Chapter 141: Save It for When It’s Actually Me

Chapter 141: Chapter 141: Save It for When It’s Actually Me

I stood in the private room looking at the exit.

"You can come in now, you know."

Ten seconds passed.

Then Gianna walked in, hands folded, face holding none of the usual anger, only a tight, assessing calm that was somehow worse.

"You left early and asked me to talk with her," he said.

"You could’ve stayed."

"If I stayed, she wouldn’t have opened up like that. With you"

I met her eyes.

"She trusts you more than you know, but some things she only says when the room is smaller."

"Maybe..."

I moved closer.

"I talked it out. Everything went fine."

"Mm."

"What is it?"

"Nothing."

I kissed her forehead.

"Liar."

"Seriously?"

I kissed her lips, brief and sure.

"Yes. What? Were you sad she kissed me?"

"I’m long used to seeing you kiss someone else."

Gianna’s voice stayed even.

"I’m just shocked."

That hit a nerve I didn’t know was exposed.

I pulled back enough to look at her properly.

"What do you mean, shocked?"

"That you refused her."

"Excuse me?"

My eyebrows went up.

"What do you think about your man? That I’d sleep with anyone just because I was offered?"

"Well."

A slight tilt of her head.

"I did hear when we both want, which you said."

I turned half away, then back.

"Those were comforting words."

"Is it, now?"

"Yes."

"Liar."

Gianna stepped in and kissed me, longer than the forehead, not a claim for an audience, just contact with weight behind it.

When she eased off, her eyes stayed on mine.

"Were you considering it?"

"No."

"Not for a second?"

"Not even for a second."

The honesty came easier than pride.

"The whole time I kept thinking I hadn’t even slept with you. How would I move to her? Especially when Rei was using me as an escape."

Gianna stared at my face.

"You think about fucking me while consoling her?"

"My body works in strange ways."

A beat.

"You really... are a pervert."

She walked toward the door, ponytail bouncing, bag already on her shoulder like the conversation had reached its scheduled end.

I grabbed my own bag and caught up, sliding an arm over her shoulders and pulling her in against my side as we hit the corridor.

"Oh, come on. You like me as a pervert, right?"

"No."

"You do."

"I like you functional," she said, but she didn’t shrug the arm off.

"I like you refusing a crisis spiral on a mat because you still know whose name is primary. That’s not the same as liking the part of your brain that schedules sex mid-consolation."

"It’s one brain. Package deal."

"Unfortunately."

We walked a stretch of guild hallway in that charged quiet, public enough that neither of us turned it into another sealed-room disaster, private enough that her shoulder stayed under my arm.

"How long were you outside?" I asked.

"Long enough."

"You heard the refusal."

"I heard enough to know you didn’t take the easy door."

Gianna’s jaw worked once.

"Rei’s mother is already treating me like removable arithmetic. If you’d slept with Rei tonight to fix her pride, I wouldn’t have left the slate, but I would have stopped believing my we three meant anything but logistics."

I squeezed her shoulder lightly.

"It isn’t only logistics."

"I know. That’s why the shock. I keep waiting for the class to make you simpler. You keep choosing the annoying version."

"Annoying is my brand."

"Don’t get cute in a corridor, Revien."

"Separate homes tonight?"

"Separate homes."

She glanced up at me.

"Board week. Hooks. Clear heads. You already used your emotional budget for the evening on Lawless."

"Cruel."

"Accurate."

At the split toward residential lifts, she finally stepped out from under my arm, then fixed a loose fold of my collar with two fingers like the gesture cost her nothing.

"Tell Rei, if she asks, that I know," Gianna said.

"I don’t need a performance apology. I need her on time tomorrow and not bleeding herself empty in ghost hours."

"I’ll tell her."

"And Revien."

"...Yeah?"

"Next time you think about sleeping with me while someone else is falling apart on your chest, save it for when it’s actually me on your chest."

I smiled despite myself.

"Copy."

She turned, but I called out quickly.

"You know..."

"Mm?"

"As long as I am here, Cecilia can’t do anything to you."

Her eyes widened slightly.

"Now you wanna be cool?"

"Yes."

I looked into her eyes.

"No one can remove you from anything."

She nodded once.

"Why do you think I am so daring recently?"

Gia left first.

I stood a second longer in the corridor, still tasting forehead and mouth and the strange relief of being shocked-for-refusing instead of condemned-for-accepting, then headed for Jenna’s block with the mat’s unfinished heat still under my skin.

*****

Rei’s house didn’t feel like a home so much as a maintained argument.

She let out a long sigh before entering the place.

Lights low. Table set.

The kind of silence that meant someone important had already decided the evening’s shape.

"Rei," Cecilia said from the head of the table, silver-grey eyes lifting without surprise.

"Come join dinner."

"I don’t wan—"

The refusal died before forming fully.

A figure sat in the middle of the long table as if the center place had always belonged to him: composed, immaculate in the way high-tier supports were when they no longer needed to prove scarcity with noise.

Presence like a held blade wrapped in silk.

Cillian Lawless.

SS-rank support. Her mother’s husband in the practical sense. The stabilizer of the house.

The man Rei had been measured against since she understood what bloodline expectations were.

"Sit," Cecilia said, not repeating the invitation as kindness.

Rei sat.

Cillian’s gaze moved over her once, training wear, faint bruises at the knuckles, the particular exhaustion of someone who had been refused and still walked home on her own feet.

He did not comment on any of it out loud.

"You’re late," Cecilia said.

"Training ran long."

"At Overwatch?"

"...Yes."

Cillian poured water for himself with unhurried precision.

"Inverse Intake in a week. Your registration is already sector gossip."

Rei’s jaw tightened.

"It’s a legal slate."

"Legal and wise are different words," Cecilia said.

"You attached yourself to a support Jenna is trying to hide under provisional language. I visited. I saw the graphs. Your number is lower than the Everheart girl’s."

"I’m... aware."

"Are you also aware that lower numbers become removable numbers when houses start doing arithmetic under Empress optics?"