The first attempt of a family dinner, Saint bailed the second he’d sat in the passenger seat. Looking at Kitty with a pleading green gaze as anxiety ate him whole and demanded for more time, that he wasn’t ready yet to indulge her want to dine with the people she cared about most in the world and create a secret union between the two families. But for Saint, anxiety didn’t come from the idea that he had been doing something wrong, something his mother would disapprove of and punish him severely for. It’s the notion of not being liked, the understanding that he was a Warden and them all Femenias. What business had he had walking directly into the lion’s den and declaring his adoration for their cousin? Nerves weigh lick a ten tonne brick on his chest for the majority of the evening, sat at the dining table quietly polite, speaking when spoken to and nodding agreeably as jokes and onslaughts of laughter reverberator energetically around the room.

“I’m going for a cigarette,” he leans over to whisper into Kitty’s ear, who is too occupied in a conversation with Marcus to pay any mind to his new absence, and Saint hadn’t caught the conversation entirely as he grabs his jacket from a coat hanger and makes his way outside onto the terrace. Inhaling a deep and welcoming breath of fresh air, humming into the summer evening breeze and, ultimately, the quiet. The roar of the Femenias family replaced by central London’s ambient setting. The sound of cars below and the chatter in which the city so naturally inhabits. They’re different from his own family in more ways than just their rivalries. They’re warm, whereas the family dynamic he had been born to be icy cold. Loud versus the quiet that his mother encases him in, and then a new noise interrupts as he’s lighting the tip of his cigarette, and Saint turns around to meet their gaze.

Ravi. His shoulders relax, slump as he takes a deep inhale and breathes out a smooth line of smoke from his lungs. “Hey. Sorry. I just needed a cigarette, I’ll be back in in a moment,” Saint offers with a hesitant smile. Kicking himself already for his own mundanity, feeling uninteresting and more like an intruder than he had Kitty’s partner. He should hate to think what they all thought, though it was rather simple to presume. That his declared love had come from a place of opportunity, which even worse, would have suggested that those feelings he’d experienced for her and only her hadn’t been real. Cigarette stays pressed against his lips, lusting after the quick relief of nicotine before his attention returns to the other, “Oh, that’s super rude of me. You didn’t want one, did you?”