Page 38 of Heat Unscripted

Not of her. Not of the bond or the match or whatever his body had confirmed last night, loud and clear. Of himself. The man had lived inside being exact for so long that feeling something this big and this shapeless made him wonder if the whole thing he was built out of could take it.

“Eat,” he said. “I’ll be in the sitting room.”

He left.

I ate the eggs. They were perfect, of course they were, Bram didn’t half-do anything, and the coffee beat anything I’d have made, and the light coming through Isobel’s kitchen window turned the whole room gold.

Cillian’s fingers kept moving on the tablet. A crisis getting handled with the same steady hand he gave audio levels.

“He’ll come back,” Cillian said, not looking up. No judgement in it. No worry. Just a man stating what he’d seen Bram do a hundred times.

“I know.” I put my fork down. “That’s not the part that worries me.”

His eyes came up. Met mine. The silver in his ears caught the light.

“What worries you?”

“That he’ll come back with a framework.” I looked at the empty doorway. “He’ll think his way through it and show up with a plan and a structure and a list of how it’s all going to run, and none of it’ll leave room for the part that isn’t rational.”

Cillian sat with that a second. His thumbs went still on the screen.

“He’s not wrong to need time,” he said. “His system’s not yours. You felt the bond years ago and spent the whole time fighting it. He felt it yesterday and hasn’t slept.”

Fair. That was fair.

From the sitting room came Bram’s voice on the phone, controlled, in charge, the work voice fully out. Managing. Protecting. Doing the thing he knew how to do, while the thing he didn’t know how to do slept upstairs smelling like honey.

I finished the coffee. Rinsed my plate. Standing at a sink in Isobel’s kitchen washing one plate felt insane against the size of it, millions of people waiting for answers as to what happened, the hashtags, legal, a thing that was going to either end or remake all our careers. And here I was watching soap bubbles catch the light.

“I’m going back up,” I said, grabbing the plate of eggs and the glass of water for Iz.

Cillian nodded. Already back on the tablet, fingers going again. Keeping the world off the people he loved, quietly, all the time, a thankless job that I needed to remember to thank him for later, when this was all over.

I dried my hands. Went up the stairs. Stood outside the bedroom door.

I was supposed to be guarding it.

That was the deal we’d made in the small hours, nobody said it out loud, the pack just sorted itself. Cillian ran comms. Bram ran strategy. I stood between Isobel and anything that might get to her before she was ready.

Guard the door. Simple.

Through it I heard her move. The mattress creaked. A small sound, not distress, not last night’s whines, something half-made. Somebody reaching for the warmth that had been next to her and not finding it.

I balanced the glass of water as my hand went to the handle before I’d finished thinking.

I opened the door.

She was half-awake, curled on her side, the covers shoved down to her waist. Bram’s coat still over her shoulders, she’d slept in it, the silk lining on her skin, his scent wrapped round her like a stand-in for the man. Her hair was a disaster. Her glasses still sat on the nightstand, and without them her face was smaller, softer, all its fine lines bare in the morning light.

Her eyes found me. Half open. Green as deep water.

She didn’t say anything. Her voice was still shot, would be for hours, maybe days. She didn’t need it.

She reached for me.

One hand out of the covers and the coat, fingers spread. Not grabbing. Asking. Years of refusing to ask anybody for anything, and she was choosing to ask now, eyes open, all the way awake to it.

I was across the room in two steps. The eggs and glass of water hit the night stand clumsily.