We Know

Christie's POV

I didn't hear him come out.

One second I was alone on the steps talking to myself like an idiot, and the next Lyon was sitting beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him in the cool evening air.

I straightened up quickly.

"How long have you been standing there?" I asked.

"Long enough to know you needed company," he said.

He didn't make anything of it. He just sat there looking out at the open land in front of us and I slowly let my shoulders drop back down.

We sat in silence for a while. It wasn't the kind of silence that needed filling.

"What's it like?" I asked eventually. "Being the one everyone looks to."

Lyon was quiet for a moment.

"Heavy," he said. "You grow up knowing that every decision you make lands on other people. You can't afford to be wrong. You can't afford to fall apart. Everyone in your circle is watching you for signs of weakness and the moment they see one, the whole structure shakes."

"Did you choose it?"

"You're born into it," he said. "There's no choosing. You either grow into it or you break under it."

"Which one did you do?"

He looked at me sideways. "Jury's still out."

I laughed. It came out before I could stop it, genuine and a little surprised, and he looked at me a little more keenly.

"What about you," he said. "What was it like growing up in your house?"

I looked down at my hands.

"Invisible," I said. "That's the only word for it. My mother remarried when I was twelve and after that I was just something that occupied space in someone else's life. My step sister, Anna, was the daughter she showed off. I was the one she hid."

"She hid you," Lyon repeated.

"Kept me out of photos. Introduced Anna as her only child at parties. Made sure I knew that everything I had, the roof, the food, the little she gave me for school, was a favour she was doing me." I paused. "So I stopped asking for anything and started getting things myself. Scholarships. Research grants. My own lab. Everything I have I got alone."

"And she still isn't proud of you."

It wasn't a question. He had heard enough from the phone call that first night to understand the shape of it.

"She thinks I'm an embarrassment," I said. "A daughter who wears cargo pants and smells like a lab is not the kind of daughter you bring to a dinner party."

Lyon shook his head slowly. Not in pity. More like quiet anger on my behalf.

"You found a cure for a growing brain tumor," he said. "You saved my mother's life. And the woman who was supposed to raise you thinks you're an embarrassment."

"Welcome to my life," I said.

He was quiet after that. The sky had gone fully dark while we were talking and the grounds in front of us were still and wide.

"For what it's worth," Lyon said, "nobody in this house thinks that."

I looked at him.

He was looking straight ahead, but there was something deliberate about the way he said it. Like he meant it to land and he knew it would.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

We sat there a little longer. When I finally stood up, my legs were stiff from the cold stone. Lyon stayed where he was, forearms resting on his knees, looking out at the dark.

I walked to the door and put my hand on the handle.

I don't know why I looked back. I just did.

He was still sitting there, not moving, and the way he looked in that moment, just a man sitting alone on his back steps carrying everything he carried, made something in my chest pull in a direction I wasn't ready to examine.

Maybe I was starting to really want him to pull me into the embrace of those strong arms.

I went inside.

My room was warm. Someone had left the bedside lamp on. I noticed my phone on the nightstand, plugged into a charger I hadn't put there. Lyon had arranged that too, I was sure.

I picked it up.

The screen lit up and the notifications came in all at once. Forty two missed calls, almost all from my mother. I scrolled past them without listening to a single one.

Then I saw the text.

Unknown number. Sent two hours ago.

‘We know where you are, Doctor Graves. Come home or we come to you.’