CHAPTER 104: Three AM

POV: Selene Castellano

She put the box back and stood at the counter for a moment looking at herself in the mirror. The same face. The same 3 AM hair. Nothing different yet except everything potentially different.

Not tonight, she thought.

Not at 3 AM alone in a bathroom while he slept.

If this was happening it deserved better than that.

She turned off the light and went back to bed.

He stirred when she got in.

“You okay?” he murmured. Half asleep.

“Fine,” she said. “Just the bathroom.”

He reached for her without fully waking. An arm finding her waist. Pulling her back against him the way he did sometimes, unconsciously, like his body had learned where she belonged even when his mind was elsewhere.

She let him lay there in the dark with his arm around her and his breathing slowing back into sleep and a box under the bathroom sink that might or might not change everything.

She didn’t sleep again.

But she didn’t mind.

He woke at six.

Found her already awake, lying on her side facing him, just looking.

“You’re staring,” he said. Voice rough with sleep.

“I’m allowed.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No.” She reached over and pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I just like looking at you when you don’t know you’re being looked at.”

He caught her hand and pressed it against his face.

“You can look anytime,” he said. “I don’t mind being looked at by you.”

“That’s new.”

“A lot of things are new.”

She smiled.

He pulled her closer.

For a while neither of them said anything. Just the warmth of the bed and the early light starting at the edges of the curtains and the luxury of a morning with nowhere urgent to be.

His hand moved along her spine. Slow and unhurried.

“We don’t have anywhere to be until ten,” he said.

“I noticed.”

“That’s a lot of time.”

“It is.”

He kissed her shoulder. Then her neck with the utmost attention of someone who had decided this morning was worth taking slowly.

She turned to face him properly.

“Avalon.”

“Yes.”

“Yesterday was a lot.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want this to be about yesterday,” she said. “I don’t want it to be us trying to fix something with this.”

He looked at her.

“It’s not about yesterday,” he said. “It’s about this morning. Right now. You looking at me before I was awake.” He traced her jaw with his thumb. “That’s all this is.”

She believed him.

Later, much later, she lay against his chest listening to his heartbeat slow back to normal.

His fingers moved idly through her hair.

“What were you thinking about when you got up last night ?” he asked. 

She considered telling him.

But it didn’t feel right yet, not  because she was hiding it but because some things needed their own moment and this morning had already found its moment and she didn’t want to crowd it.

“I was thinking about Claire,” she said. Which was also true. “About what she said.”

“That you were home.”

“Yes.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Are you okay with all of it?” he said. “Really.”

She thought about it honestly.

“I think so,” she said. “I think yesterday needed to happen. All of it. The hard parts too.” She traced a pattern on his chest. “I don’t think we would have gotten to this morning without going through yesterday first.”

“That’s a generous way to think about it.”

“I’m trying it on,” she said. “Seeing if it fits.”

“Does it?”

“Ask me again in a week.”

He laughed.

She felt it under her ear, the rumble of it, and something in her chest went warm and simple and uncomplicated.

They were late to the office.

Amara looked up, smiled and said nothing.

Maya, however, looked up, looked at them, and grinned.

“You’re both late,” she said.

“We know,” Avalon said.

“And you both look—” Maya tilted her head. “Rested.”

“We’re fine, Maya,” Selene said.

“I didn’t say you weren’t fine. I said you looked rested.” Maya turned back to her screen, still grinning. “That’s all I said.”

James, in the corner, did not look up from his laptop, but Selene caught the corner of his mouth doing something that suggested he’d heard every word and had opinions he was choosing not to share.

Selene sat down at her desk.

Felt, rather than saw, Avalon glance at her once before he went to his own corner of the office.

She opened her laptop.

Tried to focus on the morning’s emails but found herself, every few minutes, thinking about a box under a bathroom sink.

At lunch Maya sat across from her with her own container of food, looked at her for a long moment, and said: “You’re somewhere else today.”

“I’m here,” Selene said.

“You’re here,” Maya agreed. “But also somewhere else.” She took a bite. Chewed thoughtfully. “Good somewhere else or thinking somewhere else?”

Selene looked at her sister.

She almost told her.

“I’ll tell you,” Selene said. “When I know what I’m telling you.”

Maya looked at her for a long moment.

Something in her face shifted. Understanding arriving without needing the words yet.

“Okay,” Maya said simply.

She didn’t push.

That was new for Maya too. The actletting.

She’d learned it somewhere.

That evening, walking home, Selene stopped outside the same bookshop Avalon had gone into weeks ago.

He stopped beside her.

“What is it?” he said.

“Nothing. Just looking.”

He looked at the display too. Then at her. Then back at the display, like he was trying to see what she was seeing.

“Selene.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been somewhere else all day.”

She looked at him.

“I noticed Maya noticed too,” he said. “She gave me a look at lunch. The kind that means she knows something I don’t.”

“She doesn’t know anything,” Selene said. “I didn’t tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

She looked at him.

“Come home with me,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

He looked at her for a moment.

Something in his expression went very still.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

They walked the rest of the way without talking.

But his hand found hers halfway there.

And held on.