Page 650 of End Game

I don't need to do that anymore.

I also don’t need to open the door

The door can stay closed, but I can walk away from it.

Chapter forty-eight

Proficiency Bonus

Micah

There is a stuffed dragon in Ronan's basement that has been tied up more times than Cami.

Which is saying something.

Clay bought it for her in the hospital gift shop after the DKA thing—bright green, stupid smile, wings that won't stay flat. It spent maybe two weeks on her dresser before Ronan stole it for rope practice.

Technically, he borrowed it.

Cami has not requested it back.

The dragon has endured chest harnesses, hip harnesses, failed transitions, successful transitions, one particularly ugly attempt at symmetry that Ronan cut apart after staring at it in disgust for six straight minutes, and a night where Dex drew a face on one of the throw pillows and named it Gerald so we'd have “multiple body types.”

Griffin walked downstairs, saw Ronan tying Gerald to the dragon, and turned around without asking a single question.

That's growth.

We've practiced on actual people too.

Mostly Cami. Dex volunteers for anything if you phrase it like a challenge, which has made him both useful and deeply fucking irritating. Griffin even let me put rope on him once, although he spent the entire time insisting it was “for educational purposes,” which nobody believed.

Sometimes practice becomes a sexual scene afterward.

Sometimes it doesn't.

More often than not, we're fully dressed in the basement at ten at night, Ronan arguing with me about line placement while Dex eats chips somewhere he has been explicitly told not to eat chips.

Tonight is different.

Tonight we're back at the studio for our eighth actual lesson, and for the first time, I don't feel like I'm waiting for someone to tell me what my hands are doing wrong.

That doesn't mean they aren't.

It means I know enough now to notice first.

“Too much tension on that side,” Ronan says it at the same moment I feel it beneath my fingers.

I look up.

He's crouched on the other side of Cami, green eyes fixed on the line crossing her torso.

“I know.”

His mouth moves. “Then fix it.”

“I was.”

Cami looks down between us. “You two know I can hear you, right?”