"So we have tomorrow," Atlas says. Quiet. His hand still in my hair. "All day. No one to hear us. No one to perform for."
"A whole day," Zero murmurs. His lips press against my shoulder. His fingers curl, slow, and my breath catches against Bane's chest. "You hear that, baby? I've got you for a whole day. All three of us do. No hands over your mouth. No locked doors. Just you and us and this bed."
"We should eat at some point," Bane says.
"I'll feed him in bed."
"That's not—"
"Grapes. Cheese. Those little crackers Margot keeps in the pantry. I'll hand-feed him between rounds."
"Between rounds." Bane's chest moves under my cheek. A laugh he's trying to hold. "You're assuming there are rounds."
"Bane." Zero's voice drops. His fingers press deeper. My thigh tightens around Bane's hips where I’m still half hooked around him. "There are always rounds."
Atlas reaches over me and flicks Zero's ear. "Let him rest."
"He doesn't want to rest. Do you, baby?"
I don't answer. My eyes are half-closed against Bane's chest. Zero's fingers are moving in the slowest rhythm imaginable—barely there, barely anything, just enough to remind my body that he's inside me. Bane's heartbeat is steady under my cheek. Atlas's hand is in my hair.
I don't want to rest. I don't want to sleep. I don't want tomorrow to come or the day after tomorrow when Margot's car pulls into the driveway and the walls go back up and the hands go back over my mouth.
I wantthis. Right here. The four of us wrecked and tangled and talking about crackers and ruined sheets in a room that smells like everything we are to each other.
"Stay awake with me," I say. To all of them. To no one in particular.
Zero's fingers go still inside me. Bane's hand pauses on my neck. Atlas's hand stops in my hair.
"Yeah," Atlas says. Soft. "Okay, sweetheart. We'll stay up."
"All night?" Zero asks.
"All night," I say.
Zero presses his mouth to my shoulder. Bane's hand resumes on my neck. Atlas's fingers start moving through my hair again.
Nobody sleeps.
Chapter 13
Twenty four hours later…
I'm dreaming. I know I'm dreaming because the cell is wrong.
The proportions are off—ceiling too low, walls too close, the concrete sweating in a way I don't remember. The cot is there. The drain in the floor. The camera in the corner with its dead red eye. But the light is different. Yellower. Warmer. The light from a kitchen I haven't stood in since I was eleven years old.
I'm sitting on the cot with my knees pulled up and my arms around them and I know what's coming because my body knows before my brain does—the tightening in my chest, the way my skin goes cold, the specific quality of silence that comes right before a door opens.
The lock on the massive door buzzes and clicks.
The door swings inward. Slow. The way the facility doors opened—mechanical, hydraulic, the hiss of the seal releasing.
But it's not a guard.
It's not Talbot's men in their black shirts with their clipboards and their latex gloves.
It's Linda.
