Chapter 14
The comments did come back eventually.
Of course they did.
Usually at the worst possible times.
Like the afternoon Adrian decided, with all the seriousness of a man about to negotiate national peace, that he wanted to learn how to cook.
This should have alarmed me more than it did.
But he looked so determined, and Rowan was in one of his rare generous moods, so the two of them ended up side by side in my kitchen.
It lasted six minutes.
Rowan criticized Adrian’s knife grip.
Adrian said at least he did not flirt with vegetables.
Rowan said the fish smell was affecting his concentration.
Adrian asked if foxes naturally talked this much or if Rowan was uniquely cursed.
By the time I intervened, the comments were already hysterical.
Domestic battlefield.
Ellie, blink twice if you need rescue.
I did not need rescue.
I needed stronger nerves.
Still, watching them bicker over my stove while trying, in their own very different ways, to build a life that fit around me… it did something warm and strange to my chest.
Adrian eventually learned three dishes.
All seafood.
He acted as if this made him a culinary genius.
Rowan rolled his eyes so often I thought they might get stuck.
And I ate every bite.
On another night, when freezing rain tapped softly against the windows, Adrian asked in a low voice if I ever would have sent him back for real.
The question sat heavily between us.
I thought about lying.
I did not.
“Yes,” I said. “I would have. Because I thought you hated me.”
He stared at the blankets for a long time.
Then: “I was terrified.”
There was no pride in it.
No dramatics.
Just truth.
“I know,” I said.
He looked up.
“And if I had gone?”
I reached out and brushed damp hair off his forehead.
“Then I would have regretted it for the rest of my life.”
His eyes went red at once.
From the other side of me, Rowan groaned. “Please. If he starts crying in bed, I’m sleeping in the kitchen.”
A pearl hit the pillow.
Then another.
I burst out laughing.
Adrian glared at Rowan through watery eyes. Rowan glared back. Then, maybe because the rain made everything softer, maybe because we had all come too far to pretend we were anything but ridiculous together, Rowan leaned over and pressed a kiss to Adrian’s temple.
Adrian froze so completely it was almost artistic.
“There,” Rowan muttered. “Stop leaking on my bedding.”
The comments absolutely lost their minds.
The fox did not just do that.
Character development everywhere.
Adrian touched the place Rowan had kissed like he did not know what to do with it.
Then, very quietly, he said, “Your timing is terrible.”
Rowan smirked. “And yet effective.”
It was not friendship.
Not exactly.
But maybe that was okay too.
Some bonds were stranger than simple names allowed.