like that,” she admitted quietly, almost shy now despite all her teasing. “I like knowing those things about you.”

Her thumb brushed lightly along his temple as she leaned closer, her voice softening even more.

“And I like that I’ll get to wake up beside you every day and hear it.”

The playfulness in her expression flickered back, gentle but unmistakable.

“Even if half the time I have no idea what you’re saying.”

Asteria’s order hit the room like a thrown gauntlet.

“You all can shoo,” she said, and immediately every man in the nursery began reacting with the kind of wounded drama only grown athletes could summon when denied the right to be inconvenient.

Connor pointed at himself as if surely she could not mean him. Neil made a scandalized noise and declared that he had “given too much to this war.” Jake started gathering tools with the calm exhaustion of someone who had accepted long ago that he was surrounded by idiots and that civilization, apparently, rested on his shoulders alone.

Rowan, of course, did not move.

Rowan planted himself in the middle of the nursery with his arms crossed, his damp lashes still clumped from the punishment bottle, his shirt streaked with dust, and his expression carved into pure betrayal. He glared at Asteria like she had personally revoked his citizenship, taken away his house keys, and banished him from the kingdom he had nearly died assembling.

“This is my house,” he said.

Asteria lifted the spray bottle.

Rowan’s jaw tightened. “This is our house.”

The bottle rose another inch.

“Charlotte’s house,” he corrected immediately, lifting one hand. “Honestly, I just live here.”

“Smart,” Jake muttered.

“Survival instincts finally came online,” Neil added.

Connor nodded solemnly. “Growth. We love to see it.”

Rowan shot them a look over his shoulder, but the threat lacked bite with his hair still faintly wet and a piece of cardboard clinging stubbornly to the back of his shirt like a badge of shame. Asteria pointed toward the door, and Rowan exhaled loudly through his nose, every inch of him offended by the concept of obedience. Still, he stepped toward her.

For half a second, Christian thought Rowan might argue again. It would have been on brand. Rowan looked like the kind of man who could argue with a closed door and somehow make the door feel guilty.

Instead, the larger man reached out and pinched Asteria lightly at the waist, just enough to make her jerk and slap at his hand.

“Don’t terrorize my shelves,” Rowan grumbled, dipping his head to press a kiss against her cheek. “And don’t let Connor touch anything decorative. He thinks ‘jungle chaos’ is a theme.”

Connor frowned from the doorway. “It is.”

“It’s not,” everyone said at once.

Asteria waved Rowan off with the spray bottle, and he finally began backing toward the door, though not before his eyes found Christian.

The shift was instant.

All the soft teasing affection Rowan had given Asteria hardened into that older-brother glare, sharp enough to pin Christian in place. Rowan looked to make sure Asteria was not watching, then mouthed, slowly and deliberately, Behave.

He pointed two fingers toward his own eyes, then toward Christian, lingering on the gesture for far longer than necessary.

Christian’s expression flattened.

I am holding tools in a nursery. How much danger does he think I can cause with a screwdriver and moderate emotional interest?

Neil appeared behind Asteria then, entirely too pleased with himself. He caught Christian’s eye and made a little gesture with his hand held low, indicating Asteria’s height, then pointed toward the upper shelves with a grin that was either encouragement or harassment.

Christian squinted at him.

Neil made the gesture again, more dramatically, then mimed lifting something.

Christian’s eyes narrowed further.

That better mean “help her reach the top shelves,” he thought, because if you’re making some kind of filthy puppet show behind her back, I’m putting you in the empty crib box.

Apparently Rowan reached the same conclusion, because his palm came down on the back of Neil’s head with a hollow thump that made Neil yelp.

“Ow, man!”

“Stop communicatin’ like a pervert,” Rowan snapped, dragging him toward the door by the collar.

“I was being supportive!”

“You were being you.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“That’s accurate.”

Jake followed them out, still carrying screws in a plastic cup. Connor grabbed a box and walked backward, calling, “We’ll be downstairs if leadership needs us,” before Asteria lifted the spray bottle again and he turned around quickly.

The parade of them disappeared into the hall in a chorus of complaints. Rowan was still grumbling about being exiled from his own nursery. Neil kept insisting he had helped “emotionally.” Jake threatened to label the screws himself because nobody else could be trusted. Connor asked whether baby mobiles could be sports-themed if done tastefully.

“Nothing you do is tasteful,” Rowan snapped from the hallway.

“That’s not true,” Connor protested. “My shoes are tasteful.”

“They have flames on them,” Jake said.

“Subtle flames.”

Neil’s voice drifted back, delighted. “Subtle flames is what Connor calls every bad decision he’s ever made.”

Their voices carried down the stairs, still bickering, still overlapping, still loud enough that the house felt full even after they had left the room.

Then, finally, the nursery quieted.

Christian suddenly became very aware of that quiet.

Asteria stood a few feet away, surrounded by bags of decorations and tiny clothes, the spray bottle still in her hand like a badge of office. The room looked different now, though maybe that was only because the worst of the chaos had been dragged out of it. The crib stood assembled in the center of the space. The shelves were secured. The mobile swayed gently above the crib, tiny moons and stars turning in slow, soft circles.

And Christian remained near the wall with tools tucked awkwardly against one arm and a bracket still dangling from his fingers.

He knew he should probably follow the others.

That would be the normal thing. The respectful thing. The thing that would not make Rowan materialize from the hallway like an angry ghost with a hockey stick and a moral objection.

But his feet did not move.

Not even a little.

He cleared his throat, gaze shifting briefly to the door before returning to her.

“That, um…” He gave a small, almost sheepish smile, the kind that admitted he was about to try something and knew it. “That count for me too?”

He lifted the tools slightly, like evidence.

“Because as much as I hate to break it to you, there’s no way you’re going to be able to decorate all the higher shelves without me.” The teasing was there, but quieter now, less protected by the boys and their commentary. “And I already survived the spray bottle, so I feel like I’ve earned some kind of probationary status.”

He glanced at the top shelf, then back down at her, the smile softening before he could stop it.

“But if you want me to go, I will.”

That was the honest part, and it made something vulnerable move through his chest before he could bury it.

Christian did not want to leave.

He wanted to stay in the room now that it had gone calm. Wanted to know what Asteria was like when she was not trying to wrangle five grown men and one overprotective future father with a spray bottle. Wanted to see if the smile she kept hiding would come easier without an audience. Wanted to know whether she hummed while she worked, whether she talked through her choices, whether she was particular about colors and spacing and tiny folded blankets.

He wanted to keep being useful, if useful meant standing near her, reaching things she could not, and letting her tell him where to place the little pieces of love she had brought in all those bags.

It was absurd, probably.

Too soon, definitely.

But there he was anyway, drawn toward her like gravity had shifted its center to the woman standing beneath the shelves with a spray bottle in her hand and too much sunlight in her smile.

He shifted his weight, trying to make the pause feel casual, but there was nothing casual about the way his eyes stayed on her.

“No pressure,” he added, because apparently his mouth had decided to give him one last chance at dignity. “I’m just saying, every decorating operation needs a tall assistant with no strong opinions and decent obedience skills.”

From down the hall, Rowan’s voice shouted, “I heard that!”

Christian closed his eyes briefly, then called back, “Stop listening!”

“I live here!”

Neil’s voice followed immediately. “Barely! You were banished!”

“I was shooed,” Rowan corrected sharply. “There’s a difference.”

Connor called, “Shooed men don’t get legal standing!”

Jake sighed loudly enough to be heard from the stairs. “None of those words mean anything.”

Asteria’s laugh filled the quiet, and Christian looked back at her, smile helplessly returning. “See?” he said, lower now, warmer. “Terrible acoustics. Better reason to let me stay.” He nodded toward the doorway with the faintest little grin.

Asteria felt strangely at ease being alone with Christian.

It should have felt awkward, especially after everyone else had left and the nursery had gone quiet around them, but it didn’t. If anything, the silence made it easier. There was no one interrupting, no one teasing from across the room, no Rowan making comments that would force her to pretend she wasn’t enjoying Christian’s attention as much as she was.

They worked together easily, moving around the room with paint supplies, decorations, and the little finishing touches she had brought for Charlotte’s surprise. Christian followed her directions without complaint, but not without comment. There was banter, of course. Little remarks tossed back and forth. His dry responses making her smile, her teasing making that amused look settle across his face again. And somewhere between handing him a paintbrush and pretending not to notice the way his sleeves stretched around his arms, Asteria realized she liked this.

She liked being around him.

She liked how steady he was, how he listened without making her feel like she had to repeat herself, how his humor slipped in quietly instead of demanding attention. She liked the way he looked at her when she said something ridiculous, like he was trying not to encourage her but couldn’t help himself.

Then, all at once, the moment shattered.

Christian stepped back with a can of paint in one hand, his heel catching on the edge of the drop cloth. His balance went first, then his dignity. His eyes widened, his free hand shot out for something—anything—to grab onto, but there was nothing close enough to save him.

He went crashing down to the floor.

The paint can tipped with him.

Asteria gasped as paint splattered across his shirt, his arms, the covered floor, and part of the nearby wall. For half a second, she was frozen, staring at him sprawled on the floor like the nursery itself had betrayed him.

Then she rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside him.

“Christian—are you okay?”

Her hands hovered over him, unsure where to touch first, her concern immediate and real.

But then he blinked up at her, completely stunned, paint streaked across his cheek and dripping from his sleeve, and Asteria lost the battle.

A giggle slipped out.

She pressed a hand over her mouth, eyes widening like she hadn’t meant to do it, but that only made it worse. Another laugh followed, softer but impossible to stop.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, kneeling beside him as her shoulders shook. “I’m sorry, I’m checking on you, I swear, but you have to know what you look like right now.”

Christian stared at her from the floor, paint-covered and betrayed.

“I almost died.”

“You tripped over a drop cloth.”

“I suffered.”

“You’re covered in nursery paint.”

He lifted his head slightly, looked down at himself, then back at her. “That doesn’t make my suffering less valid.”

That did it.

Asteria laughed again, warm and helpless, even as she reached out to brush a streak of paint from his cheek with her thumb. The second her hand touched his skin, her laughter softened.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Christian’s eyes flicked over her face, and Asteria suddenly became aware of how close they were—her knees pressed into the drop cloth, her hand still near his cheek, his shirt ruined, the air between them no longer quite as playful as it had been seconds before.

Her smile lingered anyway.

“Very brave of you,” she said softly.

His mouth curved, slow and amused. “Thank you. I’d like that remembered.”

Asteria shook her head, still smiling as she reached for a rag nearby. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I could forget this if I tried. Seriously,” she added, softer this time. “You didn’t hit your head or anything?”

Christian shook his head, still blinking like he was trying to process how quickly his dignity had abandoned him.

Asteria grabbed a nearby towel and stepped closer, her attention moving over his face. Paint was smeared across his cheek, dotted near his jaw, and streaked along the side of his mouth. She started wiping it away gently, careful not to press too hard as she cleaned the worst of it from his skin.

“You really committed to the fall,” she teased, her smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Very dramatic. Ten out of ten for effort.”

She shifted closer, leaning in slightly as her eyes searched his face. “Hold still,” she murmured, focusing near his lashes. “I’m making sure you didn’t get paint in your eyes.”

The room seemed to quiet around them.

Asteria’s hand slowed as she wiped a small smear from his cheekbone, her fingers steady despite the sudden awareness of how close they were. Christian stayed still, his gaze fixed on her while she concentrated on cleaning him up.

“Are you always this clumsy?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light.

Her thumb moved before she could think better of it, brushing gently over the paint lingering on his bottom lip.

The teasing smile on her face softened almost immediately.

For a second, she forgot what she had been saying.

Her thumb paused there, barely touching him, and her breath caught at the realization. She looked from his mouth back to his eyes, suddenly aware that she was standing far closer than necessary.

Then, as if remembering herself, she pulled her hand back and glanced down at the towel.

“There,” she said, quieter now. “Mostly fixed.”

Connor had thought about kissing Kassandra before.

Not on purpose.

Not exactly.

Not in a way he would ever admit out loud to another living soul, especially not to the men currently gathered behind him like a tribunal of professional idiots who could smell embarrassment the way sharks smelled blood. It was not something he sat around planning. He did not, contrary to what Jake would absolutely claim if ever given the chance, stare wistfully at ceilings thinking about red dresses and rugby players and whether Kassandra’s mouth would feel as dangerous as the rest of her looked.

Except sometimes, yes, he did.

A little.

Fine. More than a little.

It happened in flashes. Betrayals, really. Tiny ambushes from his own mind when he was trying to be normal. During warmups, when he caught sight of her across a field and suddenly forgot what stretch he was supposed to be doing. During team events, when she laughed at something someone else said and Connor found himself grinning like the sound had been meant for him. In the middle of conversations where he was nodding like a functioning adult while some private, treacherous part of his brain wondered what it would be like if she looked up at him from that close. If her fingers touched his chest. If she said his name softer. If she stopped teasing long enough to let him know whether he had been imagining the charge between them this whole time.

He had wondered.

God, he had wondered.

And now she had pulled him down by his tie and kissed him. Kassandra had kissed him. Kassandra. Kissed. Him.

His mind got caught there, snagged on those three facts like cleats in torn turf. It tried to move forward and simply could not. It doubled back instead, dumbstruck and useless, repeating the same impossible information with increasing urgency.

Kassandra kissed me. She kissed me. She kissed me in front of the team. She kissed me in front of Rowan. I am never surviving this.

Actually no, focus, idiot. Her mouth. Her mouth is on yours. Do something. Kiss her back. Kiss her back right now before she thinks you have died standing upright.

For a heartbeat, Connor froze.

Of course he did.

Because apparently when handed the exact fantasy his brain had been torturing him with for months, his first instinct was to become furniture. The team saw it happen. Of course they saw it happen. They saw everything. They had the collective observational instinct of neighborhood aunties and the mercy of unpaid debt collectors.

Jake made a wounded sound behind him, half laugh, half gasp, like Connor had just been struck down in the prime of his life. “Oh, he’s gone.” Mason answered with the grim solemnity of a man announcing a national tragedy. “No pulse. Beautiful service. We’ll say kind things.” “He hated vegetables,” Christian added. Theo hummed, unhelpfully thoughtful. “His soul is still nearby. Confused but euphoric.” Rowan, calm as weathered stone, said, “Give him a second. That was a clean hit.”

Connor would have told them all to shut up. He would have, truly. There was a whole speech waiting somewhere in him about boundaries, loyalty, basic human decency, and how no one who owned that many compression shirts had the right to comment on anyone else’s life choices.

But language had abandoned him. Language had seen Kassandra’s fingers curled in his tie, felt her mouth press to his, and thrown itself into traffic.

So he kissed her back instead.

A heartbeat late, yes. Possibly two. He would be hearing about that for the rest of his natural life, if Jake had anything to say about it. But once Connor’s body remembered what his brain had forgotten, everything in him moved toward her with a kind of helpless relief. His hand found her waist, careful even through the shock, his palm settling against her like he was afraid one wrong move might wake him from the best mistake he had ever been allowed to make.

And then kissing her was not a thought anymore.

It was sensation.

Her mouth warm beneath his. The faint pull of his tie still caught in her fingers. The soft pressure of her body close to his. The smell of satin-warmed skin and perfume and party air. The noise around them thinning into nothing but bass and blood and the impossible fact of her.

Connor had been hit hard before. He had been folded under defenders. He had eaten turf. He had come up with his ears ringing and his ribs screaming and still found the wherewithal to grin at someone afterward. But this was different. This knocked something loose in him that no tackle had ever touched.

This was not impact.

This was surrender.

Oh no.

The thought drifted through him with horrifying clarity.

Oh no, I am so much worse off than I thought.

Because he liked her. He had known that already. Liked was safe enough. Liked could be laughed off. Liked could be hidden beneath jokes and half-glances and conversations he never quite started. Liked could be survived.

But this?

The way his chest opened at the simple fact of her kissing him back, the way his hand wanted to hold her closer and still stayed careful because she mattered too much to be careless with, the way some young, lonely part of him leaned into the kiss like it had been waiting at a locked door for years?

That was not just liked.

That was dangerous.

Behind him, Jake whispered, “There he is.” Mason muttered, “Late reaction time, but strong finish.” Rowan made a thoughtful sound. “Recovered the play. Respectable.” Connor barely heard them. Or he heard them and refused to process it, because Kassandra was smiling against his mouth by the third kiss, and that nearly ended him all over again.

She was smiling.

While kissing him.

That tiny curve of her mouth did something catastrophic to his internal wiring. It lit him up and hollowed him out at the same time. It made him want to laugh. It made him want to kiss her again. It made him want to say something devastatingly sincere and then immediately fake his own death to avoid the consequences.

When she pulled back, Connor followed her by the smallest fraction before he caught himself.

Unfortunately, the team caught it too.

A whistle cut through the air behind him.

“Did he just chase?” Jake asked, delighted. “He chased,” Mason confirmed. Christian sounded far too amused. “Man followed her like she had his car keys.” Theo, with clinical cruelty, added, “Attachment response activated.” Rowan said, “We may need to call a timeout.”

Connor stared at Kassandra.

He should have said something.

Anything.

A normal man might have said, Wow. A smoother man might have said, You can thank me like that anytime. A truly gifted man might have taken the moment by the throat and made it into something clever, something confident, something worthy of the way she was still looking up at him with wicked satisfaction bright in her eyes.

Connor, unfortunately, was not currently a normal man. He was not a smoother man. He was barely a man at all. He was a professional athlete-shaped crisis with a hand on Kassandra’s waist and his whole life flashing in red satin.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Words. Use words. You love words. You use too many words. People have complained about your words.

Pick one.

Kassandra smiled at him, fingers still loose in his tie, and said, “Now that’s a thank you.” Connor’s brain took the sentence, held it gently, and then dropped it down an elevator shaft.

Behind him, Jake leaned toward Mason, stage-whispering loudly enough to qualify as public broadcast. “Do we throw water on him or let nature take its course?” “Let nature cook,” Mason said. Christian nodded. “This is educational.” Theo added, “His blood pressure is doing poetry.”

Connor finally inhaled.

A miracle.

A medical breakthrough.

“I…” he started.

Excellent. One word. Almost.

Kassandra’s eyes sparkled.

He tried again. “That was… you… I mean, I…” Jake made a soft impressed noise. “Oh, he’s fluent.” Connor lifted one finger without looking away from her. “I will become violent.” Rowan took a slow sip of his drink. “You’d have to become verbal first.”

The team laughed, and Connor’s face went hotter, heat climbing up his neck until he was certain his ears were glowing. He could feel it. He hated that he could feel it. Kassandra could probably see it too. Of course she could. She was close enough to count his pulse if she wanted, and knowing Theo, the man probably already had.

But Connor still did not look away from her.

He couldn’t.

If he looked away, even for a second, he was afraid the courage would vanish, and he would go right back to being the man watching her from across crowded rooms and calling it patience because fear sounded too honest. He had spent months orbiting her, playing it casual so badly that apparently everyone on his team had built a documentary around it. Now she was here. Her fingers had been in his tie. Her mouth had been on his. She was looking at him like she knew exactly how much damage she had done and was considering whether to do more.

Then Kassandra stepped closer again and brushed his tie.

Connor’s entire attention snapped to that touch.

Tie. Her hand. Still there. She kissed me and she is still touching me.

Do not make a sound. Do not whimper. You are six foot three. You cannot be felled by neckwear.

“Don’t tell me I have to kiss you again to bring you back to earth,” she teased, leaning in just enough to make his pulse trip over itself. “Because I will. Purely for medical reasons, of course.” Connor laughed under his breath. It came out soft. Shaken. Real. Too real, maybe. The kind of laugh that escaped when something inside him could no longer hold its shape. He looked down at her, and his expression softened before he could stop it, all the stunned wanting bleeding through the cracks in his usual grin.

“See,” he said, voice low enough that the words belonged mostly to her, though with his team lurking behind him there was no such thing as privacy anymore, “that’s the problem.”

He swallowed.

His mouth had gone dry. His thoughts kept skipping, snagging, rewinding around the same impossible feeling. Kassandra close. Kassandra’s fingers. Kassandra’s mouth. Kassandra smiling like she had caught him and liked the way he looked in her hands.

“I don’t think I want to come back to earth yet.”

The team reacted immediately. Jake groaned. “Oh no. He’s romantic.” Mason sounded personally offended. “Since when?” “He’s been hiding it,” Christian said. “Like snacks.” Theo murmured, “Not well.” Rowan took another sip. “I blame the tie.” Connor closed his eyes for half a second. “I am trying to have a moment.” “You are having one,” Rowan said. “We’re documenting it.” “I don’t need documentation.” “You absolutely do,” Jake said. “This is historic.”

Connor opened his eyes again and focused on Kassandra before he could start threatening his friends in ways that would require both effort and follow-through. The noise behind him softened at the edges when he looked at her. Not disappeared. Never disappeared. The Phantoms were incapable of disappearing quietly. But it mattered less. She had a way of pulling the room smaller around them without ever asking permission, as if the entire party had become background noise to the small, reckless weather system blooming between them.

His hand was still at her waist.

He realized that suddenly and nearly panicked all over again.

Hand. Waist. Is this okay? She has not moved away. She kissed you first. She is still holding your tie. You are probably fine. Probably. Do not overthink the hand. You are overthinking the hand. Congratulations, you have now made your own hand weird.

His fingers flexed once, gentle and restrained, a silent question more than a claim. When she did not pull away, something in his chest went soft enough to hurt.

“I had this whole idea,” he admitted, words coming slower now, rough around the edges because honesty always made his throat feel too small, “of how I was going to talk to you.”

Kassandra’s smile deepened.

Connor almost forgot the rest of the sentence.

“Eventually,” he added. “Maybe. When I stopped being a coward about it.”

“Eventually?” Rowan echoed behind him. “He means sometime before retirement.” Jake snorted. “Optimistic.” Mason added, “He had a five-year plan.” Connor sighed. “Captain commentary continues.” “Just keeping the record accurate,” Rowan said. “I was building suspense,” Connor muttered. “You were building nothing,” Mason said. “You were staring across rooms and pretending that counted as strategy.” “It was a long-term approach.” “It was birdwatching,” Jake said.

Connor exhaled through his nose, but Kassandra looked amused, and that made it hard to be properly offended. Her hand still held his tie. Her smile still had that wicked little curve to it. She looked like she enjoyed seeing him knocked off balance, but not cruelly. Not like she wanted to make him feel small. More like she had discovered that beneath all the jokes and broad shoulders and team chaos, Connor Graves could be flustered into something sweet.

And God help him, he wanted her to keep discovering things.

“You make me nervous,” he said.

The sentence slipped out before he could dress it up.

For once, even the team quieted a little.

Not completely. They were not saints. But enough.

Connor’s heart gave one hard, panicked kick against his ribs.

Why did you say that? No, it’s true. Still. Horrible timing. No. Good timing. Maybe. She kissed you. She deserves the truth.

The truth? Are we doing truth now? In public? In front of Rowan? Bold. Stupid. Continue.

Connor’s eyes flicked over Kassandra’s face, searching for the right place to put the rest of it. There was no perfect way. No clever route through. So he did the only thing football and life had ever really taught him to do when impact was coming.

He took the hit straight on.

“Not because I’m scared of you,” he added quickly, then paused, reconsidering. “Though, to be clear, I think a healthy level of fear is appropriate. You look like you could make a grown man apologize to a door.”

Rowan murmured, “She could.” Christian added, “The door would deserve it.” Connor pointed vaguely behind himself. “You are both ruining the mood.” “No,” Jake said. “She’s into it.” Mason nodded. “Somehow.”

Connor huffed a laugh despite himself, but his attention stayed on Kassandra. His thumb brushed once against the curve of her waist, so lightly he almost did not realize he had done it until the movement had already happened.

“You make me nervous because I wanted this to matter,” he continued, softer now. The room seemed to lean in around him, or maybe that was only his panic making everything too sharp. “Talking to you. Being near you. Getting it right.”

His smile turned shy at the edges, embarrassed by how naked the words felt once they were out.

“And then you walked up like you already knew exactly how to ruin me.”

Kassandra’s fingers remained curled in his tie.

Connor’s eyes dropped to them, and his mind, because apparently it enjoyed suffering, immediately supplied another useless thought.

She could pull you down again.

His pulse tripped.

Stop thinking that.

No, actually, keep thinking that. Quietly. Respectfully. Later. Maybe now? No, drink first. Fireball. God, she said Fireball shots after kissing you. Who does that? Her. Obviously her. Of course it would be her.

“For the record,” he said, dragging himself back toward words with heroic effort, “you do not have to kiss me again to bring me back to earth.”

Then his gaze lifted to hers.

“But I’d be a terrible patient if I refused treatment.”

Jake made a strangled sound behind him. Mason muttered, “That was smooth. I’m uncomfortable.” Christian sounded impressed despite himself. “Did he just land that?” Theo nodded. “Unexpectedly.” Rowan’s voice came with rare approval. “Clean throw.” Connor finally glanced back, incredulous. “Did you just compliment me?” “Don’t get attached,” Rowan said. “Too late. I’m emotionally fragile now.” “You were emotionally fragile before.”

But he was smiling when he said it, and the smile softened the second his attention returned to her. Because she was still there. Still close. Still smiling like she had no intention of giving him mercy. It was possibly the best and worst news he had ever received.

“Fireball shots,” he said, as if considering a sacred and dangerous proposal. “Okay. Sure. Yes. Fireball. Why not?” He exhaled a nervous laugh, still looking at her like she had personally rearranged the laws of gravity. “But if we’re doing Fireball after you kissed me like that, I need you to understand that my composure is already being held together with athletic tape and prayer.”

“Mostly prayer,” Theo said. “No tape left,” Christian added. “We checked.” Jake leaned in. “Want us to put in a team order?” Connor gave a long-suffering sigh. “I am begging every man here to discover hobbies.” “This is our hobby,” Mason said. “Watching you fumble romance?” Rowan asked. “Absolutely.” Connor narrowed his eyes over his shoulder. “I am not fumbling.” Rowan looked at Kassandra’s hand still hooked in Connor’s tie, then back at Connor’s flushed face. “You’re advancing the ball in a deeply unconventional way.”

Kassandra laughed.

Connor’s whole expression brightened before he could stop it.

There it was again.

That laugh.

That warm, lethal little sound that made him want to be funnier and braver and better all at once. He could feel himself reacting to it, embarrassingly obvious, his grin tugging wider, his shoulders easing, his heart doing that stupid hopeful thing where it reached before he gave it permission. He wanted to hear it again. Already. He wanted to collect it in the safest part of himself and carry it home like proof that the night had really happened.

She laughed because of you.

She kissed you because she wanted to.

She is still here.

The thought nearly undid him.

His hand shifted from her waist to her hand, fingers closing gently around hers where she still held his tie. He did not pull her hand away. No chance. Absolutely not. He held it there against him, like proof, like an anchor, like the only thing keeping his brain from floating right out of his skull.

“Drink with me,” he said, voice warm and low, and then immediately panicked at how direct that sounded. “I mean, obviously that was already the plan. You said drink. I’m agreeing. Enthusiastically. Respectfully. Not too enthusiastically. Normal amount.” He winced. “There is no normal amount after being kissed by you, actually, so forget that part.”

Jake whispered, “He’s looping.” Mason nodded. “Brain’s skipping.” Christian said, “Like a scratched CD.” Theo added, “A romantic scratched CD.” Rowan said, “That may be the worst sentence ever spoken near me.” Connor shut his eyes briefly. “All of you are potholes in the road to my happiness.” “Beautiful,” Jake said. “He is writing poetry.”

Connor opened his eyes and looked back down at Kassandra, and despite the team’s laughter, despite the heat still burning in his face, the softness returned. He squeezed her hand once, careful and gentle.

“Tease me,” he said. “Tell me how badly I stole your move. Threaten more medical treatment if you feel professionally obligated.” His grin curved, bashful and daring at once. “Just don’t let go of my tie yet.”

Behind him, the team reacted like someone had thrown meat into a wolf enclosure.

Jake slapped Mason’s arm. “Oh, he’s down bad.” “He has been down bad,” Mason said. “This is underground.” Christian nodded gravely. “Buried.” Theo added, “Root system established.” Rowan’s voice came in quieter but sharp enough to draw blood. “Careful, Kassandra. If you keep that up, he’s going to write poetry.” Connor closed his eyes. “I am going to put my quarterback in a pond.” “There’s no pond here,” Rowan said. “I’ll find one.” “You’d have to let go of her first.”

Connor opened his eyes. Then immediately looked back at Kassandra, realizing Rowan had him cornered and hating how accurate that was. “Unfortunately,” Connor said, still holding Kassandra’s hand against his tie, “he makes a point.”

Jake laughed. “He admitted it. Mark the calendar.” Mason lifted his glass. “To growth.” “To public embarrassment,” Christian added. “To Kassandra,” Theo said with sudden solemnity. “For advancing team science.” Rowan raised his drink toward her too, his expression dry but warm around the edges. “And for getting him to shut up for three whole seconds. That’s not nothing.”

Connor looked at Kassandra, red-faced and laughing now, unable to fully hide how happy he was beneath the humiliation. That was the terrible part. He should have been mortified. He was mortified. But somewhere underneath the embarrassment was a bright, impossible delight that kept spreading through him no matter how hard he tried to contain it.

Because this was awful.

And perfect.

Because his team was unbearable, and Kassandra had kissed him, and her hand was still tangled in his tie like she had every right to keep him exactly where she wanted him.

Because for once, he did not feel like he had to perform being fine. He felt ridiculous. He felt exposed. He felt nervous enough to peel out of his own skin.

And he also felt wanted. The realization hit him quieter than the kiss had, but deeper.

“They’re awful,” he said, voice softer, though the grin stayed. “They’re invested,” Rowan corrected. “Awfully invested.” “Fair.”

Connor shook his head, then gave Kassandra’s hand a small squeeze. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, once, almost absent. His gaze dropped to their hands, to her fingers at his tie, to the small intimate mess of it, and his heart did that stupid stumbling thing again.

Do not say something too much. You are going to say something too much. Fine. Say it softly.

He looked back at her.

“Come on,” he murmured. “Let me buy you that drink before I say something else that gets me sent to a pond first.”

He hesitated for half a second, grin turning crooked again as the courage flickered back in pieces.

“And, uh, if the medical reasons come back…”

His eyes flicked to her mouth once more. This time, he let her catch him looking.

The blush came roaring back, but he did not apologize for it. He did not hide it fast enough. He did not turn it into a joke before she could see what she had done to him.

“I trust your professional judgment,” he said, voice low and warm and just unsteady enough to betray him.

Behind him, Christian made an approving and very surprisingly un-lewed sound. “Okay, pretty boy.”

Connor did not look away from Kassandra.

But then his smile softened.

The noise of the party seemed to dull around them, fading beneath the weight of what he said next. “You make me nervous because I wanted this to matter,” Connor admitted, his gaze settling on hers. “Talking to you. Being near you. Getting it right.” His fingers toyed absently with the end of his tie, the same one she had used to pull him down, like he could still feel her there. “And then you walked up like you already knew exactly how to ruin me.” He swallowed, a little embarrassed, a little helpless, but he didn’t look away. “Like you knew I’d been trying so hard not to mess this up, and all you had to do was smile at me and suddenly I forgot how to be normal.” A faint, crooked grin tugged at his mouth. “So yeah. You make me nervous, Kassandra.” His voice dipped, softer now. “But I think I’d be more worried if you didn’t.”

Her hold on his tie tightened as she leaned forward, her gaze never leaving his face.

Kassandra couldn’t help the smile that curved across her lips. Mason had been right — Connor did have moments where he managed to be smooth without even seeming to realize it. Somehow, that only made him more dangerous.

More adorable, too.

And before she could think better of it, before she could talk herself out of wanting him this badly in front of half his teammates, Kassandra tugged his tie again.

This time, when she kissed him, there was no teasing little pause, no careful test of whether he would meet her halfway. Her mouth found his with certainty, warm and deliberate, and her hand slipped from his tie to the back of his neck as if she intended to keep him right there.

Her other arm draped over his shoulder, pulling herself closer as the kiss deepened. The noise of the party blurred around them — the music, the laughter, the boys probably losing their minds nearby — until all she could focus on was him.

Connor.

The way he froze for half a second before melting into her. The way his composure seemed to vanish under her hands. The way kissing him felt less like a risk and more like something she had been waiting far too long to do.

And when she finally pulled away, she didn’t make him chase her this time.

Instead, Kassandra gave him one last soft peck, lingering just enough to be cruel, before easing back with a pleased little grin.

She looked up at his flustered face, eyes bright with triumph and affection. “Much better,” she murmured.

“Fireball shots,” Connor finally managed. He blinked once, like his brain was still catching up to the last thirty seconds of his life. “Okay. Sure. Yes. Fireball.” He nodded a little too quickly, then let out a breathless laugh. “Why not?” His eyes flicked back to her mouth for half a second before he forced himself to look anywhere else — the bar, the floor, the ceiling, literally any safer option.

“But if we’re doing Fireball after you kissed me like that,” he added, voice low with lingering disbelief, “then I need you to understand something.” He leaned in slightly, trying to sound serious and failing spectacularly because his smile kept breaking through. “My composure is already being held together with athletic tape and prayer.” Connor exhaled another nervous laugh, dragging a hand over the back of his neck. “So if I say something stupid in the next five minutes, just know I was doomed before the cinnamon whiskey got involved.”

Kassandra laughed, bright and unguarded, the sound slipping out of her before she could think to stop it.

Usually, she kept this side of herself tucked away. The softer parts. The playful parts. The parts that smiled too easily and wanted too much. She was used to armor — on the field, with her friends, in crowded rooms like this where everyone seemed to be watching.

But with Connor, it was different.

Around him, her walls didn’t feel so necessary. She didn’t have to be untouchable or intimidating or perfectly composed. She could just be Kassandra — laughing, teasing, wanting — and somehow that felt more terrifying than any match she had ever played.

And still, she felt happy.

Free.

Her grin widened as she looked at the group of boys still watching them with poorly hidden amusement.

“Sorry, boys,” she said, not bothering to give them more than a passing glance. “But I’m gonna steal Pretty Boy for myself.”

A few of them immediately started laughing and making noise, but Kassandra barely heard them. Not when Connor’s cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of red. Not when he looked at her like she had just knocked the air straight out of him.

That look alone was enough to make her feel bold all over again.

She laced her fingers through his and tugged him away from the group, leading him toward the bar with the same confidence she carried onto the field. Their shoulders brushed as they walked, and she felt far too aware of the warmth of his hand in hers.

When they reached the bar, Kassandra ordered the Fireball shots without hesitation. Once the bartender set them down, she picked up one and passed the other to Connor, her smile turning playful again.

“To stolen moves,” she said, lifting her glass slightly. “And proper thank-yous.”

Then she tilted her head back and drank the liquor in one smooth motion, the cinnamon burn blooming sharp and warm down her throat.

She lowered the empty glass with a satisfied little exhale, eyes immediately finding Connor again.

“Your turn, pretty boy.”

Of course — here’s a smoother, flirtier version with a little vulnerability tucked underneath:

“You know…” Kassandra said, her voice playful as she leaned her hip against the bar, eyes fixed on him. “You don’t have to be afraid to come up to me.”

A soft chuckle slipped past her lips, warm and teasing.

“I don’t bite.”

She let the words hang there for a second, her smile curving as she looked him over.

“Not unless I’m asked nicely, anyway.”

The joke came easily, but what followed was quieter. More honest.

Kassandra glanced down at the empty shot glass between her fingers, turning it absently against the bar top before lifting her gaze back to his.

“But honestly…” Her smile softened. “I’ve been admiring you from afar for a while now.”

The confession made her heart beat a little faster, but she didn’t take it back. Not this time.

“And maybe,” she added, her voice dipping into something gentler, “I only come to these events because I know there’s a chance I’ll see you.”

She tilted her head, still smiling, but there was something open in her expression now.

Rowan narrowed his eyes as Charlotte started to walk away, his gaze following her with the kind of frown that suggested he had caught onto something deeply suspicious. Not dangerous. Not life-threatening. Worse, apparently. Domestic. She moved through his penthouse like she already knew the shape of every room in the dark, like the place had slowly rearranged itself around her without asking his permission. There were traces of her everywhere now. Hair ties on the bathroom counter. A sweater on the back of his couch. Her shampoo in his shower. A pair of shoes tucked beside his by the door like they had formed some tiny, judgmental little couple of their own.

There she goes again.

Talking about her apartment.

Like that was still a regular phrase.

Like she had not spent most of the week here.

Like he had not started sleeping worse on the nights she wasn’t curled up beside him.

Like his kitchen had not been invaded by four jars of pickles because apparently his girlfriend’s cravings had more authority over his grocery order than he did.

“Hang on,” he said, pointing after her as though she had just committed some athletic violation and he was calling it from the sideline. “First of all, don’t think I didn’t notice how casually you admitted to surviving off pickles.”

Charlotte glanced back at him, innocent as anything, which was unfair because there was nothing innocent about the way she looked at him when she knew she was getting away with something.

“I didn’t say surviving off pickles.”

“No, you just heavily implied your body is being powered by vinegar and spite,” Rowan said, still pointing at her. “Which, honestly, explains a lot.”

His mouth kept moving because that was what it did when his chest got too tight. It built barricades out of jokes. It threw sarcasm like confetti over panic and hoped nobody noticed the floor was shaking underneath. But Charlotte looked at him with that soft little curve at the corner of her mouth, and suddenly every clever thing in his head slipped sideways.

God. Look at her.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? He looked at her and everything got louder and quieter at the same time. The rain against the windows. The hum of the refrigerator. The ridiculous jar of pickles on the counter. The fact that she was here, in his clothes, in his space, in his life, and somehow still talking about leaving like it was casual.

“You know…” His voice changed before he had the chance to stop it, the teasing edge dulling into something slower, something less rehearsed. He cleared his throat immediately, because apparently he was allergic to sounding vulnerable for more than three seconds at a time. “There’s actually something I kinda wanted to talk to you about when it comes to that.”

Charlotte turned a little more fully toward him. “When it comes to pickles?”

“No. Jesus, no. I mean, yes, maybe later, because four jars is criminal behavior and I do think we need to circle back to that as a household concern.” He stopped. Blinked. “Not household. I mean… kitchen concern. Refrigerator concern. General condiment-related concern.”

Smooth.

That was terrible.

That was so terrible she might actually leave just to avoid witnessing the rest of it.

Rowan dragged a hand down his face, then let it fall to his side as he shifted his weight against the counter. He could feel the words sitting behind his teeth, massive and awkward and glowing like some cursed treasure chest he had somehow dug up in the middle of breakfast. He had thought about this before. More than once. More than he wanted to admit. In the shower. On the drive home from practice. Half-asleep with her breathing against his shoulder. Every time she packed a bag to go back to her own place, some ugly, selfish part of him wanted to take the damn thing and hide it under the bed.

Not because he wanted to trap her.

Never that.

Charlotte was too proud for cages, and he loved that about her. Loved the way she stood on her own feet. Loved the way she belonged to herself first. Loved that she did not need him in the desperate, hollow way people sometimes confused for romance.

But wanting her here was becoming a thing with teeth.

“Your apartment,” he said finally.

Charlotte’s brows lifted. “My apartment?”

“Yeah.” Rowan nodded once, then immediately looked annoyed at himself for nodding like that had clarified anything. “Your apartment. Which sounds way more threatening than I meant it, so let’s all stay calm.”

“There’s only two of us.”

“Exactly. Small audience. High pressure.”

He exhaled through his nose and glanced toward the ceiling as if the answer might be written somewhere in the recessed lighting.

“I’ve been doing some math.”

Charlotte’s expression shifted with instant suspicion.

Rowan pointed at her again. “Don’t make that face.”

“What face?”

“That face. The one that says you’re about to ask if I hurt myself.”

“Well…”

“Unbelievable,” he muttered, though his mouth twitched despite himself. “Anyway. Math. Dangerous, heroic, deeply underappreciated math.”

He pushed away from the counter slowly and took a step toward her, then another, stopping close enough that he could reach for her if he wanted to. He did want to. That was not new. Wanting Charlotte had become the background noise of his entire life, constant and inconvenient and occasionally humiliating.

“You’re here four or five nights a week,” he said.

“Six.”

“See?” He spread a hand like she had just presented evidence in court on his behalf. “That right there. That is exactly the kind of statistical support I’m talking about.”

Charlotte’s smile softened, and Rowan felt it like a hit to the ribs.

Don’t screw this up.

Do not turn this into a joke so completely she misses what you’re asking.

Also, maybe one more joke. For structural integrity.

“And I’m not complaining,” he added quickly. “Before you get that look. I’m not standing here like, ‘Damn, my beautiful girlfriend keeps showing up and making my life better, what a tragedy, how will I survive this terrible burden?’ I’m not an idiot.”

Well...

“Not about that, anyway.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers brushing over warm skin. His ears were probably red. He hated that. His ears had no loyalty whatsoever.

“It’s just…” He glanced around the penthouse, searching for the right words in the places she had already left pieces of herself. “You’ve got stuff here.”

Charlotte followed his gaze.

“Not just stuff,” he continued, rambling now, because once the dam cracked there was apparently no shutting him up. “Important stuff. Your clothes. Your books. That moisturizer thing I used once because I thought it was lotion and then my face smelled expensive for three days. Your mugs. The blanket you insist is better than every other blanket even though I’m pretty sure it’s just a blanket with a superiority complex.”

His eyes flicked back to hers.

“And when you’re not here, the place feels…”

He stopped.

The word was too honest.

Too bare.

Too much like handing her a weapon and trusting she would never use it.

Empty.

The penthouse felt empty without her.

Not quiet. Quiet had never bothered him. He knew quiet. He used to like quiet. But this was different. This was the kind of quiet that sat in rooms after someone left and made everything feel staged, like he was walking through a life he had not fully moved into yet.

He cleared his throat.

“Wrong,” he said instead, because it was safer. “It feels wrong.”

The joke softened out of his face little by little.

“I know you’ve got your own place,” he said, slower now. “And I know you’re proud as hell, which is one of the reasons I’m obsessed with you, by the way. Extremely inconvenient trait. Very annoying. Ten out of ten, would fall in love with again.”

His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed on her.

“So I’m not trying to make it sound like you need me to take care of you. You don’t. I know that. Believe me, I know that. You’d probably survive the apocalypse with a pocket knife, three sarcastic comments, and half a granola bar.”

He took another breath, and this one came out shakier than he wanted.

“But I want you here.”

There it was.

No joke big enough to hide that.

“I want you here when I wake up. I want your weird pickle crimes in my fridge. I want your shoes by the door and your shampoo in my shower and your blanket acting like royalty on my couch. I want to come home and know you might be here. Not visiting. Not passing through. Not packing a bag because technically you live somewhere else.”

His gaze dipped for a second, then lifted again.

“So at what point do we stop calling it your apartment and start calling it storage?”

The line came out softer than he intended, almost helpless under the sarcasm.

He huffed a quiet laugh, then shook his head at himself.

“That was supposed to be smoother,” he admitted. “In my head, it was extremely charming. Borderline legendary. There were no pauses. No condiment detours. Nobody said ‘household concern’ like a man having a breakdown over pickles.”

Rowan stepped closer, finally reaching for her hands, his thumbs brushing over her knuckles once he had them.

“What I’m trying to ask,” he said, voice lower now, “is if you’d think about moving in with me.”

His fingers tightened just slightly around hers.

“Not because it’s easier. Not because of the rain or the food or because I apparently can’t be trusted to stock a fridge like a functioning adult.” His expression softened. “Because I love you. Because this already feels like home when you’re in it. And because every time you leave, I hate how fast I start waiting for you to come back.”

Charlotte’s brows lifted. “My apartment?” 

“Yeah.” He nodded once, then immediately looked annoyed at himself for nodding as if that clarified anything. “Your apartment. Which sounds way more threatening than I meant it, so let’s all stay calm.”

Charlotte looked even more confused, “There’s only two of us.” She mentioned before he exhaled deeply, “Exactly. Small audience. High pressure.” He then glanced towards the ceiling, “I’ve been doing some math.” 

Her eyes narrowed at him and he pointed at her, “Don’t make that face.” 

“What face?” She asked, “That face. The one that says you’re about to ask if I hurt myself.” He says with furrowed brows. “Well...” She took a step towards him. “Unbelievable,” he muttered, though his mouth twitched despite himself. “Anyway. Math. Dangerous, heroic, deeply under appreciated math.” He then pushed away from the counter slowly and took a step towards her. “You’re here four or five nights a week,” he said, to which Charlotte corrected him, “Six.” Rowan then spread a hand like she had presented evidence, “See? That right there. That is exactly the kind of statistical support I’m talking about.” 

Then Charlotte’s smile softened.

All at once, she understood what Rowan was really talking about — what he was trying to ask without actually saying it.

And he was right.

She did have things here.

Not just little things, either. Not the kind of belongings someone accidentally left behind after spending too many nights in the same place. These were important things. Personal things. Pieces of herself scattered throughout his home like they had slowly, quietly made a place for themselves.

Clothes folded away in one of his drawers. Her books tucked onto his shelves between his. Her skincare lined up in the bathroom, taking up more space than she had ever meant for it to. Her mugs in the kitchen cabinet. Her favorite blanket draped over the couch, soft and familiar, smelling faintly like her perfume and him.

The realization sent butterflies blooming through her stomach.

This wasn’t nothing.

It hadn’t been nothing for a while.

Her gaze drifted around the room as if she was seeing it all differently now. Every little trace of herself felt louder than it had before. Permanent, almost. Like her life had been weaving itself into his without her fully noticing.

And maybe she had noticed.

Maybe she had just been too afraid to name it.

When her eyes returned to Rowan’s, her breath caught softly in her throat. He wasn’t teasing. There was no easy smirk on his face, no joke waiting at the edge of his mouth to soften the weight of the moment. He was quiet, serious in a way that made her chest ache.

Charlotte stepped closer before she could overthink it.

The space between them disappeared slowly, her body moving toward his like it already knew the answer before her mind could catch up. When his hands found hers, she let him take them. She let his fingers wrap around her own, let the warmth of his palms steady the nervous flutter in her chest.

Her heart beat faster.

She tipped her head back to look at him better, searching his face, trying to hold onto the feeling passing between them. It was fragile and terrifying and sweet all at once. The kind of moment that could change things if either of them was brave enough to let it.

Charlotte’s fingers tightened around his.

The idea of having more of herself here should have scared her. A drawer becoming two. A few books becoming a shelf. Her favorite blanket no longer feeling like something she had brought over, but something that belonged exactly where it was.

But it didn’t scare her the way she thought it would.

Instead, it filled her with a warmth so sudden and tender that she almost didn’t know what to do with it.

A place.

A space.

A home.

Him.

The thought made her throat tighten, and her smile returned slowly, softer this time. Not playful. Not teasing. Just honest.

Charlotte leaned into him, close enough that their joined hands were caught between them, close enough that she could feel the quiet steadiness of him. She didn’t need him to say it outright. She understood.

And maybe, in the small way she squeezed his hands and stayed exactly where she was, she answered him anyway.

“What I’m trying to ask…” His voice dipped lower, quieter, almost shy. “Is if you’d think about moving in with me.”

For a second, Charlotte forgot how to breathe.

The words settled between them gently, but they hit something deep inside her all the same. Her heart swelled so suddenly, so warmly, that it almost hurt. Everything around them seemed to fade at the edges — the room, the quiet hum of the apartment, the tiny details she had been so aware of only moments ago.

All she could focus on was him.

And the fact that he had asked.

Not joked. Not hinted. Not danced around it with that teasing, careful way he sometimes had when something mattered too much. He had actually asked her to move in with him.

A soft, dizzy kind of happiness bloomed in her chest.

Charlotte had imagined this before, though she would never have admitted it out loud. Not directly. Not without wrapping it in humor first. She had pictured what it would be like to stop packing a bag every few days, to stop dividing her life between two places, to stop pretending she wasn’t already happiest here. She had imagined waking up and not having to wonder which apartment held her favorite sweater or whether she had left her moisturizer in his bathroom again.

She had imagined her books mixed with his, her mugs in his cabinets, her shoes by his door.

She had imagined coming home to him.

The thought alone made her throat tighten.

Because this place already felt like part of her. Slowly, quietly, without either of them fully saying it, she had begun leaving pieces of herself behind. A sweater in his drawer. Her favorite blanket on his couch. A few skincare bottles lined up beside his sink. A stack of books on the nightstand. Tiny little hints disguised as convenience.

But they had never really been accidents.

Not all of them.

Maybe some part of her had been hoping he would notice. Maybe some part of her had been leaving a trail, waiting to see if he would follow it to the same conclusion she had been too nervous to name.

And now he had.

Charlotte leaned in before she could overthink it, pressing her mouth to his. The kiss was soft at first, tender and full of all the emotion crowding her chest. Her hands curled gently against him as if she needed something to hold on to, something to ground herself while happiness fluttered wildly through her.

“Yes,” she whispered against his lips.

The word came out small, but it was certain. Completely certain.

She smiled, unable to stop it from spreading bright and full across her face. “I’ll move in with you.”

Saying it made the whole thing feel real.

Her stomach flipped at the thought. Moving in. Sharing a space. Turning his apartment into their apartment. It should have felt huge and terrifying, and maybe it did a little, but beneath that was something steadier. Something that felt right in a way she couldn’t talk herself out of.

Then her smile tipped into something more playful, because if she didn’t tease him at least a little, she might cry.

“Took you long enough,” she murmured, brushing her nose against his. “I didn’t want to assume, so I’ve been leaving hints for weeks now.”

A laugh slipped out of her, warm and breathless, as she imagined all the tiny signs she had planted like evidence. The extra clothes. The extra shampoo. The way she had started bringing over things she definitely didn’t need for one night. The way she had stopped asking before curling up under her blanket on his couch, like the spot had always been hers.

Maybe it had been.

Maybe he had known too.

Charlotte’s fingers slid up slowly, brushing over the back of his neck as emotion softened through her again. She could feel how close they were standing, how the moment had shifted into something intimate and almost fragile. The kind of fragile that didn’t feel breakable, exactly — just precious.

“You know you’re going to have to deal with an apartment full of my stuff,” she said, her voice light, though her heart was still beating hard. “And decorations. Lots of decorations.”

Her smile deepened as she leaned in, grazing her lips against the side of his neck before giving him a gentle, playful nip.

But underneath the teasing, her mind was already racing ahead.

She pictured her clothes in his closet. Her books on his shelves. Her plants by the window. Her favorite blanket staying exactly where it was because it belonged there now. She pictured changing little things — adding candles, rearranging mugs, buying throw pillows he would pretend to complain about and secretly use anyway.

She pictured ordinary mornings. Grocery lists. Laundry mixed together. Half-finished coffee on the counter. Her keys in a bowl by his door.

Their door.

The thought made her chest ache all over again.

Charlotte pulled back just enough to look at him, her smile softer now, more curious than teasing. There was something almost shy in her own voice when she asked, “How long have you been thinking about this?”

Because she wanted to know.

She wanted to know if he had been carrying the thought around the way she had. Quietly. Carefully. Letting it grow in the back of his mind every time she stayed the night, every time she reached for him in her sleep, every time she left another piece of herself in his space and he didn’t ask her to take it back.

She wanted to know if he had looked around one day, seen all the evidence of her life tangled with his, and realized he didn’t want less of it.

He wanted more.

Neil had always believed there were moments in life when a man ought to stop, think, and make a careful decision. This, evidently, had not been one of them. Because he could not remember deciding to cross the street. He remembered standing beside Rowan, Jake, Connor, and Christian with one shoulder angled toward traffic, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket while he told some story from training camp that had already been interrupted twice by Christian and once by Connor laughing too early. He remembered Jake making that low, amused sound under his breath, remembered Rowan leaning back with that sharp-eyed, half-smirking expression that usually meant he was about to say something criminally unnecessary. Then Neil had looked across the street, and every sensible thought in his head had gone clean out like someone had pulled the fire alarm in his skull.

There had been the glint of her glasses in her hand, the careful press of the earpiece against her lips, the slight scrunch of her nose as she stared down at the ancient Greek carved into the little statue before her. She looked entirely removed from the present, as though the noise of the city, the passing cars, the coffee cooling beside her, and the world itself had become background static to whatever mystery had hooked its fingers into her mind. Neil had seen focus before. He had seen Rowan vanish into film study like a man preparing for war with God’s personal defensive coordinator. This was different. Ivy looked at that artifact as though it was not dead history, but something still breathing. Something whispering. Something that had waited centuries for the right person to listen. That is not your business, Neil’s common sense had warned him, faint and useless from somewhere very far away. That woman is working. You are a stranger. Stay where you are, Hayes.

Naturally, he had done the exact opposite. By the time he reached her table, some mortifying part of him had already decided she had to be real, because no one should be allowed to look that much like a thought made human and then turn out to be a trick of sunlight and caffeine deprivation. His hand had moved before his brain could file the proper paperwork, before manners could tackle impulse to the ground, before he could remember that touching someone’s hair and adjusting their glasses without permission was not charming when done by a six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound stranger built like a reinforced door. He had tucked the loose strand behind her ear with surprising gentleness, slid the glasses back into place on the bridge of her nose, and said beautiful like the word had simply fallen out of him, helpless and honest and completely indefensible. Then she went still. And Neil, finally catching up with himself, felt heat climb up his neck with ruthless, humiliating speed.

His cheeks burned first, then the tips of his ears, and somehow that made it worse because he could feel it happening. He could feel the red betraying him in real time while Ivy blinked up at him with soft, startled confusion, her head tilting just enough to make him feel like he had become the artifact under examination. Brilliant. Fantastic. Perfectly normal behavior. Walk up to the scholar, touch her face, call her beautiful, and then stand there like an escaped monument. Wonderful work, Neil. Truly elite execution. His mouth opened. Nothing came out. His hand dropped back to his side far too late to save him, and he curled his fingers once, like he could physically squeeze the embarrassment back into his body if he tried hard enough. “I… uh.” He stopped, jaw tightening as he looked briefly at the table, then back at her face, then immediately regretted that because her eyes were still on him and they were not helping his ability to function like a man who had spoken to another person before.

“Hello?” Ivy said, quiet and uncertain, and Neil nearly exhaled a laugh because, honestly, that was generous. Hello was generous. Screaming might have been fair. Throwing the latte at him would have been legally understandable. Instead, she looked at him with that same careful curiosity she had given the statue, as though she was trying to translate him too, and that somehow made his embarrassment twist into something softer. He dragged in a slow breath through his nose, held it for half a second, then let it out with the controlled discipline of a man trying to remember that he had, in fact, survived playoff games, press conferences, and Christian attempting to explain cryptocurrency at a team dinner. Breathe. Apologize. Use your name. Do not stare at her like she was carved out of prophecy and bad decisions. His smile came small, sheepish, and painfully honest around the edges. “Yeah,” he murmured, voice low and rough with the effort of collecting himself. “That’s fair.”

He took half a step back then, deliberately giving her room, because the last thing he wanted was to make her feel cornered by the full, inconvenient size of him. The heat had not left his face. If anything, it had settled in with a lease agreement, burning along his cheekbones and right up into his ears while he tried, and failed, not to look as flustered as he felt. “I should probably start with my name,” he said, and the words came out steadier this time, though not by much. “Before you decide I’m some kind of wandering museum security threat.” His gaze flickered to the artifact, then back to her, careful now, respectful, though the fascination had not gone anywhere. It was still there in him, glowing like a banked coal beneath his ribs. “I’m Neil. Neil Hayes. And I’m sorry. That was…” He paused, mouth pressing into a flat line as he searched for the least damning description. “That was not my usual social strategy.”

From across the street, Rowan’s voice detonated through the fragile little pocket of silence with the grace and subtlety of a brick through stained glass. “Yo! Did you have a fuckin’ aneurysm or somethin’? You were in the middle of a story and you just poofed, bro?” Neil froze, eyes closing briefly as his entire soul seemed to leave his body, look around, and decide there was no safer place to stand. Of course. Of course he noticed. Of course he chose maximum volume. Why wouldn’t he? A second later, Connor’s laugh cracked through the air, loud enough to offend nearby architecture, and Christian’s voice followed with delighted cruelty. “He poofed for academic reasons, Row! Look at him. That man is experiencing a dissertation!”

Neil turned his head just enough to aim a look across the street. It was not dramatic. It did not need to be. It was the kind of look that had ended locker room arguments, silenced rookies mid-sentence, and once made Christian put back a traffic cone he had insisted was “basically free.” Unfortunately, his cheeks were still red and his ears were still worse, which robbed the look of some of its usual authority. Christian, naturally, noticed. Neil could see the exact second his favorite headache clocked the evidence and prepared to make it everyone’s problem. Neil lifted one hand, palm outward, warning in the simplest possible terms. “Christian,” he called, voice calm enough to be dangerous.

Christian’s grin was audible even from across the street. “One word. Just one damn word, I swear, boy.” Connor made a noise like he was actively dying. Jake had turned away with one hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking. Rowan looked between Neil and Ivy with dawning, devastating understanding, and Neil knew with grim certainty that his peace had been murdered in public. He looked back at Ivy, and the embarrassment on his face shifted into something more resigned, warmer despite himself. “Those are my teammates,” he said, as if that explained anything at all. “And possibly evidence that I’ve made poor long-term social choices.”

He breathed in again, slower this time, forcing himself back into his own body instead of letting panic pilot him into further disaster. Ivy was not a statue, not a mystery for him to solve, not some impossible vision that had stepped out of the old world to ruin his afternoon. She was a person. A woman working quietly at a table, whose space he had interrupted because wonder had outrun his manners. The thought steadied him more than anything else could have. His shoulders eased, his hands staying visible and still at his sides, his eyes meeting hers without crowding her. Do this right. Or at least stop doing it wrong. “I really am sorry,” he said, quieter now, sincerity settling into every word. “I saw you from across the street, and you looked so focused that everything around you seemed to go quiet. I should’ve introduced myself before…” His gaze flicked briefly toward her glasses, and the red in his ears deepened. “Before doing whatever that was.”

Still, his smile returned, small and helplessly fond despite his best efforts to behave like a reasonable man. “You were reading Greek,” he said, nodding once toward the artifact. “Ancient, I’m guessing. I saw you with it and thought…” He paused, because the truth felt absurdly intimate for a stranger, but he had already crossed the street, embarrassed himself, and been publicly diagnosed by Rowan with possible neurological failure. There was not much dignity left to protect. His gaze lifted back to hers, steady but soft, carrying the wonder he had been trying and failing to hide. “I thought no one looks at something that old like that unless they know how to hear it.”

Ivy tilted her head, her confusion only growing. “I’m sorry?”

She watched as color crept up his neck and settled across his face, the charming confidence he had worn moments ago beginning to crack under his embarrassment.

“I should probably start with my name,” he said, the words coming out steadier this time—though not by much. He gave a small, sheepish smile and lifted his hands slightly, as if to prove he meant no harm. “Before you decide I’m some kind of wandering museum security threat.”

Ivy’s confused expression deepened.

“I’m Neil,” he said, clearing his throat softly. “Neil Hayes. And I’m sorry. That was…”

He paused, his mouth pressing into a flat line as he searched for the least incriminating way to describe what had just happened. His gaze flicked away for half a second, embarrassment still coloring his face.

“That was not my usual social strategy.”

That last line is great already, honestly — very charming disaster energy.

Before Ivy could open her mouth to respond, a chorus of voices cut through from the other side of the room.

Neil’s face went redder almost instantly.

Ivy noticed the way his shoulders tightened, the way his eyes briefly closed as if he were silently begging the universe for mercy. Then he looked back at her, embarrassment written plainly across his face.

“Those are my teammates,” he said, as though that explained anything at all.

From somewhere behind him, someone laughed.

Neil exhaled through his nose and gave Ivy a small, resigned look. “And possible evidence that I’ve made poor long-term social choices.”

In truth, Neil was cute—far too tall and broad compared to her, almost absurdly so—but cute nevertheless. There was something endearing about the way his confidence seemed to come and go in uneven waves, as if he kept realizing, a second too late, that he had already said too much.

“And then I needed to hear your voice,” he admitted.

Ivy blinked.

Neil’s expression shifted immediately, embarrassment flickering across his face. “Which sounds like a line, I know. I promise it isn’t.” His mouth twitched with dry humor, though his ears had gone faintly red. “I’m not smooth enough for lines.”

He paused, glancing briefly toward his teammates as if they were living proof of that fact.

“Clearly.”

Ivy chuckled softly, the sound slipping out before she could stop it.

“Well…” she said, her lips curving into a small smile. “That is certainly one way to catch my attention.”

For the first time since he had interrupted her, she seemed to fully settle into the moment. Her confusion faded into something lighter, something amused. She reached for the ribbon tucked between the pages of her book and carefully marked her place before closing it halfway.

“Usually, my nose is buried too deeply in books for me to notice anyone around me,” she admitted, glancing up at him. “But you managed to catch my attention in a rather unique way.”

She turned slightly toward him, giving him her full attention now.

“I’m Ivy,” she said. Then, as if remembering the artifact between them, her eyes brightened. “And yes, these markings are ancient Greek. I just came back from a dig site outside the city limits of Rome, where we uncovered several small statues like this one. They all have fragments of Greek inscriptions carved into them—though I’ll admit, my ancient Greek is a little rough.”

She laughed quietly, almost sheepish, before lifting the statue with careful hands.

“This one appears to be a depiction of the God of War,” she continued, angling it so Neil could see the worn details along its surface. “Soldiers would sometimes pray to the God of War before battle, asking for courage, victory, or protection. At least, that’s what I think this inscription may be connected to.”

Her earlier awkwardness seemed to vanish the more she spoke. Ivy leaned closer to the open book, pointing to a passage with one finger, then gesturing back to the carved lines on the statue.

“See here?” she said, her voice gaining quiet excitement. “The wording is fragmented, but this section might refer to an offering. Or maybe a plea. It’s difficult to tell without the rest of the inscription.”

She looked back at Neil then, her smile softer now, curiosity replacing her confusion.

Connor saw her before she saw him.

That was usually how it went.

He could pretend he didn’t look for Kassandra when he walked into a room, but the lie had started to feel insulting even to himself. It was automatic now, some traitorous little part of him scanning every crowd for her face, her shoulders, the particular way she carried herself like she did not need the room to notice her in order to know exactly who she was. She moved differently than most people. Not loud. Not desperate. Not performing for attention. She just existed with this grounded, dangerous sort of grace, and Connor, who was used to being the loudest warmth in any given space, had no idea what to do with someone who could quiet him by simply being nearby.

So, naturally, he had been staring.

Not in a creepy way.

Hopefully.

More in a deeply embarrassing, very obvious, someone please send help before my entire personality leaves my body sort of way.

“You planning on talking to her,” Mason asked from beside him, voice dry as dust, “or are we all just gonna watch you admire her from the wildlife preserve?” Connor’s shoulders stiffened. “I’m not admiring.” Theo glanced over the rim of his drink. “Your pulse changed.” Connor turned slowly. “I know you think saying stuff like that makes you sound mysterious, but mostly it makes me want to throw a breadstick at you.” Theo only smiled faintly. “You also stopped blinking for eight seconds.” “That’s normal,” Connor said too quickly. “It is absolutely not normal,” Jake said, leaning in with a grin so bright it was practically illegal. “Big Man’s malfunctioning.” “I am not malfunctioning.” Christian, who had been minding his own business until he apparently decided peace was overrated, gave Connor a once-over and said, “Your ears are red.” Connor immediately reached up like he could physically hide them. “It’s hot in here.” “It’s February,” Theo said. “Inside, man. Inside heat exists.”

Rowan, who had been quiet until then, took a slow sip from his drink and looked across the room with the lazy precision of a man who had read the defense before the snap and already knew exactly where the ball was going.

“No,” he said. “That’s not heat. That’s fear.” Connor turned on him. “Quarterback privilege does not extend to emotional commentary.” Rowan’s mouth twitched. “It does when my fullback starts looking like he forgot his own playbook because a woman walked in.” Mason snorted.

“So does courage.” Connor shot him a wounded look. “I have courage. I run into linebackers for a living.” “Yeah,” Jake said, “but apparently one rugby player in a red dress has you looking like you need a permission slip.”

Rowan leaned slightly forward, eyes still on Kassandra. “To be fair, she looks like she could make a linebacker apologize.” Connor opened his mouth to respond, something sharp and clever ready on instinct, but then the crowd shifted.

And there she was.

Kassandra.

Red satin. Loose hair. Strong legs. That smile.

Connor’s entire brain went quiet for one fatal second.

Dear God.

The guys saw it happen in real time. Of course they did. Because his life was cruel and full of witnesses.

“Oh, he’s gone,” Jake said with immediate delight. “Not gone,” Mason corrected. “Reduced.” Theo nodded solemnly. “Emotionally composted.” Rowan studied Connor for a beat, then said, “I’ve seen cleaner collapses under blitz pressure.” Connor blinked. “Can everyone please stop narrating my death?” 

Then Kassandra’s voice cut through the music.

“Pretty boy!”

Connor froze.

Not subtly. Not smoothly. Not in any way that could be mistaken for dignified.

He froze like someone had pulled his plug.

The team erupted.

There was no other word for it. The sound that came out of them was immediate and viciously joyful, a chorus of laughter, whistles, slapped shoulders, and someone, probably Jake, saying, “Pretty boy! Oh, we are never letting that go.” Rowan’s grin appeared slowly, sharp at the edges. “Pretty boy,” he repeated, as if testing the nickname for future tactical use. “That’s going on the call sheet.” Connor turned toward her, already feeling heat crawl up his neck.

“Hi,” he said.

One syllable.

That was all he managed.

Brilliant.

World-class.

Truly the kind of verbal performance that made men legends.

Rowan lifted his glass slightly. “Electric opening. Really controlled the pocket there.” Connor shot him a look that begged for silence and threatened violence at the same time.

Kassandra slid into the space beside him like she had always belonged there, her hand settling lightly on his arm. Connor looked down at that hand before he could stop himself, and every single thought in his head tripped over itself, fell down a flight of stairs, and landed in a heap.

Her fingers were on his arm.

Her fingers were on his arm and she was smiling up at him and calling him pretty boy in front of his entire team, and Connor had the sudden, terrible realization that he would rather take a helmet to the ribs than survive the next thirty seconds with grace.

“Were you hiding from me,” she asked, warm and teasing, “or just waiting for me to find you?”

Connor inhaled. Then forgot what breathing was for.

“I was, uh.” He cleared his throat, forcing one hand into his pocket like that might make him look casual instead of doomed. “I wasn’t hiding. I don’t hide. I mean, I can hide. Physically. If the situation calls for it. I’m big, but I’m surprisingly stealthy for a man who has been compared to structural damage.”

Behind him, Mason muttered, “Lord help him.”

Rowan nodded solemnly. “Strong start. Terrible middle. Unsure about the finish.”

Connor closed his eyes for half a second.

Pull it together, Graves.

When he opened them again, Kassandra was still watching him with that sparkling look in her eyes, and somehow that made it worse. Better. Worse-better. A horrible, beautiful ambush.

He gave her a crooked smile, trying to recover some fraction of the charm people insisted he possessed.

“What I meant,” he said, voice smoothing just a little, “is that I was waiting for you to find me because clearly you enjoy the thrill of the chase.”

“Ooh,” Jake said, far too loudly. “There he is.”

Rowan tipped his chin in mild approval. “Better. Little shaky on delivery, but he found the route.”

Connor pointed backward without looking away from Kassandra. “Ignore him. He thinks because he throws a ball for a living, he gets to narrate everyone else’s choices.”

Rowan’s brows lifted. “I throw very important balls.”

Christian coughed into his drink.

Connor turned his head sharply. “Nope. Not today. We are not doing phrasing today.”

Kassandra mentioned his game, and Connor’s smile warmed instantly, his embarrassment softening beneath something earnest. Praise from her hit differently. The crowd could roar, commentators could talk, coaches could slap him on the helmet, but Kassandra noticing him? Kassandra watching his play closely enough to catch a borrowed move?

That landed somewhere deep.

“Good game, pretty boy,” she said.

Connor’s grin twitched wider despite himself. “You keep calling me that and I’m gonna start answering to it in public.”

“You already did!” Jake called.

Rowan nodded. “Twice, actually. Once verbally, once spiritually.”

Connor turned his head slightly, expression warning. “I swear on every protein shake in that locker room, I will put you through a refreshment table.”

Rowan looked at the nearby table, then back at him. “You’d miss. Hands are shaking.”

The team howled.

Kassandra’s hand gave his arm a gentle squeeze, and Connor’s threat died immediately.

He looked back at her.

Right.

Yes.

Beautiful woman. Hand on arm. Focus.

“You used my signature move,” she said, playful accusation glowing in her voice. “I saw it. Don’t even try to deny it.”

Connor’s brows lifted, and for one precious second, he managed something close to suave. He leaned back just enough to look down at her with mock offense, one hand pressing to his chest like she had wounded him personally.

“Stole?” he asked. “Kassandra, I am shocked. Hurt, even. Maybe a little betrayed.”

“You did steal it,” Christian said.

Connor snapped his fingers toward him. “You don’t have proof.”

“There’s film,” Theo said.

“That’s circumstantial.”

“It’s literally footage,” Mason said.

Rowan hummed, enjoying himself too much. “I remember the play. He came back to the huddle trying to look casual.”

Connor’s eyes widened. “Do not.”

Rowan continued, merciless. “Then he said, ‘You think Kassandra saw that?’”

The entire group made a noise.

Connor stared at him like he had just been stabbed by his own commander on the battlefield.

“Rowan.”

Rowan spread one hand. “Accuracy matters.”

Connor’s face went volcanic. “I said that because she understands the technique.”

“Sure,” Rowan said. “That was definitely the tone.”

Kassandra looked far too pleased with all of this, and Connor, despite the humiliation crawling red-hot up his throat, felt something dangerously fond bloom in his chest. Because she fit there, somehow. Not in the soft, polished way people sometimes tried to fit around athletes and their noise, but easily. She did not shrink from the teasing. She did not seem startled by the chaos. She stood in the middle of their noise with her hand on his arm and that amused little smile on her face like she had decided she could survive them.

Worse, the team had noticed too.

Connor could feel it.

The way Mason’s teasing had warmed into approval. The way Jake was grinning like he had already started designing wedding hashtags in his head. The way Christian watched Kassandra with the assessing calm of someone deciding she had enough spine to run with their particular pack of emotionally damaged, overgrown golden retrievers. The way Theo, cryptic menace that he was, had gone quiet in that way that usually meant he had seen enough to know something before Connor did.

And Rowan, damn him, looked almost satisfied.

Not loud about it. Not soft in any obvious way. Just standing there with that captain’s stillness, watching Kassandra hold her own among them, watching Connor turn into a blush-red mess beside her, and apparently deciding something had clicked into place.

Jake lifted his glass toward her. “For the record, Kassandra, you’re welcome here anytime.” “Anytime,” Mason agreed. “You make him quiet. That’s a public service.” “I am not quiet,” Connor protested. “You said hi and then forgot nouns,” Christian said. Theo studied Kassandra with thoughtful approval. “Also, his blood pressure is doing something fascinating.” Connor groaned. “Please stop giving her medical updates.” Rowan lifted his drink slightly toward Kassandra. “You walked into this chaos and didn’t flinch. That counts for something around here.” Connor glanced over, suspicious. “Was that sincere?” Rowan looked at him. “Don’t make it weird.” “I didn’t make it weird. You were nice. That’s suspicious.” “I can be nice.” Mason made a doubtful noise. Jake shook his head. “Debatable.”

Rowan ignored them and looked back at Kassandra, his expression dry but not unkind. “What I’m saying is, if you ever need backup, bad advice, or someone to drag Connor out of his own head by the ankles, congratulations. You’ve got all of us now.”

Connor’s heart did something stupid.

Kassandra’s grin widened, and the team, rather than backing off, seemed to brighten around her presence like someone had officially opened a window in the room. It was not mean. Not really. There was too much warmth in it for that. Too much immediate acceptance. They were teasing Connor because they loved him, and because Kassandra had apparently walked in and found the one lever capable of turning their resident battering ram into a stammering disaster.

Jake leaned slightly toward Kassandra, not even trying to hide his grin. “You know, he’s been trying to talk to you for weeks.”

Connor’s soul left his body.

“Jake.”

“Months,” Theo corrected.

Connor turned on him. “Et tu, weird oracle?”

Mason nodded. “He had openers.”

“I had no openers.”

“You had several,” Christian said. “One involved complimenting her footwork.”

Connor’s face went hotter. “Because her footwork is good!”

Rowan took another sip. “He said it with reverence.”

Connor pointed at him. “You are supposed to be my quarterback.”

“I am,” Rowan said. “That’s why I’m reading the field.”

“This is not a field.”

“You’re sweating like it is.”

“Another involved asking about recovery routines,” Mason added.

“That is a normal athlete question.”

“Another,” Jake said, barely holding himself together, “was, and I quote, ‘Do you think she likes coffee, or is that too forward?’”

Connor stared at him.

The betrayal was biblical.

Rowan’s mouth curved. “My favorite was when he asked if saying ‘good match’ sounded too basic.”

Connor dragged a hand down his face. “I hate all of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Rowan said.

Connor looked at Kassandra, then back at Rowan. “I am considering starting.”

Kassandra’s hand was still on his arm, and Connor could feel every ounce of himself becoming more and more ridiculous under her gaze.

“I was workshopping,” he said, dignity limping behind him with a flat tire.

Then Kassandra leaned closer, her voice dipping into something softer, more dangerous.

“Or,” she said, “you could thank me properly.”

The room seemed to take one collective inhale.

Connor definitely did.

His eyes flicked to hers, then to her mouth for half a second, then back up so quickly it might as well have come with a guilty sound effect. His smile faltered, not disappearing, just changing. Less performance. Less defense. More honest. More stunned that she was standing there, that she was teasing him, that maybe, somehow, she had crossed the room for him.

“Properly,” he repeated.

The word came out lower than before.

Behind him, Jake whispered, “Be cool.”

Connor did not look away from Kassandra. “I was cool before you said that.”

“No, you weren’t,” Mason said.

Rowan added, “You were nearby.”

Connor lifted one finger. “I was cool adjacent.”

Kassandra’s eyes glittered.

Connor swallowed, then gave her the best grin he could manage, crooked and warm and still a little wrecked at the edges.

“Okay,” he said, nodding once as if accepting an extremely serious athletic challenge. “Proper thank you. I can do that. I’m very good at gratitude. Huge fan of appreciation. Big believer in credit where credit is due.”

“Stalling,” Theo said.

“Absolutely stalling,” Christian agreed.

Rowan clicked his tongue softly. “Clock’s running, Graves.”

Connor ignored them again, though the blush creeping up his neck made the effort less convincing.

He shifted a little closer to Kassandra, careful not to crowd her, but close enough that the teasing from the others blurred into the background. His hand came up, hesitated for one nervous second, then settled gently over hers where it rested on his arm.

It was careful.

Questioning.

But he did not pull away.

“Thank you,” Connor said, and despite the heat in his face, despite the team hovering like a council of badly behaved cupids, his voice turned sincere. “For the move. For noticing. For coming over here and making me look like I’ve never spoken to a woman before.”

“You haven’t,” Jake said.

Connor’s jaw tightened. “I’m choosing peace.”

Rowan nodded once. “Growth.”

Then Connor looked back at Kassandra, and the softness returned.

“And for the record,” he continued, “I did give you credit. Maybe not out loud, because I was busy trying not to get folded in half, but in here?” He tapped his temple, then immediately winced. “Wow. No. That looked less smooth than it felt.”

Kassandra laughed, and Connor’s whole face brightened.

There it was.

That was worse than the dress, somehow. The laugh. Because he had made her do that. Because it did something to him, something stupid and hopeful and bright.

He tried again, a little quieter.

“I saw you use it first,” he admitted. “And I remembered because you move like you already know exactly where the hit is going before it happens. It’s not just power with you. It’s timing. Leverage. Nerve.” His thumb brushed once, barely there, over the side of her hand. “So yeah, I borrowed it. Maybe because it worked. Maybe because I wanted to carry a little bit of you onto my field.”

The team quieted just enough for the shift to be noticeable.

Connor realized what he had said a second too late.

His eyes widened.

“I mean, not in a weird way,” he rushed out. “Not like a shrine thing. I don’t have candles. Or photos. Or, God, please don’t let that be the sentence you remember.”

The laughter came back, but softer this time.

Jake pressed a hand over his heart. “He’s growing.”

Mason nodded. “Painful, but beautiful.”

Christian lifted his glass. “To Connor’s first complete thought.”

Rowan’s voice came in, low and dry. “Mark the date. We’ll put it in the team newsletter.”

“Okay, all of you are being traded to Cleveland,” Connor said.

Rowan didn’t miss a beat. “You can’t trade me. I throw the very important balls.”

Connor closed his eyes. “I regret teaching you sarcasm.”

“You didn’t,” Rowan said. “I came like this.”

Then, because Kassandra was still there, still smiling, still touching him like she had no intention of running from the disaster zone that was his dignity, Connor let himself be brave.

Just a little.

“So,” he said, voice lowering again, warm and nervous and trying very hard to be smooth, “if proper thanks are on the table, pretty girl, I’d like to start with buying you a drink.”

A beat.

His grin tilted.

“And then maybe you can tell me exactly how much credit I owe you.”

Another beat, softer this time.

“And after that,” he added, cheeks still flushed but eyes steady on hers, “maybe I can finally stop pretending I haven’t been trying to work up the nerve to talk to you since the first time I saw you play.”

The team made a collective sound behind him.

Not laughter this time.

Something more like delighted approval.

Jake leaned toward Kassandra, stage-whispering, “We like you, by the way. Officially. Unanimous vote.”

“You don’t get a say,” Connor muttered.

“Oh, we absolutely get a say,” Mason replied. “You’re emotionally unsupervised.”

Theo gave Kassandra a small nod. “Welcome to the fold.”

Christian’s mouth curved. “Good luck with him.”

Rowan raised his glass one more time, eyes flicking between Kassandra and Connor with that sharp, quiet captain’s approval he rarely bothered to soften.

“He’s an idiot,” Rowan said. “But he’s ours. And he’s good where it counts.”

Connor looked at him, caught somewhere between touched and horrified.

“Was that a compliment?”

Rowan looked unmoved. “Don’t get needy.”

Jake laughed. “Too late.”

Connor looked at Kassandra, helplessly embarrassed, painfully fond, and somehow still trying to stand tall through it. “They’re terrible,” he said.

Then his smile softened.

“But they’re mine.”

He glanced briefly over his shoulder at the men still grinning behind him before looking back down at her.

“And, uh…” His voice caught for half a second, the stammer slipping in despite his best effort. “You don’t have to be, obviously. No pressure. That sounded intense. I just mean…” He huffed a laugh, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand. “You’re welcome here. With us. With me.”

The last two words came quieter.

More honest.

His cheeks went red all over again, but this time he didn’t retreat behind a joke fast enough to hide it.

Rowan, thankfully, did not make fun of that part.

He only shifted beside the others, giving Connor the room to stand in the truth he had finally managed to say.

“So,” Connor said, squeezing her hand gently beneath his, “what’s it gonna be, Kass? Drink first, lecture about proper credit second, or do I have to earn forgiveness for athletic theft some other way?”

Behind him, Rowan added mildly, “Choose carefully. He’ll overthink whatever answer you give him for six to eight business days.”

Connor sighed without looking away from Kassandra.

The laughter came back before she could stop it, but softer this time.

It wasn’t the sharp, teasing kind she had used on him before. This one slipped out gently, warm and almost disbelieving, as Kassandra looked up at Connor with open fondness written plainly across her face.

He was adorable when he was flustered.

Ridiculously adorable, actually.

The way his ears reddened first. The way his words tripped over each other the second he realized he had said too much. The way he looked at her like he was both desperate for her to forget what he’d said and secretly hoping she wouldn’t.

And then it hit her.

He was like this every time she appeared.

Every time she called him pretty boy. Every time she slid into his space like she belonged there. Every time she smiled at him a little too knowingly or touched his arm just long enough to make him lose his train of thought.

Connor didn’t get flustered like this with everyone.

He got flustered with her.

The realization made Kassandra’s heart skip, then stumble into a rhythm far too quick for someone who prided herself on being calm under pressure.

She tilted her head, studying him with a softness she didn’t bother hiding.

“Connor,” she said, her voice still threaded with amusement, “you are terrible at pretending I don’t affect you.”

Her smile deepened, fond and teasing all at once.

“And for the record,” she added, leaning in just enough for the words to feel like a secret between them, “that is absolutely the sentence I’m going to remember.”

“Well…” Kassandra began, letting the word linger as her gaze flicked from his eyes to his mouth and back again. “I would like a drink.”

Her smile curved slowly, teasing and dangerous in a way that made it clear she was very aware of what she was doing.

Then she reached up, her fingers curling around his tie.

Connor barely had time to react before she gave it a gentle tug, drawing him down to her level. Close enough that the noise of the party seemed to blur around them. Close enough that his breath caught, and Kassandra could feel the little pause between them — that suspended second where either of them could still pretend this was just flirting.

But Kassandra had never been much for pretending once she made up her mind.

“But I was thinking,” she murmured, her voice softer now, “more like this.”

She pulled him the rest of the way down and kissed him straight on the lips.

For a heartbeat, Connor seemed frozen with surprise. Then he kissed her back, and the world tilted pleasantly beneath her feet. Their mouths shifted once, then twice, testing, finding, lingering — and by the third time, Kassandra was smiling too much to keep going.

She pulled away just enough to look at him, her fingers still loosely hooked in his tie.

“Now that’s a thank you.”

Her smile turned wickedly pleased as she smoothed the front of his tie like she hadn’t just used it to ruin his composure.

“Now,” she said, eyes sparkling as she leaned back beside him, “about that drink…”

She glanced toward the bar, then back at him.

“Fireball shots, perhaps?”

For a moment, Kassandra simply watched him.

Connor stood there like his brain had short-circuited, his eyes still on her mouth, his expression caught somewhere between stunned, delighted, and completely useless. It was, without question, one of the most satisfying things Kassandra had ever seen.

Behind him, one of his teammates let out a low whistle.

Another leaned toward the others and whispered, not nearly as quietly as he probably thought, “I think she broke him.”

Kassandra heard it.

And judging by the way a few of the boys tried and failed to smother their laughter, so had everyone else.

Her smile only grew.

She tilted her head, taking in the faint flush climbing Connor’s neck, the way his lips parted like he had something to say but had forgotten every word he’d ever learned. For someone so confident on the field, he looked beautifully, hopelessly undone.

And it was because of her. That thought sent a thrill straight through her chest.

When he still didn’t answer right away, Kassandra stepped a little closer, her fingers brushing lightly against his tie again.

“Don’t tell me I have to kiss you again to bring you back to earth.”

Her eyes sparkled with mischief as she leaned in just enough to make his teammates erupt into another round of poorly hidden laughter.