Page 6 of Ghosted AF (At First #4)

six

~ Caius ~

B y the following morning, the chick had grown to nearly the size of an apple, making the nest Rylee had worked so hard on unusable. I had tried to warn him, but nothing I said had managed to dissuade him.

The bird had also sprouted an impressive amount of black fluff during the night, a downy coat that would no doubt begin molting in the coming hours. I had never witnessed a phoenix rebirth before, but I had to admit, I found it kind of fascinating.

Or it would have been if Rylee hadn’t gone to work and left me on babysitting duty.

A part of me understood his concern. While the chick would eventually transform into a grown man with a lifetime of memories and reasoning, for now, it really was just a baby bird.

Albeit a magical one that didn’t need a full-time guardian.

Technically, I had completed the job I had been paid to do. While there had never been any real threat, I had identified the problem and made things right. As such, I really didn’t have a reason to keep sleeping on Rylee’s couch, but he hadn’t asked me to leave.

We had never finished our conversation about fate bonds and what it meant to be mated, but his desire to keep me around gave me hope. To be fair, he hadn’t seemed opposed to the idea, just confused, and maybe a little apprehensive.

I just didn’t know why.

If he chose to bond with me, I would be able to hear his thoughts and communicate with him telepathically, an ability few shadeling possessed. Until then, I only knew what he told me, and so far, he seemed determined to keep his worries to himself.

As a distraction, I’d spent the day making phone calls and performing admin tasks while occasionally checking on the chick.

Mostly, it just slept, but it would sometimes lift its head and chirp before dozing off again.

It also hadn’t moved from where Rylee had left it on the coffee table, surrounded by a makeshift nest of towels.

First, I called the apartment management to let them know about their missing maintenance worker in hopes of saving Mykal’s job. The lady on the phone neither seemed to understand nor care what I told her, but she assured me she would pass along my message.

After that, I phoned Lucius to set up a time for him to come over and repair the bedroom door. Of course, he’d had opinions about that, loud ones, but he’d agreed to drop by the next morning to take a look at it.

With both tasks out of the way, I sat down with my laptop to fill out the incident report for MNSTR.

While I mostly stuck to the facts, I might have misremembered the timeline a little and minimized my involvement. I didn’t lie exactly. I just made it sound as if the problem had resolved itself without my interference. Which it technically had.

Once I had the documentation in place, I put in a request to cancel the job and refund the client’s payment. I didn’t feel right about taking money from my mate, but in this situation, I probably would have done the same for anyone else.

Especially someone who had spent their entire savings on a misunderstanding.

The sky had just started to fade to a dusky gray when the newly replaced front door opened, and Rylee strolled in with bright eyes and a couple of brown paper bags. He appeared to be in good spirits, and I didn’t detect any trace of the low-level anxiety that always seemed to mar his scent.

“I brought dinner,” he said, holding up the bags to show the Happy’s Harbor logo on the side. “I hope you like seafood.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I didn’t have a preference, but I bit the words back. Knowing him, he had spent his entire shift agonizing over what to order me, and I didn’t want to dismiss that struggle.

Meeting him at the edge of the kitchen, I tucked a knuckle under his chin, tilting his head up for a quick kiss. “I love it.”

I knew I had made the right call when his eyes went soft, and his lips stretched into a radiant smile. “Go sit down,” he instructed. “I’ll bring it to you in a minute.”

I thanked him with another chaste kiss, loving the way he followed when I pulled away. “How was work?”

“Good. Busy. We had a couple of softball teams come into the restaurant after their game, which is why I’m late.” He glanced at me over the narrow bar stop the sink. “How was your day?”

“Uneventful.”

“How’s Mykal?”

“Alive. Probably sleeping.”

He paused and looked up at me again. “Where is he?”

I jerked my thumb toward the sliding door behind me. “Outside. He kept knocking over shit trying to fly around the apartment.”

“Fly? How big is he now?”

“See for yourself,” I suggested.

Rounding the counter, he hurried across the living room while I followed at a more sedate pace, chuckling when I heard his intake of breath.

“What the hell?” he asked when I joined him on the patio. “He’s huge.”

As I had suspected, the chick had lost its baby fluff by midday, the soft down replaced by brown and gold feathers that didn’t look unsimilar to my own. Those, too, would molt, likely by morning, making way for his adult plumage.

Perched on the rusted metal railing that surrounded the concrete balcony, the adolescent phoenix lifted its head, peering at Rylee through sleep-blurred eyes. It cawed softly, a quiet, musical sound, before tucking its head under its wing and returning to slumber.

I didn’t blame him. Growing from an egg to the size of a toddler in a single day took a lot of energy.

“How big will he get?” Rylee asked, stroking the back of his hand along the bird’s neck.

“Depends. He’ll be at least twice this size before he’s finished growing.” Resting my hand on his nape, I squeezed gently. “Let him sleep. Dinner is getting cold.”

“Yeah, okay.”

He gave the phoenix one last stroke before retreating back into the apartment.

A few minutes later, we settled down on the sofa with plates of red snapper, roasted vegetables, crawfish mac and cheese, and warm yeast rolls. The food tasted amazing, made even better by the company, and we talked about regular, everyday things as we tucked into the meal.

Rain had been forecasted later in the week, and Rylee looked forward to it. He didn’t like thunderstorms, but he did enjoy a good downpour.

I told him that Lucius would be by sometime the following day to fix his bedroom door. He seemed pleased by the news, and I had to fight back a wave of jealousy at the way he smiled when I mentioned my brother’s name.

“Tomorrow is my day off,” he informed me before shoveling a forkful of pasta into his mouth. “We should do something.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Do you want to go to the zoo?” He started shaking his head before he had even finished asking. “Never mind. That’s lame. We can do something else.”

I took his hand, rubbing light circles over the knuckles while I waited. Sure enough, he wasn’t finished.

“I think they still have those concerts in the square going on. I can check. What kind of music do you like? If you don’t want to do that, I can see what’s playing at the cinema. Or…we could…”

He finally seemed to run out of words, his voice trailing away with a defeated huff. Gods, he was a fucking disaster, but he was my disaster, and I found his flustered rambles ridiculously adorable.

“I haven’t been to the zoo in years. Do they still have that train that goes around the park?”

His head shot up, and he stared at me with wide, hopeful eyes. “Yes and no. The train is gone, but they replaced it with safari buses. I also heard on the news that one of the female rhinos recently had a baby.”

“Well, now we have to go,” I said, smiling at his cute giggle.

“You’re not just saying that, right? I mean, if you think it’s stupid—”

“It’s a good idea.”

“Okay.” He inhaled deeply, the breath expanding his chest, then released it slowly. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m trying.”

I felt my brow wrinkle as I tried to work out what he meant. “Explain that.”

His cheeks pinkened, and he glanced away, no longer able to meet my gaze. Now I really wanted to know.

“I’ve never been in a relationship before,” he confessed. “I mean, I’ve dated, but nothing that lasted longer than a couple of months.”

“And being mated is a pretty big leap from casual dating,” I interpreted.

“Yes.” He whipped his head around, his eyes flaring as he shifted closer to my side. “I really am okay with it, though. Yeah, it’s kind of intense, but it feels right. Does that make sense?”

“It does,” I said before he could get himself worked up again. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I don’t know. I feel really comfortable with you, and the thought of you not being around makes my chest hurt. I’m just worried I won’t be very good at it.”

“At being mated?” I checked.

I expected more rambling, but he pressed his lips together and dipped his head.

“There’s no rush. We can take things at our own pace and figure it out as we go.” I squeezed his hand and brought it to my lips to brush a kiss across the knuckles. “Just keep being exactly who you are, and I promise, you can’t screw it up.”

“What if who I am isn’t good enough?”

I didn’t know who had told him that, but no one came to that conclusion on their own. For their sake, I hoped I never met them.

“You are enough, Rylee.”

“But—”

“You. Are. Enough.”

Then I gripped his chin, drawing him closer and covering his mouth with mine to cut off any remaining protests.

His lips yielded, trembling with a mix of surrender and uncertainty. I skimmed my thumb along the ridge of his jaw, grounding him in the moment, and he responded with a breathy sigh as he arched into me.

I kept the kiss gentle, not wanting to overwhelm him, but when his lips parted in silent invitation, I couldn’t resist delving inside for another taste.

Though I could continue to reassure him, I knew he wouldn’t believe me, not yet, but he would. Eventually, he would come to realize what I had known all along.

He might not be perfect, but he was perfect for me, and I wouldn’t change a damn thing about him.