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It shouldn’t warm me. It does anyway.

Malachi moves beyond the living room like the place bends to him. Charlie has gone quiet, still tucked under my arm, and it’s only when he speaks again that she stirs.

“I asked Joséphine to come over tomorrow.” His voice is calm, deliberate, but there’s something beneath it—like he’s testing the words before he offers them to either of us. “She’ll stay here to watch Charlie, in case you decide to go in to work. I know we open soon, but I want you to know you can take whatever time you need.”

The statement hits harder than expected. I blink. My body’s still locked half in survival mode, wired and disoriented like I’m waiting for the next crash. The idea of leaving Charlie again, of walking away from her so soon after tonight... it feels like tearing off a splint before the bone has reset. I tilt my chin slightly, swallowing down the gut-deep unease that rises high in my throat. It’s logical. It makes sense. But it still feels wrong.

“Joséphine?”

“Joséphine is the best,” he says to Charlie, eyes flicking to mine as he continues. “She’s the unofficial head of the Nightshades, honestly. She’s got four centuries of experience keeping us vampires in line. Nothing fazes her. And she loves to cook.”

“She sounds like a fairy godmother who could snap someone’s neck,” I mutter before I can stop myself. The words spill out, jagged and brittle. For one embarrassed heartbeat, I regret them.

Except Charlie bursts out laughing, the sound crinkling with leftover fear heard too often tonight, fading now into something almost playful. Even Malachi’s mouth tilts, the corner of his grin quietly amused.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I push on like I hadn’t just shoved my foot in my mouth. The words come quiet, flat, stretched too tight with internal contradiction. “I might stay home with her.”

Except I know that in less than five hours, it’ll be the day before opening night at The Place and we’re supposed to have the final dress rehearsal. As the stage producer, I really shouldn’t miss it. I’m torn between my duty to my child and my duty to a job. Even if Malachi says I can take all the time I need, I don’t know if I could handle the guilt of taking the day off.

I look down at Charlie, needing to know how she feels. This Joséphine is a stranger to me and her. She lifts her face, and her expression is unexpectedly open. Resigned, a little sad, but thoughtful in that way she gets when she surprises me.

“It’s okay, Mom,” she says. Her voice is low, tired, but sure. “You don’t have to be with me every second. I know you’ve been working so hard. Don’t let the asshole ruin that for you.”

The breath catches in my chest, a strangled huff of a laugh. I kiss the crown of her head, muttering, “Language, little lady.”

I want to tell her she’s a thousand times more important than any opening week, any broken spotlight. That the idea of not being there for her goes against everything I swore when our bio-mother shoved her into my arms.

She’s watching me with that quiet tenacity she’s always had—my girl who grew up with thrift store clothes and a mom always working.

Malachi catches that too, if the shift in his gaze is any measure. He steps forward—not close enough to crowd, but close enough I can feel the weight of him again. That damn scent. Silver fog on stone. Woodsmoke trailing fingers through citrus groves. He smells like storms about to break.

I glance at him through my lashes, the way I used to with men I didn’t want to fully engage—half open, half defensive. But my breath catches again because he’s not looking at Charlie anymore. His focus sharpens on me like a blade being honed, like there’s a predator somewhere under that handsome face, and it’s starting to stretch under his skin.

“It’s all arranged if you want. She’s already planning to bake her chocolate chip toffee cookies,” he adds, attention turned sudden and precise again. His voice lowers to a shape that heat slides into, and I feel it where I shouldn’t. “Ashe will bring her by at nine. Then, if you want, he could take you to work. Or you could ride with me.”

I blink at that. A cozy image of domesticity, where Charlie bakes cookies in his massive penthouse kitchen and we drive together to work every day. My heart is a hummingbird stuck in my throat. Because it shouldn’t be so easy to picture that. None of this should feel like a life sliding into place with a click.

“Only if it’s not an imposition,” I say slowly, not sure who I’m truly speaking to—him or myself. “I’m not used to strangers watching her. I—I need to know she’ll call me. If anything feels even slightly off, she has to call me. Immediately.”

My voice is sharp now. Not loud, but sharp. It cuts easily. My hand drops to curl around Charlie’s shoulder, grounding myself in her warmth like a wall I can still anchor to. I’m not giving that up, not for soft-voiced vampires with babysitter references and steel-threaded baritones.

Charlie nods. “I promise, Mom.”

It comes too quickly—rehearsed, almost, like she’s already prepared this stage direction. Maybe she has. Maybe I am more transparent than I want to be. It doesn’t matter, because the second she says it, my spine unlocks a little.

Not enough to soothe the buzzing anxiety still punching lines inside my head. Not enough to erase the feel of a note sealed in an unwanted gift box. But enough that the knot loosens, fraction by fraction. I give in, nodding but my smile probably looks as forced as it is.

Malachi doesn’t press anything else, though he could.

Instead, he gestures toward the stairway he’d come down. The motion pulls his shirt tight across his chest and I hate that I notice. Hate that I remember how those sleeves once framed arms pushing me against worn cushions, how that body bent over mine with an importance he still doesn’t know.

“I’ll show you both the guest rooms,” he says. “They’re upstairs, same hall as mine. You’ll be close.”

He doesn’t linger on that last part, but it’s there. And I appreciate it more than I want to admit. He’s saved me once before, stepped in again when another man wouldn’t stop pushing, and now he was there when my daughter and I needed him the most.

We follow him without speaking, Charlie’s hand tucked securely in mine, but my mind stays on the man a few steps ahead.

The easy way he moves, controlled and deliberate, like the world never catches him off balance.