Aria’s POV
Three days under lockdown, and the penthouse had started to feel like a very beautiful cage.
I understood the necessity — every ti that photograph flashed through my mind, the lobby, the shadow, the deliberate see what I can do of it — the lockdown settled around us like armor, necessary and suffocating in equal asure. Reyes’s team was good, the building was secure, and there were layers between Marcus and Noah that I could count and trust. But Noah was four years old, and he wanted to go to the park.
"Mama." He appeared at my elbow for the third ti that morning while I tried to answer emails, his expression carrying the particular gravity of a child who felt a deep injustice had been done to him. "When can we go outside?"
"Soon, baby." The sa answer I’d given him yesterday and the day before.
"You keep saying soon." He leaned his whole small weight against my arm. "Soon was yesterday. And the day before yesterday. That’s a lot of soons."
"It is," I agreed, pulling him onto my lap despite the open laptop. "You’re very good at counting soons."
"I know." He accepted this as plain fact. "Daddy said soon too. I think you’re both saying it because you don’t want to say no."
I pressed my face into his curls so he couldn’t see my expression. "Smart kid."
"Can Theo co here instead?" he asked, sitting up to look at .
"Not right now, bug."
"Why not?"
"Because we’re just being a bit careful at the mont." I kept my voice light, the way Damien and I had agreed — matter-of-fact, no fear in it, no detail that would make him feel the walls closing in. "It won’t be forever. Just for now."
Noah tilted his head, studying the way he sotis did, with those ice-blue eyes that saw too much. "Is it because of the bad man?"
I went still. He looked up at , serious and watchful in that way he had sotis — too old for his face, too knowing — and I reminded myself that this was a child who had absorbed more than he should have, who paid attention to adult voices and body language and the particular quality of silence that ant sothing was wrong.
"Why do you ask that?" I said carefully.
"I heard Daddy on the phone." He said it simply, without guilt. "He said ’Marcus’ and ’not getting near my son’ and then he saw and made a face and said ’go find your dinosaurs.’ But I already had my dinosaurs."
I exhaled slowly. "You shouldn’t listen to adult conversations, baby."
"I wasn’t listening on purpose," he said, with the absolute conviction of a child who had reasoned this through. "My ears just heard."
He was quiet for a mont, turning sothing over in his mind the way he did when he was working up to the real question, and then he looked at with those serious eyes and asked, "Is it the man who took away? From you and Daddy?"
My chest tightened, but I kept my face steady. "Yes, baby," I said softly. "It is."
He nodded slowly, like that answer had confird sothing he’d already half-known, and for a mont he just sat there processing it with a gravity that broke my heart a little. "But you found last ti," he said finally.
"We did," I said. "We always will."
"Okay." He seed to settle at that, sothing releasing in his small shoulders. "So that’s why we’re being careful."
"That’s exactly why." I smoothed a curl back from his forehead. "There are a lot of good people making sure we’re safe — that’s what the new people at the door are for."
He thought about this seriously. "Like guards?"
"Sort of like guards."
"Like in Dragon Kingdom." He brightened considerably. "The king always has guards when there’s a quest happening. Are we on a quest?"
"We are absolutely on a quest," I said, grateful for the opening.
"What’s our quest?" he asked, leaning forward with real interest.
"Staying safe and being together." I squeezed him tight. "Very brave, very important quest work."
He seed to find this satisfactory and slid off my lap with the rcurial ease of a child who could pivot from existential to cheerful in under ten seconds. "I’m going to tell my dinosaurs we’re on a quest," he announced, already halfway down the hall.
I sat there after he’d gone with my hands in my lap and the familiar weight of motherhood pressing on my sternum — the particular heaviness of threading the needle between protection and truth, every single day.
The fight started at seven that evening, in the kitchen, over sothing almost absurdly small. Damien had reorganized the pantry.
It sounds ridiculous, and even in the middle of it so detached part of my brain was watching us both and thinking: this is not about the pantry. But the reorganization had moved the coffee I liked to a shelf I couldn’t easily reach, and I’d been running on four hours of fractured sleep for three nights, and when I asked him why he’d moved things without telling , the tension that had been building between us like pressure behind glass simply cracked.
"Because it made more sense," he said, too controlled, which was sohow worse than if he’d just snapped. "The coffee was blocking things we use every day. It made the whole system inefficient."
"It was where I put it." I crossed my arms. "I know where to find things when they’re where I put them."
"I was trying to help."
"You were controlling," I said, and watched the word land harder than I’d intended.
He set down the dish he’d been drying. "Excuse ?"
"You reorganized the space without asking ." I kept my voice low, conscious of Noah two rooms away. "I live here too, Damien. My things are here. You don’t just move everything because you’ve decided your system is better"
"My system is better," he said flatly. "The old arrangent made no logical sense."
"It made sense to ."
"Because you’re used to it, not because it’s correct."
"There is no correct for where the coffee lives!" My voice climbed before I caught it. "This is what you do — you decide sothing is optimal and you implent it and you don’t ask because asking feels inefficient to you."
"I was trying to make things easier." Sothing shifted in his jaw, a flicker of hurt underneath the defense. "You’ve been exhausted for three days. I wondered if the kitchen ran more smoothly."
"I don’t need you to fix the kitchen." I pressed my palms flat on the counter. "I need you to ask before you change things in a space we share. I need to feel like decisions are made together, not handed to already."
"I’m not my father," Damien said finally, quietly. "When I try to manage things, I’m not trying to control you."
"I know you’re not your father." I softened despite myself. "But when you make decisions about our shared space without talking to , even with good intentions" I searched for the right word. "It feels like I’m a guest in my own life again. Like things are happening around instead of with ."
He went very still. I watched the defensiveness drain out of his posture as the words settled, and I moved around the island and closed the distance between us. "We have to actually be partners, Damien. Not just call ourselves partners. That ans asking — even about the coffee, especially when things are stressful, because stress is when the old habits co back for both of us."
He looked at the counter for a long mont, then without ceremony reached out and pulled against him, his arms wrapping around and his chin dropping to my hair. "We’re doing this wrong," he said.
"We’re doing it exhausted," I corrected into his chest. "There’s a difference."
"Are we okay?"
"We’re always okay." I tilted my head to look at him. "We’re just also tired and scared and stuck inside and taking it out on the coffee arrangent."
He made a sound that was almost a laugh, and his arms tightened around . "I’m scared too," he said. "In case that wasn’t obvious."
"It’s obvious." I touched his face. "But being scared together is still better than anything else. We’re strongest when we’re not trying to manage each other, when we just—" I smoothed my thumb along his jaw. "When we just are."
He turned his head and pressed his lips to my palm, slow and deliberate. "I love you," he said.
"I love you too." I stretched up and kissed him softly, his hands sliding to my waist the way they always found their way there. "Now show the pantry system. Not so you can implent it. So we can decide together."
He pulled back and looked at with sothing caught between exasperation and helpless affection. "You are the most stubborn woman I have ever t."
"You’re marrying ."
"Enthusiastically," he said, and kissed once more before reaching past to open the pantry door. "Okay. The coffee was blocking the olive oil, which we use more frequently, and the system from the second shelf down was arranged by weight rather than use frequency, which"
"You made a whole system."
"I always make a system," he said, as though this were obvious.
"I know." I leaned against the counter and looked at him — this brilliant, impossible, earnest man with his pantry logic and his arms that always found — and felt three days of locked-in tension dissolve into sothing warr, sothing that was just us. "Okay. Show so we can adjust it."
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