Page 44 of Burned

That might be what undoes me most.

He is watching us like this matters. Like the entire room, every rack and box and ridiculously expensive bottle, is not about wealth or control or showing off.

It is about making us feel loved. Cherished.

Spoiled.

And I’ll never be able to pay him back.

Lucian’s eyes find mine. “You three have made my life so full. And I want you all to have everything I can give you.”

My throat tightens.

Lucian’s voice softens. “You three deserve all of this and more.”

Oh.

Oh, that is unfair.

I blink back tears. We are given all this and did nothing to earn it other than come into his life as our jumbled, hot-mess selves.

Cass makes a choking sound beside me and immediately turns it into a cough.

Blaze, always one to lighten the mood, shouts, “Hear, hear!”

The other men join in.

One of the women standing near the clothing racks steps forward. She is elegant, professional, and entirely unbothered by the armed men positioned around a pop-up boutique in a Scottish safe house.

“Everything has been selected in your sizes,” she says warmly. “We brought additional options, of course. Tailors are on standby. Anything you like can be adjusted. Anything you don’t like goes back. No pressure.”

Cass stares at her. “Our sizes?”

The woman smiles. “Yes.”

Cass looks at me.

I look at Lucian.

He does not apologize.

Of course he doesn’t.

“The scents?” I ask because my brain has apparently chosen the strangest detail to survive on.

Lucian’s mouth curves faintly. “Cass likes citrus and vanilla. You like lavender when you think you don’t, and vanilla when it isn’t too sweet.”

I blink.

He adds, “Ryan likes the bubblegum bath bubbles, which I have decided to tolerate.”

Ryan clutches a Spider-Man pillowcase to his chest. “This smells like new.”

“That’s a great smell, isn’t it, Ryan?” Cass says softly with a smile, remembering our childhood of hand-me-downs.

“Even better than bubblegum.” He buries his face in it.

I press my fingers to my lips like it will stop the tears.