Page 77 of What We Become

“Oh,” I breathe.

“Yeah,” Milo says smugly. “Therapeutic relief.”

I sink lower, letting the water climb to my collarbones, and a groan escapes me before I can edit it for dignity. The jets find the exact knot between my shoulder blades that’s been there since the wall, and I briefly understand why people marry rich.

“That sound,” Milo says, pointing at me with a slice of pineapple, “is going in the mental archive. Glorious.”

Micah laughs against my shoulder, his arm coming to rest along the rim behind me, not quite touching, offering. I lean back into him anyway, and his fingers curl around my shoulder like he knew I would.

Across the tub, Holden hasn’t said anything in a while. He’s watching me with a look that seems like boredom from far away and arson up close. His eyes drop to where the water laps at my chest, then lift, unhurried, back to my face.

“Ribs?” he asks.

“Happy.”

“Lungs?”

“Also happy.”

“Good.” He reaches for his drink on the edge, and the flex of his arm steals my concentration. It’s possible I drool. “Then enjoy it. This might be the first night in ten days one of us doesn’t hold a mirror to your face while you sleep.”

“You looked at me with a mirror while I slept?”

“It was a small mirror,” Eli says mildly, like confessing to a shared hobby. “Held in front of your mouth at random intervals to make sure you were breathing.”

“Not at all creepy.”

“It was hard to tell sometimes, and we didn’t want to wake you. You needed your sleep to heal,” Micah says into my hair, entirely unashamed.

I should be annoyed. Before Stephen took me, I would’ve performed annoyance, at minimum. Instead my insides go all soft and stupid, because this is what life looks like now—five men who love me so much they check my breathing, and none of them is asking me to be smaller so the fear feels bigger.

Knox’s foot finds mine under the water. Just rests there. Anchoring.

I look over at him. His eyes are closed again, head tipped back, throat exposed to the fairy lights, steam curling off his shoulders like the mountain is exhaling him. He looks like something carved. He also looks like a man who hasn’t unclenched since he pulled me out of a wall, and I make a decision.

“I’m relocating,” I announce.

“Relocation approved,” Milo says. “Please route through my section for a toll.”

I ignore him and wade through the churning water—slow, because the jets keep shoving at my bruised ribs and I refuse to give Holden an excuse to end this. Knox feels me coming before I touch him. His eyes open. His arm lifts from the rim, making space, and I settle over him, my front against all that warm, immovable chest, my thighs bracketing his under the water.

His hand goes under the water behind me, and the jet that’s been shoving at my ribs dies to nothing.

He doesn’t say anything about it. He doesn’t look at Holden either.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi, Fury.”

I roll my hips.

Knox’s gaze drops once. A slow drag down my throat, my chest, the line where my body meets his under the water. Then back to my face.

“You sure, Fury?”

I nod.

His hand slides up my spine, warm even through the heat of the tub, and he leans in just enough that his forehead nearly touches mine, close enough that our breath mixes.