I woke up tangled in Adrian’s arms, and for the first time since everything between us had shifted, it didn’t feel like some fragile arrangement we were tiptoeing around. It felt real. His skin was warm against mine, his chest rising steady under my cheek. Not careful. Not rehearsed. Just… us.
Adrian was already awake, his fingers tracing lazy little shapes on my shoulder like he’d been doing it forever. We’d spent most of the night talking, really talking. About Brennan, about our fathers, about how revenge had thrown us together and somehow love had kept us there.
“What time is it?” I mumbled, my voice muffled against him.
“Early,” he said, that thoughtful weight already in his tone. “I’ve been thinking.”
Of course he had.
“About what?”
“About how to find Charles Brennan without hi
