Page 114 of Thexan

I was here.

And for the first time in my existence, remaining felt less like a position to hold and more like a home being built one decision at a time.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Brynn

By the next afternoon, the room behind the infirmary looked smaller than it ever had.

It had always been small, of course. I knew that. I had lived in it long enough to know every narrow path between the bed and the table, every uneven floorboard, every place where the wall had been patched after winter damp worked its way through old seams. It had never bothered me before because I had never expected much from it. The room had been a place to sleep, to change clothes, to sit for a few minutes with a cup of tea if no one needed me badly enough to interrupt. It had been practical, private enough, and close to the infirmary, which had mattered more than comfort.

Now Thexan stood in the middle of it, studying the space with the same serious attention he gave damaged fence lines and hostile terrain, and suddenly every limitation of the room seemed impossible to ignore.

The bed was too narrow.

The table took up too much of the wall.

The storage trunk blocked the only corner that might have held another shelf.

And Thexan, who had faced a kill squad without hesitation, looked as if he were calculating whether turning too quickly would break something essential.

I leaned against the doorframe and watched him longer than I needed to, partly to see what he would decide and partly because the sight of him standing there still tugged at something tender in my chest.

Nearly a month had passed since I found him bleeding at my door. Now he belonged in the room, because I had already adjusted to the idea of him in it. That was the problem. My life had made space for him faster than the walls had.

“This room wasn’t built for two people,” I said.

His gaze moved from the window to the bed, then to the table, then finally to me. “No.”

I waited.

He surveyed the room once more, already treating its limitations as a problem with an answer. “Then we alter it.”

I should have expected that answer. It was exactly what Thexan would say, practical and direct, without ceremony or drama. Still, the words moved through me more deeply than I was prepared for, because he wasn’t only talking about moving furniture or reinforcing a wall. He was saying he expected to be here long enough for the room to change around us.

I pushed away from the doorframe and stepped inside. “You make that sound simple.”

“It is not simple,” he said. “The wall behind the bed is load-bearing. The adjoining classroom space may be partially reclaimed, and we can keep the storage room intact. The bed requires replacement or modification, and the table should be moved closer to the window to improve access.”

I stared at him.

“You already planned it.”

“I assessed available options.”

“That means you already planned it.”

“Yes.”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t keep the smile from pulling at my mouth. “You’ve been in here just over a month.”

“The inadequacy of the space was apparent much sooner.”

“Of course it was.”

He turned his attention back to me. “Does my assessment displease you?”

The question sobered me a little, because underneath the precision I heard what he was really asking. He was not only evaluating the room. He was asking whether he had overstepped, whether making plans for shared space assumed too much too quickly after everything we had only just begun to understand.