He smiles, and it's the one I saw for the first time in that bungalow at three in the morning — the unguarded one, the one that has nothing behind it because it doesn't need anything. It isn't hiding. "Remind me daily," he says. "Hourly. I can take it."
Viv makes a sound that is equal parts touched and disgusted.
Grayson raises his glass again. "To Liam and Star," he says, and the edge in his voice is gone — just that. Just what he means. The group lifts with him.
The toast is brief and the drinking is not. The ocean continues regardless. Waves push in at the shoreline and drag back over the sand with the patient, indifferent sound of something that was here before any of us and will be long after. A torch near the water sputters as the sea breeze passes through it, flaring bright for a second then settling.
Roan keeps my hand. Not possessively — his thumb just rests against the inside of my wrist, over the pulse point, and stays. I can feel my own heartbeat against his hand.
Star's laughter rises above the ambient noise, and Liam's face in the torchlight is a man who has stopped trying to manage what he feels. Jaleesa tips her head against Hunter's shoulder, and he doesn't move — just lets her. Grayson pulls his phone out, looks at it, then pockets it with a private smile that means Lila sent something about Jas.
The sun is gone. The sky above the water has gone to deep blue at the top and a thin copper line at the seam, and the stars are starting.
Roan turns to look at me sideways. There's still something loose in his face, the aftermath of having said something real in public, the faint residue of exposure. I know that look now. I know what it costs him.
I lean my head against his shoulder. He stiffens for exactly one second — reflex — then exhales and puts his mouth against my hair.
The copper line on the horizon narrows to nothing. The ocean keeps moving.
The future feels like a door left open on purpose.
