"That's what collapsed means," James says, offended.
Luca reaches me through the chaos and touches my wrist. His fingers are warm. Too warm against skin that still feels cold. His thumb brushes the inside of my pulse, and his eyes lift to mine at once.
"What happened?" he asks softly.
I want to tell him. For a second, I almost do. The words rise, ugly and tangled, Dorian's scent and Dorian's voice and Luca's name in a stranger's mouth.
Then Samuel yelps from inside the blanket pile, and the whole structure shifts sideways with a muffled thump.
"Dad! I'm trapped but not scared!"
Rosalie releases my leg and runs toward the living room. "I'm coming! I'm the rescue boss!"
James grabs two blocks and a gear. "Don't move the left support."
Maceo closes his eyes for one long second, then stands carefully, stickers flashing under the light.
The moment breaks.
I pull my wrist gently from Luca's hand and force my mouth into something close enough to a smile. "Just the meeting. Victor kept routing things through Luther, Dorian used too many impact words, and I had a headache before coffee. I need a shower."
Luca doesn't move. "That's not all."
"It's enough for right now."
I hate the way his face changes. Not hurt exactly. Worse. Understanding restrained by children in the next room and dinner on the stove and the knowledge that if he pushes me here, I might snap in front of them.
Samuel yells again, this time with more irritation than fear. Rosalie orders Maceo to lift the blanket "like a crane." James insists the crane needs a counterweight. Maceo, to his credit, asks which pillow's been designated as structurally safe.
Luca looks toward them, then back at me. His hand lifts like he might touch my face, but he lets it fall before the kids can see the worry in it too clearly.
"Shower," he says quietly. "Then you come back down."
I nod. "I'll come back down."
Upstairs, I lock the bathroom door and turn on the shower before I've finished taking off my shoes. Steam fills the room quickly, clouding the mirror until my reflection disappears. I strip out of my clothes and leave them in a pile on the floor, then step beneath water hot enough to sting.
I wash my hair first. Then my neck. Then my arms. I use too much soap and stand there while it runs in clean lines down my skin and into the drain. The water takes the scent-neutralizer, the office air, the sharp edge of my own fear. It should take the rest.
It doesn't.
Nothing happened, I tell myself.
Dorian stood too close. He used careful words. He mentioned my medical history like risk management and Luca like public context. He made the room feel smaller than it was. That's all.
I press my forehead to the tile and close my eyes. Downstairs, faintly, I can hear the house moving without me. Children. Mates. Dinner. The life I helped build so no one could ever reach us again.
My mind can make excuses, but my body doesn't believe them.
9
Luca
Two days after Blake comes home smelling like metal and something bitter, I step out of the elevator at Keller Industries and understand why.
The office has never been mine the way it's Blake's. I know the routes. I know which corridor leads to the conference rooms, which lounge the kids prefer, which supply closet Grayson keeps stocked with extra snacks because Samuel considers hunger a structural emergency. I know the floor where Blake builds hisworlds, where his people look up when he walks past because they trust the shape of his mind.
Today, the air feels wrong.
