Chapter8

Celestia's POV

Six in the morning.

Winter dawn seeped through the broken blinds, thin and blue, touching the floorboards, the couch, the clothes we had abandoned somewhere between midnight and surrender.

I woke first.

For several seconds, I didn't move.

Lysander was asleep beside me, one arm wrapped loosely around my waist, his face tucked close to my shoulder. His breathing was slow and even. Warm. Real. Too real.

My body remembered before my mind finished catching up.

His mouth on mine. His hands shaking when he asked, again and again, if I was sure. The way he had gone still when I touched his face and said yes. The way he had looked at me after, stunned and almost afraid, like he couldn't believe I had stayed.

Heat rushed up my neck.

I slept with him.

Not Damien. Not a lie I had convinced myself was love because I was starving.

Lysander.

The man who had broken down in my arms like a terrified child. The man who had come back to himself hours later, horrified, ashamed, and gentle enough to keep asking for permission even when we were both falling apart.

My throat tightened.

His trauma was real. I knew that. I had held him through it. I had heard his voice turn small and lost. I had felt his hands clutch at me like I was the last safe thing in a burning world.

And later, when he was himself again, I had let him touch me.

No. Not let.

I had wanted him.

That was the dangerous part.

Lysander stirred.

His lashes fluttered, then his eyes opened, unfocused gray slowly sharpening. For one suspended second, he looked half asleep and unguarded.

Then memory arrived.

His gaze dropped to my bare shoulder. To the sheet twisted around us. To his hand resting against my waist.

His entire face went red.

I blinked.

Lysander Thornfield, the man who had kissed me like he wanted to crawl inside my ribcage and live there, was blushing.

"Morning," I said, because apparently my survival instincts had left the building.

His hand jerked back like he'd touched fire. "I... God. Sorry."

I pulled the sheet higher, suddenly aware of every inch of skin. "For sleeping?"

"For staring." He looked away so fast it was almost funny. "For waking up like this. For... everything. Not because I regret it. I don't. I absolutely don't. I just..."

He stopped, jaw tightening.

The awkwardness should have been ridiculous. Instead, it cracked something open in me.

"You asked," I said quietly.

His eyes flicked back to mine.

"Last night. After you came back to yourself. You asked if I was sure. More than once."

"I remember." His voice was low. Rough. "I remember all of it."

That sent another wave of heat through me.

He sat up slowly, keeping the sheet around his hips, giving me space without making a performance of it. His hair was messy, his mouth a little swollen, and there was a vulnerability in his posture that made my chest ache.

"Celestia," he said, careful with my name, "about last night..."

My muscles tightened on instinct.

Here it came. The morning-after retreat. The polite apology. The adult version of this was a mistake.

I knew the script. Damien had written entire seasons of it.

Lysander noticed. Of course he did. His expression changed, softening with alarm.

"No," he said immediately. "Whatever you're thinking, no."

"You don't know what I'm thinking."

"I know that look." He reached for me, then stopped himself before touching. "Like you're already bracing for impact."

That was too close to the truth.

I looked away. "I don't brace. I prepare."

A faint, pained smile touched his mouth. "Of course you do."

Silence settled between us, not empty, but full. The kind of silence where every breath counted.

He got out of bed and pulled on his sweatpants, moving with stiff, careful modesty that made my own embarrassment worse. Then he picked up my sweater from the floor and handed it to me without looking at my body.

"Here."

"Thank you."

I dressed under the sheet with all the dignity of a wounded raccoon.

When I finally stood, he was by the tiny kitchen counter, making coffee with the seriousness of a man defusing a bomb. The apartment looked worse in morning light. Peeling paint. A chipped mug. A bicycle helmet on a chair. Too ordinary. Too intimate.

He handed me coffee.

Our fingers brushed.

Both of us froze.

Then we both looked away.

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Small. Rusted from disuse.

His head snapped toward me, eyes widening like I'd handed him a miracle.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing." His voice went softer. "I just haven't heard you laugh before."

The warmth in his face was dangerous. It made me want to step closer. It made me want to believe in simple things. Coffee. Morning light. A man looking at me like I hadn't been ruined by everything I'd survived.

I took a sip to hide the shaking in my hands.

He watched me for another second, then set his mug down.

"Celestia."

The air changed.

Not heavy. Not sexual.

Serious.

I looked at him.

He took one step closer, then another, stopping just far enough away that I could choose.

"I know this is fast," he said. "I know we barely make sense on paper. We met in a storm, disappeared, found each other again, and somehow ended up sharing the same nightmare from fourteen years ago."

My throat tightened.

"But last night wasn't casual for me." His hands curled at his sides, like he wanted to reach for me and was forcing himself not to. "You were there when I broke. You stayed. Then when I came back, you still looked at me like I was someone worth touching."

"Lysander..."

"I don't want to pretend this is nothing." His voice roughened. "I don't want to wake up beside you and act like I can go back to being a stranger."

My pulse started climbing.

"I want to take you out properly. I want to learn what coffee you actually like, because you clearly hate this one. I want to know what makes you laugh when you're not trying to hide it. I want to be the person you call when the world goes sharp."

My chest hurt.

Too much. Too fast. Too beautiful.

"And I know you don't trust easily," he said. "I won't ask for more than you can give. But I want to ask anyway."

He swallowed.

"Would you let me be yours?"

The room went silent.

Not will you be mine.

Not possession. Not claim.

Would you let me be yours?

The answer rose in me with terrifying speed.

Yes.

God help me, yes.

I opened my mouth.

---

BANG BANG BANG.

The knock slammed through the apartment.

Lysander's face changed.

Not fear. Not confusion.

Recognition.

"Mr. Thornfield!" a man's voice called from the hallway. "Sir, open the door. It's urgent."

My blood chilled.

Thornfield.

Lysander went still.

The man outside kept talking, lower now but frantic. "The board is demanding confirmation you're alive. Media picked up the missing report. Investors are dumping positions. We've lost seventy-two billion in market cap."

Market cap.

Board.

Investors.

I looked at Lysander.

The shabby apartment rearranged itself in my mind. The expensive watch. The controlled posture. The erased phone number. The way danger moved around him like it recognized an owner.

"Thornfield Industries?" My voice came out calm. Too calm. "That Thornfield?"

His face drained of color. "Celestia, I can explain."

My stomach dropped.

I can explain.

Damien had said that too.

I stepped back.

"Are you the Thornfield heir?"

He closed his eyes for half a second.

Then nodded.

A clean crack opened in my chest.

I didn't scream. I didn't slap him. I didn't call his trauma fake, because it wasn't. I knew what I had held last night. That pain had been real.

But this was real too.

The lie.

"How much of you did I actually meet?" I asked.

His eyes flew open. "All of me. Celestia, the name was hidden, not me."

"That's a convenient distinction."

"Someone tried to kill me. My parents' deaths weren't an accident. I went underground to investigate. I couldn't tell anyone."

"You could sleep with me."

The words landed hard.

He flinched.

I hated myself for saying it. I hated him for making it true.

"Did you know who I was?" I asked. "Before last night. Did you know I was an Ashford?"

"What?" His shock was immediate. "No. I swear to God, no. You're an Ashford?"

I searched his face.

I wanted to believe him so badly it felt like weakness.

"The episode was real," I said, voice shaking now. "Your fear was real. I know that. But you still lied about your life."

"Yes." Tears gathered in his eyes. "I did. And I'm sorry. But what I feel for you is real."

The man outside knocked again. "Sir!"

I grabbed my coat.

"Celestia, please." Lysander stepped toward me. "Give me one chance."

"I can't." My voice broke. "Not today. Not after this."

"Don't leave like this."

"If I stay, I'll forgive you before I understand what I'm forgiving."

He stopped.

That hurt him. I saw it.

Good.

No. Not good.

Necessary.

I walked to the door.

"Celestia," he said behind me, ruined. "What I asked you before... I meant it."

My hand closed around the knob.

"I know," I whispered. "That's what makes this worse."

Then I left.

The elevator doors closed before the first sob escaped.

I pressed both hands over my mouth and slid down the wall.

His trauma was real.

His touch was real.

But so was the lie.

And I no longer knew how to tell the difference before it destroyed me.