First night. His place. Our beginning.
Epilogue
Devin
Four months later.
The house smells like sawdust and fresh paint and oak. Dave's crew finished yesterday. The last coat of stain on the bookshelves, the last trim piece around the reading nook window, the final inspection that Knox stood through with his arms crossed and his alpha attention on every joint and seam until Dave said "it's good, Knox, it's really good" and Knox nodded once and said "okay."
Five houses on five acres. Built in a circle around a fire pit that doesn't have string lights yet because Robin is "waiting for the right ones" and nobody argues with Robin about aesthetics.
I'm standing in house five. Alone.
Silas is at the bar. I asked him to give me an hour. He didn't ask why. He just kissed me and said "take your time" and went, because he's Silas and he understands that some things need to happen in silence.
The front door opens into the living room. Open floor plan. Kitchen on the right, living area on the left, the island that Silas asked for because he watched me cook at the bar and decided I needed counter space. The kitchen has a real stove. Four burners. A window above the sink that looks out at the fire pit and beyond it, the other four houses.
I can see Vaughn and Robin's house from here. The one with the wraparound porch that Robin insisted on because "porches are where conversations happen." Ash and Jason's next to it, the kitchen twice the size of any other room because Jasondesigned it himself and Jason's relationship with kitchen space is personal. Knox and Toby's at the center. The alpha's house, the anchor. Ezra and Nico's on the far side, clean lines, efficient layout, Nico's influence visible in every practical decision.
And this one. Ours. The one with the bookshelves.
I walk to the second bedroom.
The door is open. The room is empty. And the walls —
The shelves are empty, oak, floor to ceiling, running the full length of both walls. Dave's crew built them to Silas's specifications and Silas's specifications were meticulous: adjustable shelf pins, eight feet tall, the wood stained dark enough to look like it's been here forever. The room smells like oak and possibility.
The reading nook is under the window. The east-facing window. The one that looks toward the library. You can't see it from here, not really, but Silas knows the direction and that's what matters. The window seat is wide. Wide enough for two people, because I asked and he'd already planned for it. Storage underneath. A cushion that is soft gray, the color of morning fog, and impossibly comfortable.
I sit in the reading nook. Pull my knees up. Look out the east-facing window at the February afternoon. Cold, bright, the trees bare, the sky the kind of blue that hurts.
My backpack is on the floor beside me. Not the emergency bag, not the everything-I-own bag. Just a bag of books. The ones from the apartment, the ones from Silas's room, the ones Toby and Robin and Margaret kept giving me until the collection outgrew every surface I put it on.
I unzip it. Take out the first book.Piranesi. The copy with Toby's sticky notes still in it, the ones from book club, the argument that changed how I thought about found homes and chosen beauty.
I put it on the shelf. Eye level. Left wall.
The second book.The Name of the Wind. Silas's copy. The one we've been arguing about for months. Kvothe is still a disaster. Silas still disagrees. The argument will outlast us both.
I put it next toPiranesi.
The third. The fourth. The fifth. One by one, I unpack the books and put them on the shelves and the oak holds them the way oak holds everything. Solidly, permanently, without complaint.
The shelf fills. Slowly. Not even close to full. Two bags of books don't fill floor-to-ceiling shelves on two walls. But it's a start. The beginning of a collection that will grow the way everything in my life has grown for the past four months: steadily, in a place where growing is allowed.
I'm on the twelfth book when I hear the front door open.
Footsteps. The weight of him. Not heavy, just present. The way Silas moves through a space, like he's reading it.
He appears in the doorway of the second bedroom. Leans against the frame. Looks at me in the reading nook with a book in my hand and twelve books on the shelf and two hundred empty spaces waiting to be filled.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
"How's the oak?"
"It's perfect." I run my hand along the shelf beside me. The grain is smooth under my fingers, dark, warm. "You were right. It ages well."