Page 188 of Pucked Around and Found Out

Carnage, who calls me every Tuesday without fail, which I know because his brothers tease him about it relentlessly and he tells them all to go to hell with a level of conviction that makes me feel simultaneously loved and guilty. Carnage, who was there on the nights I couldn't sleep when I was living in the third-floor apartment alone. Who drove to Colorado and sat on the end of my bed at two in the morning because I called, he answered and he never once made me feel like it was an inconvenience. Carnage, who held my hair when the morning sickness had me on my knees and rubbed my back without saying a word, and somehow managed to make the worst nights feel survivable.

Carnage, who loves me. Not the way Xaden loves me, not that sharp, consuming, terrifying thing that we spent most of a year fighting before it finally won. Carnage loves me the way a person loves someone they would genuinely burn the world down for, not out of possession but out of something quieter, deeper and entirely its own.

Xaden knows.

That's the part that surprises me most, that Xaden, who spent so long treating Carnage like a threat, came to understand what he actually is to me. The conversation they had in December is one neither of them has told me the full contents of and I have stopped asking because the fact that Carnage got on a call with me the next morning and said, "Your man isn't a complete fuck up, darlin’" told me everything I needed to know.

He's going to be our baby’s godfather.

That was Xaden's idea and when Carnage found out he was so uncharacteristically speechless that Halo screenshotted his face and sent it to me with the caption you broke him and I saved it and will cherish it until the end of time.

He's flying in for the game tonight. I cannot wait for Carnage to see Xaden in his true element.

And Cas.

Cas, who is Alex's brother. Who is still navigating what that means in the quiet hours. Who has somehow managed to maintain every existing loyalty while building a new one, which is very Caspian Vought and also proof that he is a fundamentally better person than almost everyone around him.

The arrangement works because the people inside it are the right people. That's all it ever comes down to.

I told Xaden once that the past didn't own him.

I think he's finally starting to believe it.

The nursery argument starts, as most arguments in this apartment start, with Caspian being right.

The room we've designated as the nursery is the smallest bedroom, which in this apartment still means it could comfortably house a small family of four, but we are not discussing that. What we are discussing or rather, what Xaden and Cas are discussing at a volume, that I can hear clearly from the kitchen where I’m making tea and actually eating the last of the biscuits and listening to every word, is the flat-pack wardrobe.

“Step seven clearly fucking says⁠—"

“I know what fucking step seven says.”

“Then why is that panel facing the wrong way?”

“It's not facing the wrong way.”

“Xaden. That panel is objectively facing the wrong way. Look at the fucking diagram.”

“I've looked at the stupid diagram.”

“Have you? Because the diagram is very clear and what you've built looks nothing like⁠—”

“Cas, I swear to fucking God⁠—”

“The drawer is upside down.”

Silence.

“That's how I want the drawer, dumbass.”

“That's not⁠—”

“Caspian.”

“Xaden.”

“Don’t—”

“It won't open if it's upside down, Xaden, that's the point of a drawer⁠—”