I wasn’t lying when I said it. I'm over the moon.
I’m so happy I can barely stand it.
And I can’t wait–I can’t wait–for what the future holds.
Epilogue
One year later.
Iwake up in my nest.
Not theirs.Mine. The one I built with my own hands over the first three weeks we lived here—layering blankets and pillows and stolen shirts until the whole thing smelled right. Bane's flannel at the base because it holds his scent longest. One of Atlas's undershirts tucked near the headboard. Zero's hoodie balled up in the corner where I press my face when I sleep on my side.
They're not here right now. I can feel them in the house—three threads in my chest, each one a different texture, a different temperature. Atlas is downstairs. Coffee and emails, probably. Bane is somewhere outside—the thread has the loose, easy quality it gets when he's in the yard or the garage. Zero is still asleep. His thread is heavy and still and warm.
Zero sleeps like he fights: totally committed, impossible to interrupt.
I stretch. The morning light comes through the window I picked because it faces east and I wanted to wake up to this exact thing—sun across the sheets, the room warm, the house quiet except for the sounds of three men who love me existing in it.
I don't take pills anymore.
The suppressants are gone. Have been for months. Threw the ones Atlas kept in my dresser drawer in case I wanted them away one morning without ceremony—just opened the bottle over the bathroom trash and let them fall. Zero found the bottle later and kept it. Put it on a shelf in his room like a trophy.
I told him that was weird. He told me everything about us is weird.
He's not wrong.
I pull on a t-shirt and shorts and pad downstairs barefoot.
Atlas is at the kitchen island. Suit pants, no jacket. Sleeves rolled. Reading something on his phone with a cup of coffee in his other hand. He doesn't look up when I come in but his hand reaches out—automatic, not even a thought—and catches my hip as I pass. Pulls me in. I go.
"Morning," he says. Into my hair. His mouth is warm.
"Morning."
His hand slides from my hip to my lower back. Stays there. His thumb traces a slow circle against my spine through the cotton and I feel my body soften into him, the way it always does, the way it's been doing for a year now without any part of me flinching or bracing or running.
"You have class at ten?" he asks.
"Eleven."
"Good." He sets his phone down. His hand moves from my back to the side of my neck. Tilts my face up. Kisses me—slow, coffee-warm, the Atlas kiss that doesn't demand anything but takes everything anyway. I make a sound against his mouth and he smiles into it.
"Go eat," he says. "You're thin."
"I'm not thin."
"You're thin and you skip meals when you're writing."
"I don't skip—"
"You ate a granola bar for dinner last night. That's not dinner, Max."
I steal his coffee on the way to the fridge. He lets me. He always lets me.
∞∞∞
The house is ours. Bought it six months ago—Atlas found it, Bane negotiated it, Zero walked through the front door once and saidthis oneand that was that. Not the estate. Not Richard's name on anything. Four names on a deed, a kitchen with a table big enough for all of us, and the dent in the wall where Zero threw a pan during the Great Risotto Incident in March.
