Page 89 of Beautiful When He Breaks

Killian takes a sip of coffee and watches Eli for one beat too long. “Mara called.”

That gets Eli’s full attention immediately—of course it does. Every time she calls, something changes, something gets confirmed, or something else gets more complicated. I see Eli’s shoulders tighten under Mila’s small weight, and I have the ridiculous urge to reach over and put a hand on the back of his neck just to keep him steady. I don’t. Not with Killian standing there and clocking every molecule in the room.

“What now?” Eli asks.

Killian sets the mug down on the counter. “The court’s going to be looking hard at stability. Not just financially, but the environment too. Where Mila’s living, who’s around her, whether a judge or custody evaluator thinks the situation looks permanent, safe, structured, all that shit.”

Eli goes still, bracing for bad news before it fully lands. “This house is safe.”

“It is,” Killian says calmly. “Everybody who matters in this house knows it. That doesn’t mean a family court judge is going to look at a mansion full of college athletes and think it's an ideal environment for full custody of an infant. Especially not with the reputation the Sin Bin has.”

I don’t even need to look at Eli to know exactly what that hits in him. Pride first, fear second. Then that fast, ugly scramble in his head where everything immediately starts converting to, “What do I need to fix?” and “How impossible is it going to be?”

He shifts Mila higher on his shoulder and glances toward me for the briefest second before looking back at Killian. “Okay,” he says slowly. “So, what am I supposed to do? I can’t magically become thirty with a mortgage.”

“No,” Killian replies, and there’s the tiniest flicker of something dry in his voice, “though I’m sure Liam would help you color-code one if you did.”

Eli doesn’t smile. He’s too deep in it already. Killian sees that and gets to the point. “I’m converting one of the outbuildings on the property.”

I honestly think I misheard him—then I remember I’m dealing with Killian King. He doesn’t float ideas unless he’s already halfway through executing them. If he says he’s converting an outbuilding, there are probably contractors already on standby and a spreadsheet somewhere that would make an accountant cry.

Eli blinks at him. “What?”

“The smaller guest place near the back line,” Killian says, as if he’s discussing a new coffee machine instead of casually rearranging someone’s entire future. “It’s already got plumbing, power, separate access, and enough square footage that Mara thinks it’ll read a hell of a lot better as an independent residence than you and Mila sharing a room in the main house while Ryan tries to teach her how to dribble a basketball.”

That finally gets a tiny huff out of me, mostly because the mental image is so real it almost hurts. Eli doesn’t laugh. He just stares at Killian with the expression of a man who’s just been handed both salvation and another reason to feel guilty.

“Killian,” he says carefully, and I already know what’s coming next because I know Eli almost as well as I know my own name. “That’s too much.”

There it is.

Killian’s mouth goes flat in exactly the way it does when somebody says something predictable and annoying. “No, it’s not—”

“Yes, it is,” Eli argues, voice tightening. “You’re already doing all this legal stuff for us. I can’t just take a whole fucking place from you because the courts might think the Sin Bin is too chaotic.”

“First of all,” Killian says, folding his arms over his chest, “the Sin Bin is too chaotic.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s definitely part of the point.”

I keep my face carefully neutral because I can already see where this is going, and more importantly, I can see that Killian sees it too. Eli’s pride is up, and his fear is worse. He hears help and immediately starts translating it into debt he can’t repay, dependency he doesn’t want, proof that his parents were right about him not being able to stand on his own. He’ll talk himself out of something that could keep Mila safer just because accepting it feels too much like admitting he needs it.

Killian is not about to let that happen. He leans one hip against the island and says, almost lazily, “You’re not getting it for free.”

I can see the way those words stop Eli’s spiral. I almost laugh because it’s such a Killian move that I should’ve seen it coming before he said a word.

“What?” Eli asks again, but this time the resistance in him flickers.

Killian shrugs one shoulder. “When you get drafted, you pay me back.”

I have to bite the inside of my cheek not to smile.

Of course Killian knows Eli would balk at the idea of him helping out again. So, he takes the charity out of it and replaces it with a debt Eli can live with. He gives Eli a future version of himself to answer to rather than asking him to accept pure help and sit still under the weight of gratitude. He makes it practical—transactional enough to accept, human enough to still be love.

Jesus, Killian is a scary motherfucker.

Eli stares at him for a long second. “You serious?”