Chapter 153: Waiting

Chapter 153: Chapter 153: Waiting

The rain hadn’t let up by the time Penelope gave up pretending to read.

She’d taken the same book off the shelf three times now, opened it to the same dog-eared page, and gotten no further than the first paragraph before her eyes drifted, inevitably, back toward the window — toward the storm, toward the dark, toward every road Killian might currently be walking down that she had no way of seeing into.

He’d said it wouldn’t take long.

That had been hours ago.

"You’re doing the thing again," Kai said from across the room, not looking up from where he sat cross-legged on the floor, methodically sharpening the edge of his axe against a whetstone.

"What thing."

"The staring-at-the-window-like-it-owes-you-money thing."

"I’m reading."

"You’re holding a book. Those aren’t the same activity." Kai glanced up, something gentler than his usual teasing underneath the words. "He’ll be back."

"I know that."

"Do you?" He set the whetstone down, studying her properly now. "Because you’ve checked that window more times in the last hour than Aurora’s checked her own hands, and that’s genuinely her favorite pastime right now."

Penelope closed the book, giving up the pretense entirely. "Silver’s call cut off hours ago too. I haven’t heard anything since. And now Killian’s out there in the same storm, in the same city, and I have no idea if either of them is—"

She stopped herself before the sentence finished, the shape of it too heavy to say out loud.

Aunt Mary, seated nearby with Aurora dozing against her shoulder, glanced over with quiet understanding. "You’re worrying about two people at once. That’s allowed, dear. Doesn’t mean you have to carry it well."

"I don’t feel like I’m carrying it at all," Penelope admitted. "I feel like I’m just sitting here, useless, while people I care about are somewhere out there I can’t reach."

"That’s not useless," Erik said, from the armchair where he’d been quietly cleaning his pistol, more out of habit than necessity at this point. "That’s what waiting actually feels like. Nobody who’s ever done it well has enjoyed it."

Penelope pulled her knees up to her chest, some old, familiar restlessness climbing through her — the same helpless energy that used to send her pacing hospital hallways in another life, waiting on test results she couldn’t control any more than she could control a mudslide or a city full of the dead.

"He said he knew the building," she said quietly, mostly to herself. "Right before the line cut out. He sounded — surprised. Like it meant something."

Erik glanced up. "You think it’s significant?"

"I don’t know. I keep replaying it and I can’t figure out what he meant." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "What if something happened right after he said it? What if the last thing he ever—"

"Don’t," Aunt Mary said gently, cutting the thought off before it could finish forming. "Don’t build the worst version in your head before you have any reason to believe it’s true. You’ll exhaust yourself for nothing."

"I know that logically." Penelope’s voice cracked slightly. "It doesn’t stop my brain from doing it anyway."

Kai set the whetstone aside entirely and crossed the room, settling onto the arm of the couch beside her. "For what it’s worth — I don’t know your uncle. Never met him, only ever heard Mom mention him in passing over the years. But from everything I have heard, he’s not exactly someone who goes down easy."

"That’s not much to go on."

"No," Kai admitted. "But it’s something. And it beats sitting here assuming the worst about a guy neither of us actually knows yet."

Penelope let out a thin, unsteady breath. "I don’t even know how to feel about him. He’s family. He’s supposed to matter to me. But I’ve never had a real conversation with him before today, and now the first one might’ve ended with—"

"Hey." Kai bumped his shoulder gently against hers. "You don’t have to have it figured out yet. Feeling complicated about someone you just met isn’t wrong. It’s just honest."

Despite everything, a thin, startled breath of a laugh escaped her — small, but real, some of the tension in her shoulders easing by a fraction.

"There it is," Kai said, satisfied. "That’s the sound I was fishing for."

"You’re ridiculous."

"I’m effective. There’s a difference."

Penelope let that settle, some of the frantic edge in her chest dulling slightly, though the underlying worry didn’t fully leave — just quieted enough to be bearable instead of overwhelming.

The rain continued its steady assault against the windows. Aurora stirred against Aunt Mary’s shoulder, let out a small, sleepy sound, and settled again. Erik finished reassembling his pistol with the same methodical calm he brought to everything, though Penelope caught him glancing toward the door more than once himself, some quiet vigilance of his own that he wasn’t voicing aloud.

Nobody said it directly, but the whole room had the same held-breath quality — everyone waiting on two fronts now, one voice gone silent in a mudslide somewhere across the city, another simply overdue by more hours than any of them wanted to admit made them nervous.

It was nearly another hour before the sound finally came — the distinct click of the reinforced gate down the hall, followed by familiar, measured footsteps.

Penelope was on her feet before she’d consciously decided to move.

She reached the door just as Killian let himself in, soaked through despite the drizzle having eased, a faint, exhausted weariness in his shoulders that he was clearly trying not to show.

"You’re back," she said, relief plain in her voice — the same relief she’d have felt for any of them, she told herself, nothing more complicated than that.

"I’m back." His eyes found hers, something in his composed expression easing slightly at whatever he saw in her face. "You waited up."

"Somebody had to make sure you didn’t get eaten," she said, recovering some of her usual dry footing.

"Comforting to know I’m missed for such practical reasons."

"Don’t get used to it."

Kai’s voice carried from the couch, entirely too pleased with himself. "She checked that window about forty times, for the record."

"Kai."

"I’m just providing context."

Killian’s mouth curved, faint, before he stepped fully inside, rain still dripping steadily from his jacket onto the floor.

"I brought supplies," he said. "A lot of them. I’ll sort it out in the morning."

"You should rest," Penelope said. "You look like you walked through half the city."

"Something like that." He hesitated at that, some old, unexamined instinct pulling at him from earlier in the night — the florist shop, the frame he hadn’t been able to walk past. He still didn’t fully understand why he’d taken it. He reached into the space and drew it out anyway, holding it toward her without further explanation.

Penelope blinked, caught off guard.

A framed arrangement of pressed roses — orange and yellow, sealed carefully under glass.

"Found it in a florist’s shop tonight," Killian said, quieter now, almost self-conscious in a way she’d rarely seen from him. "It reminded me of your house. The one from before all this."

Penelope took the frame carefully, tracing the edge of the glass with her thumb, something unexpectedly tight rising in her throat.

"That’s the same bouquet," she said, surprised. "The one that used to sit on my coffee table."

"I thought it might be." Killian shrugged, like the gesture cost him nothing, though something in the set of his shoulders suggested otherwise. "Figured you’d rather have it than a stranger’s shop it was gathering dust in."

"That’s..." She looked up at him, unsure what exactly to call the small, warm confusion sitting in her chest — gratitude, certainly, and something else beneath it she didn’t have a name for yet and wasn’t in any hurry to examine. "That’s really thoughtful, Killian. Thank you."

"Don’t mention it." He was already turning toward his own door, some of the earlier exhaustion visibly catching up to him now that the adrenaline of the night had worn off. "Get some sleep. Both fronts you were worried about tonight — they’ll still need you functional tomorrow."

"Goodnight, Killian."

He offered a short nod before disappearing into his own apartment, and Penelope stood there a moment longer, the framed bouquet held loosely in both hands, worry for Silver still sitting unresolved and heavy somewhere beneath her ribs — but for now, at least, one half of tonight’s waiting had finally, safely ended.