CHAPTER NINE — Connected

LENA'S POV

I did not sleep well again.

Not because of fear this time. Because of what Ghost had said.

I would have let you in anyway.

I turned it over in my mind for hours. What it meant that he had known Edmund's name before I walked through the gate. What it meant that he had let me in regardless. What it meant that somewhere between the courtyard and the kitchen table and every conversation after, his reason for keeping me had stopped being about Edmund entirely.

I got up before dawn and went downstairs.

Ghost was already in the kitchen.

He was standing at the counter with his coffee, looking out the small window at the compound in the early dark. He heard me come in but did not turn around immediately. Just said, "Could not sleep either."

"No," I said.

I poured my own coffee and sat at the table and waited.

He turned around eventually and looked at me across the kitchen with those grey green eyes that I was starting to feel I could read more than he intended. He sat down across from me and wrapped both hands around his mug.

"You have something to say," he said.

"You knew who Edmund was before I got here," I said. "You let me in because of him. Because having me here gave you access to his world." I kept my voice even. "I need to know if that is still what this is."

He held my gaze. "No."

"Ghost."

"No," he said again. Firmer. "It stopped being that a long time ago and I have already told you that."

"Then why did you not tell me sooner," I said. "About your connection to Edmund. About your family. About why his name meant something to you." I leaned forward slightly. "I have been here all this time and you knew something about my life that I did not know about yours."

He was quiet for a moment. Not the defensive quiet of someone caught. The honest quiet of someone finding the right words.

"Because telling you meant letting you in further than I had let anyone in a very long time," he said. "And I was not ready."

"And now," I said.

"Now I am tired of not being ready," he said simply.

I sat back and looked at him. At the hard jaw and the tattoos and the grey green eyes that gave nothing away for free and the man underneath all of it who had built something enormous from grief and had been carrying it alone for longer than I had been alive.

"I am not a transaction," I said quietly. "I need you to understand that. Not for Edmund. Not for the club. Not for whatever this gives you access to. Just me."

"I know that," he said.

"Say it like you mean it."

He looked at me directly. "You are not a transaction," he said. "You have not been a transaction since the morning you sat across from me at this table and told me the truth without flinching. I have not known what to do with you since that morning and I have stopped trying to figure it out."

Something in my chest cracked open quietly.

I looked at my coffee. Then back at him. "Okay," I said.

"Okay," he said.

We sat in silence for a moment that felt like something settling between us permanently.

Then I said, "I am still angry that you did not tell me sooner."

"I know," he said. "You have the right to be."

"I am going to be angry about it for a little while longer."

"That is fair," he said.

I almost smiled. He almost did too.

I locked myself in my room for the rest of the morning.

Not because I was falling apart. Because I needed to think without anyone's eyes on me and the compound did not offer much privacy outside of four walls and a closed door.

I sat on the bed and pressed my hand to my stomach and felt the babies moving slowly and thought about everything that had been said and everything that was still unsaid.

Ghost had known Edmund's name.

Ghost had let me in partly because of that connection.

And Ghost had just looked me in the eye and said you have not been a transaction since that first morning.

I believed him. That was the part I was sitting with. Not the anger at being kept from the truth. I was sitting with the fact that despite everything I believed him completely.

Axel knocked on my door around midday.

"You okay in there."

"Yes."

"You sure."

"Axel."

"I am just asking."

"I am sure," I said.

A pause. Then, "Ghost told us what he told you last night. About his family. About Edmund." Another pause. "He has never told anyone that. Not in seven years."

I sat with that.

"I know," I said finally.

"I just thought you should know that he does not do that," Axel said through the door. "Telling people things. It is not how Ghost works. So whatever you think it means, it means more than that."

I heard him walk away down the hall.

I sat on the bed and looked at the door and thought about a man who built a compound out of grief and had not let anyone past the walls of it until a girl in a wedding dress stumbled through his gate.

Rook found me later that afternoon in the corridor.

He stopped when he saw my face. "You talked to Ghost."

"Last night and this morning," I said.

He nodded slowly. "And."

"And I believe him," I said. "I am just working out what to do with that."

Rook looked at me steadily. "You do not have to do anything with it immediately," he said. "It will still be true tomorrow."

I looked at him. At the quiet certainty of him. At the way he said things that were simple and landed like they had weight because he only said things he meant.

"Rook," I said. "Did you know. About Ghost's connection to Edmund."

"Yes," he said.

"For how long."

"Since before you arrived," he said. He held my gaze without apology. "It was not my truth to tell."

I nodded. That was fair. That was exactly fair.

"Is there anything else I do not know," I said.

He thought about it honestly. "Nothing that changes what this is," he said. "Nothing that makes any of it less real."

I believed that too.

That was the thing about Rook. He never said anything he did not mean and he never meant anything he was not prepared to stand behind completely.

"Thank you," I said.

He nodded once and walked away down the corridor.

I stood there for a moment and pressed my hand to my stomach and felt the babies shift and thought about truth and timing and the note Ghost had slipped under her door.

I would have let you in anyway.

She was starting to understand that the compound had not just let her in.

It had been waiting for her without knowing it.

And she had been running toward it without knowing it either.