“Did you ever know them?” I ask, barely above a breath.
He hesitates.
“Some,” he admits. “In bits and pieces. Orion made himself known. Loud and arrogant, but good-hearted. He drank too much, fell too hard, and people loved him anyway.”
I huff a laugh. “Sounds familiar.”
Hayden shoots me a look, lips twitching. “Oh, shut up.”
My grin lingers, but the weight of the moment doesn’t lift. Not entirely.
Because I feel it now, hovering over his words, stitched into the seams of his shadows. The things he’s not quite saying. I sit up, wrapping my arms around my knees, and press. “And where are you?”
He’s quiet, long enough that I think he might not answer, and I can’t help wondering where he really goes when he disappears behind those careful words and guarded looks.
“They never looked for me in the stars,” he says at last.
The words land like a stone in my chest. I turn my head, watching the way his jaw tightens as his shadows coil at the edges of his expression. The way his gaze flickers from the heavens above to me.
“People built their myths around kings and heroes,” he says, almost like a confession. “But me? I was the shadow under their feet. No one wanted the underworld in the sky.”
My throat goes tight. What do you say to someone who’s spent lifetimes watching the world honor everyone but him? Someone who’s carved purpose out of loneliness because no one offered him a place to stand?
I think of my garden plans spread across my desk…rows and grids and sketches of what could bloom. A blueprint of hope. Trying to build something living out of what was empty. The same thing Hayden’s been doing inside me without even realizing it.
I shift closer, palm cupping his cheek, exhaling when I watch him lean into my touch. “They have no idea what they missed out on.”
He swallows hard but doesn’t pull away. The stars above us remain unmoving, endless. But down here, beneath them, something shifts. Hayden sighs, low and tired, and tips his head slightly, just enough so that his lips brush against mine. I lace my fingers with his, squeezing tightly, grounding us both.
“Stars wouldn’t shine without darkness to hold them,” I whisper gently. “Maybe darkness isn’t emptiness. Maybe it’s what makes the light matter.”
His lips tremble against mine, and for a moment, the air is thick with words unspoken. So quietly I almost miss it, he whispers, “You…seemethere?”
I smile, thumb grazing the soft line of his cheek. “Among the stars? Always.”
Something unclenches in him. Something small but seismic.
We don’t speak on the walk back, just brush shoulders and breathe the same cold air, carrying a little bit of starlight between us.
Back home though, as we move through the small rituals of the evening…brushing teeth, dimming lamps, the easy silence of two people settling into the same rhythm…I feel the change creep in. All week, I’ve held it back with laughter and movement. With Hayden’s hands, his body, his steady presence…piecing me together into something shiny and new.
But by the time we crawl beneath the sheets, my back to him, the looming date on the calendar sits heavy on my chest, each breath harder to draw as I let the darkness pull me under.
24
Hayden
For the firsttime in my existence, I can breathe.
Not in the shallow, measured way I’ve spent centuries perfecting. But in a way that’s deep and full, like I’m finally living. Like I’ve found something worth holding on to.
These weeks with Levi feel stolen, almost like I’ve outwitted fate, ironically. Like I’ve carved out a piece of this mortal life just for me. I don’t question it. I don’t analyze it. I just let it be.
The past doesn’t feel as heavy. City hall, the Act, all my looping thoughts of loopholes…faded into the background.
Andhim. Levi. He’s made a home in my orbit, and I don’t feel like I’m standing on the outside anymore, watching everything and everyone move around me. I’m in it. With him.
I think of his laugh constantly. His ridiculous form of storytelling and the way he smells like sun-warmed florals and the faintest trace of coffee. The whimper when I kiss his neck.
