Page 53 of Rule the Night

“We have stuff we need to go over with you too,” he said.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Legal stuff. I’ll text Remy and Bram.” He eyed the muffins cooling on the counter. “Are these free game?”

“Of course.” I pointed out the ones I’d set aside for Remy, and Poe added one of the other muffins to a plate with two of the egg bites, then went to make a cup of coffee.

A few minutes later, Remy appeared in the kitchen wearing jeans and nothing else. He padded sleepily to the coffee machine and my eyes were drawn again to the ink on his back.

Memento Mori.Remember you must die.

I didn’t want to remember that, didn’t want to remember how quickly it could happen to people who didn’t deserve to lose their lives too soon.

He made his coffee and sniffed the blueberry bran muffin appreciatively before confirming that I’d cooked everything to his specifications.

“I can do that for you if you leave me instructions,” I said when he started making his smoothie.

Why was I offering to do extra work for one of the men who’d chased me through the tunnels? One of the men who’d enslaved me as their cook/who knew what else?

“Really?”

I shrugged. “Sure. If you have extra blender bottles I can put them in the fridge for you so they’re ready to go.”

“That would be awesome.”

Bram stepped into the kitchen. “What would be awesome?”

Why did it seem like he was always coming in at the tail end of a conversation?

“Maeve’s going to make smoothies for me every day,” Remy said, spooning ingredients from his mylar bags on top of the protein powder and yogurt.

“Good for you,” Bram said.

“Are you always this cheerful in the morning?” I asked.

He looked at Poe, ignoring me completely, like he had done the day before. “Are we doing this or what?”

Poe opened his mouth to speak but was drowned out by Remy at the blender.

“… fucking dammit,” Poe was saying when the blender cut off a few seconds later.

Remy grinned. “Sorry.”

Poe glared at him, obviously not willing to risk it by speaking again, which turned out to be an unnecessary precaution when Remy pulled his blender bottle off the machine and started chugging.

“I don’t have all day,” Bram said.

Poe opened one of the drawers in the kitchen and removed a piece of paper. “We need to go over some house and scheduling stuff, but first, you need to sign this.”

He slid a piece of paper across the island.

It took me a few seconds to realize what I was reading. “You want me to sign an NDA?”

“It’s routine,” Poe said.

“Routine.” The word felt strange in my mouth, probably because nothing about the last forty-eight hours had been routine.

“Just legal BS,” Remy said.