“Yes!” I snapped. “You’ve mentioned it quite enough times. You don’t want Daniel growing up without a mother, I get it. But if you could-“
“And I won’t have you embarrassing him.”
I paused. “Excuse me?”
He glanced at Lucian pointedly, his eyes hard with loathing, and said nothing.
An incredulous laugh tore out of me. “Oh, that’s fucking rich.” I mimed weighing an invisible object. “The hypocrisy is so thick I could sculpt it into a trophy for your next pack meeting.”
Kieran clenched his jaw, and I saw his free hand clenched into a fist, his knuckles bleaching white.
I scoffed, grabbing Lucian’s hand. “We’re leaving. You two have a nice night.” I pinned a glare on Kieran. “Stay the fuck away from me.”
I shouldered him out of the way and stomped off the roof, pulling Lucian along. To his credit, he let me drag him along as I angrily stomped to the elevator.
I was still vibrating with anger when he turned on the car and merged onto the Hollywood
Freeway.
“Sera,” he started hesitantly, “are you-“
“The nerve of him!” I snapped. “He parades around with my sister-confusing our son, flaunting their relationship-but I’m the embarrassment?”
Lucian rolled down the windows. “Scream if you need to.” A faint smirk. “I wouldn’t mind.”
I sighed, leaning my head slightly out of the window as the wind whipped tendrils of hair across my face, cooling my heated skin.
“I’m sorry you got in the middle of all that.”
He shrugged. “Would you be mad if I said it was slightly entertaining?”
I raised a brow, and he chuckled. His amusement was contagious, and I found myself smiling grudgingly, my anger gradually dissipating.
I closed my eyes, letting the soft smile play on my lips. I didn’t want to think about Kieran or Celeste. I hated how much headspace they’d already taken in my mind.
I was determined to focus on the only things that mattered-my son, my career, and my training.
Celeste and Kieran could very well jump off a skyscraper together.
KIERAN’S POV
My shoulder still burned from where Sera had brushed past me.
The contact had been brief but packed with enough tension that it sparked like a live wire.
I stared at the exit long after she and Lucian had disappeared, a prickly, electric sensation simmering beneath my skin-anger, disbelief. Something else I wasn’t ready to name.
A quiet sigh broke my trance.
I turned to Celeste. “I don’t think I’m much in the mood for sightseeing anymore,” she said.
Her voice was calm, but something edged it-something I couldn’t quite pin down. “Can we go?”
I exhaled slowly, trying to expel the anger and unease lodged in my trachea. That moment with Sera and Lucian had scraped open something jagged inside me.
But Celeste was here, beside me. I needed to focus on that.
I pulled her closer to me and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head gently. “I know it’s not your fault.”
She wound her arms around my waist and gave me a small, hopeful smile. “Why don’t we order takeout from the restaurant? Go back to your place? Just you and me. No surprises, no interruptions.”
More than anything, I wanted to be alone right now, but I swallowed down that feeling and smiled at Celeste. “That sounds perfect.”
Since she’d driven to the bar, Celeste and I drove separately back to my house.
The drive back was short, but my thoughts ran far, looping in restless circles.
It had been just over three weeks since the divorce, and ten years of routine hadn’t dissolved in twenty-one days. I still reached for habits that were no longer mine. Still paused at the door, expecting Daniel’s thundering footsteps rushing to welcome me, Sera’s quiet “Welcome home.” I still half-listened for the soft clink of her cooking in the kitchen, for the faint scent of cinnamon and clove wafting from a candle she’d always kept lit.
But every time I walked into the house now, there was only empty silence.
And tonight, when I stepped inside with Celeste’s hand in mine, that silence echoed louder than ever.
I tried to ignore it.
This would be our home someday-mine and Celeste’s. I had to start laying the foundation.
She slipped her arms around my waist again, pressing her cheek to my chest. “Hmm,” she murmured. “Feels like I’ve barely had a moment with you since I got back.”
I kissed the top of her head, closing my eyes for a beat. “I’m sorry. Things have just been… chaotic.”
That was true. But it wasn’t the whole truth.
I needed to do better. I couldn’t keep letting my past bleed into every moment of the present.
Sera was gone. Celeste was here.
This was my second chance. I couldn’t keep fumbling it.
She tilted her face up, her expression warm and open. “You can make it up to me now.”
This time, when she leaned up to kiss me, I steeled myself and let our lips meet.
She tasted like strawberries and wine, sweet and soft. She pressed closer, wrapping her arms around my neck, her body molding to mine. I hesitated-just for a breath-and then kissed her back.
I braced a hand on her waist, trying to lose myself in the warmth of her touch, the shape of her against me.
But somewhere beneath the kiss, beneath the softness of her skin and the curve of her smile against my mouth, something inside me remained distant. A part of me that couldn’t shake off that feeling of wrongness.
Celeste was my home now, and I…
I exhaled, pulling away.
Her hands hung on my shoulders, blinking up at me in question. “Kie?”
I forced a smile through the hazy fog of emotions in my chest.
I held up the bag of takeout. “We should eat.”
She shook her head, took the box out of my hand, and set it on the console table in the foyer. “I can’t think about food right now,” she whispered as she gripped my shirt and pulled me to her again.
I tried. I really, really tried. I owed Celeste that.
But when her hands slid under my shirt, warm against my skin, a shiver rocked through me. Her body pressed against me, soft and unfamiliar, and something inside me froze.
I pulled back slowly and caught her wrists, gently stilling her. “Celeste…”
She exhaled and looked at me, her expression already shifting. “What now?”
“I can’t,” I said, my voice barely held together. “Not tonight.”
Her face fell. Just slightly at first-a flicker of disbelief. Then, something deeper.
“You can’t…” Hurt. Quiet, raw, and rising fast. “Or you don’t want to?”
“No. It’s not that. I just-” I scrambled for the right words to say, to fix the cracks I could sense opening between us. “I’m not… ready, Celeste. I don’t want to pretend I am and hurt you more because of it.”
She looked at me for a long, tense minute and then let out a quiet scoff and took a step back.
I felt the distance immediately, and I was appalled by my lack of will to close it. Tension lined Celeste’s body. Her back was straight, her shoulders tight, but I could feel her composure slipping.
“You’re. Not. Ready.” She spelled out each word as if it were a code she was trying to decipher.
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