-Devon.
The agency's conference room smelled faintly of printer ink and overused coffee grounds. A map of Europe stretched across the table between us, glossy sheets pinned under pens and a stray stapler. Gracie leaned forward with both elbows on the table, explaining the sequence of Bryce's upcoming tour—city after city, flights charted, hotels pre-booked, security details threaded through it all like invisible stitches.
Her tone was brisk, but Bryce slouched in his chair as though this was a rehearsal for a comedy. He twirled a pencil between his fingers, tapping it on the corner of the map every time she mentioned a city.
"Berlin, Paris, Rome…" she listed.
Bryce turned his head toward me, eyes glinting like a kid spotting candy. "Devon, have you ever been around Europe before?"
I shook my head. "Nope. Never been outside Calderra. I've seen most of Calderra, but never crossed out."
Gracie raised an eyebrow. "You have a passport though, right?"
Before I could answer, Bryce cut in with his usual certainty. "Of course he has a passport."
Gracie flicked her gaze toward him with the kind of patience that comes right before homicide. "I was talking to him, not you, Bryce."
"Yeah, same thing," he shot back, grinning.
I couldn't help the smile tugging at my mouth. "Yes, I have a passport," I told her.
Bryce slapped the table as if he'd won a bet. "Told you."
Gracie threw her hands up. "I swear to God, I'll kick you out of this meeting."
"You're being too harsh," Bryce whined, his grin only widening.
"This is work now!" she snapped.
I slid a hand down my face, fighting the urge to laugh. "Can we please stay focused?"
Gracie inhaled like she'd been waiting for permission to drop the argument. She gave me a grateful nod, flipping through her folder. "Fine. I just wanted to know your hotel preferences."
"Preferences?" I echoed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She hesitated, twirling her pen between her fingers. "You know… king bed, double beds, separate rooms?"
I turned instinctively toward Bryce. He didn't even bother to meet my eyes.
"Don't look at me," he said, all false innocence. "She's asking you. We're respecting your boundaries."
My palm dragged through my hair, more out of exasperation than thought.
Gracie jolted upright in her chair. "This! This is the move I was telling you about." She jabbed her finger toward me as if she'd spotted a rare animal.
"Fuck, I missed it," Bryce muttered, actually disappointed.
Heat crawled up my neck. I pressed both hands over my face. "You two are like teenagers. Can we fucking concentrate on the planning?"
That only set Bryce off into quiet chuckles, the pencil slipping from his fingers and rolling onto the map.
Gracie swatted it off the paper with the edge of her folder. "If you can't sit still, I'll make you stand in the hall."
"You're cruel," he said, leaning back, arms spread like he was Christ on a cross. "Utterly cruel."
I lowered my hands slowly, catching his grin. It wasn't just mischief—it was the sort of look he gave when he knew I was reaching my limit and found entertainment in watching me wrestle it down.
Gracie cleared her throat deliberately, redirecting us. "Alright, listen. Hotels are booked, but I can still make changes. Security perimeters are mapped, but routes will shift depending on crowds. Devon, you'll be leading advance checks at every stop. Bryce, your job is to not get yourself killed. Think you can manage that?"
He gasped, hand over his chest. "That's offensive. I thrive in survival."
"You thrive in chaos," she corrected.
Their bickering droned on, and I sat back in my chair, studying the map of Europe spread beneath the scattered pens. A line of cities I'd never stepped foot in, weeks of work threaded with sleepless nights, and somewhere in the middle of it all, this ridiculous push and pull between the two of them—and me, caught like the only adult in the room.
And yet, despite myself, the corners of my mouth curved again.
I leaned forward, pressing a finger to the edge of the map where Prague had been circled. "Um, allow me to just ask this question because I feel like we skipped over it. When is this happening exactly?"
Gracie flipped a page in her folder, tapping a date with her pen. "Mid-January. Next year."
I nodded slowly, letting the number settle in my head. "So, we've got about a month before all this starts?"
"Yeah," she said, matter-of-fact. "But you know, we let everyone know beforehand. The team, the venues, all of it has been mapped and confirmed months in advance. The logistics were just waiting for you two to catch up."
Bryce smirked. "She means you, not me."
I ignored him and kept my eyes on the map. "Alright. First stop is Prague?"
"Prague," Gracie confirmed.
"Interesting," I murmured, more to myself than to either of them. The name curled around in my mind like the first page of a book I hadn't yet read. "Alright, walk me through this again, just so I'm clear. We have the play in early January, and then the tour mid-January. So back to back."
"Exactly," Gracie said. "The play kicks off on the first of January, right after New Year's. The tour launches about two weeks later."
I turned my head toward Bryce, who was twirling the fallen pencil between his fingers again as if he hadn't been listening. "You work so hard," I said, almost without realizing the weight behind it.
Bryce didn't miss a beat. "Anything for the entertainment of my fans." He said it with a grand gesture, chin tilted, the pencil raised like a sword.
Gracie rolled her eyes so hard I thought they might stay there. "Now, before we wrap, we need to discuss Christmas."
Bryce straightened. "I'm not throwing any parties this year."
Gracie's pen clattered against the folder. "Excuse me, what? I thought this was tradition. Every year."
"Yeah, well." Bryce leaned back, arms crossing lazily over his chest. "I just want to stay home with Milk and Cereal. Kate deserves a break. She can go home and spend it with her family. I'll keep the monsters with me. And you'll be there too, Gracie. Obviously."
He turned, his eyes sliding to me with an expression that was casual only on the surface. "What about you? Do you have to be with your family this Christmas?"
The question pressed against me harder than I expected. My family. I searched the back of my mind for the last time I had really sat down at a Christmas table with them, and the years stacked quickly—four, maybe five since it happened. Time had moved, yet the distance never shrank. My mother's voice came to mind, polite, scattered, stretched thin between remarriage and a life that had no corner left for me. My brother's texts were mostly instructions, never invitations. I hadn't thought about it deeply until Bryce asked, and the answer landed with a heavy clarity.
I shook my head. "No. I don't have to be with them this year."
"Good." Bryce clapped his hands together once, like he had just signed off on a business deal. "It's settled then. We're having a family Christmas."
The word family landed in the center of me with a weight that startled me. Not sharp, not painful, but heavy enough to shift something inside. Family. His word, spoken with ease, tossed across the table like it had always included me. I felt it move through me like a slow-spreading warmth and a question I wasn't ready to answer.
Was it too fast? Was I supposed to laugh it off, treat it like one of his theatrical flourishes? Or was this one of those moments where humor gave way to truth, where the casual tone disguised the reality of what he meant? I had spent years training myself not to mistake attachment for permanence, not to read too much into closeness, not to let words like family unsteady me. Yet here it was, bypassing every line of defense I had built.
My thoughts tangled, forming a quiet monologue that even I didn't want to hear out loud. Family. He said it so simply, as if belonging was something you could just hand out, like a ticket at the door. He doesn't know that the last time I had Christmas with mine, I sat at the table feeling like a guest in my own bloodline. He doesn't know that every year after that, I let the day slip past me with work, or training, or silence. And now, here he is, deciding we'll share it together—him, his pets, Gracie, me. He calls it family, and the word cuts open a space in me I thought I had sealed. Is this moving too quickly? Or have I been starving for something like this without admitting it?
I realized I had been staring at the map too long, Prague's black letters blurred under my gaze. Bryce was still smiling, pleased with himself, while Gracie scribbled notes furiously in the margin of her folder. The sound of her pen against paper grounded me, pulled me back into the present.
"Alright then," she said briskly, "Christmas at Bryce's, play on the first, tour mid-January. Europe, brace yourselves."
Bryce leaned toward me, lowering his voice just enough to reach my ears. "You're not getting out of wearing a Santa hat, you know."
I huffed a laugh despite myself, shaking my head. "Over my dead body."
"Good thing you've got a bodyguard," he whispered back, eyes dancing.
Gracie didn't look up from her notes. "If you two are done, some of us would like to actually finish this meeting before New Year's."
The pencil slipped from Bryce's fingers again, rolling over the map until it hit my hand. I didn't move it. The word family still echoed in my chest, stubborn and steady, refusing to be brushed aside like a pencil on a table.
We spilled out of the meeting room, Gracie's voice still chasing after us through the door, rattling off instructions we'd both half-ignore until she pinned us down again. Bryce shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, his stride lazy, the picture of someone who'd never taken a meeting seriously in his life. The corridor lights hummed overhead, too bright, the floor reflecting our shapes like pale ghosts.
"You didn't tell her your hotel preferences," Bryce said, tilting his head toward me as though this was the only detail that mattered.
I stopped mid-step, and he took two more paces before realizing I wasn't beside him. My voice came before I could think better of it. "Bryce, do you really consider me part of your family now?"
He let out a long exhale, shoulders sagging as if he had been waiting for me to latch onto that exact thread. "I knew you were going to stop at that."
"I just…" I shifted my weight, throat tightening. "I was kind of startled by it, that's all. I don't hate it, I really don't. I just—like I told you, I like hearing things out loud, clear. You know that."
"I thought I said it out loud," he muttered, then dragged a hand through his hair. "I don't—look, yes, Devon. Yes. Oh my god, you make it so hard sometimes. You keep giving me these reality checks, and it makes me feel like everything I'm feeling is somehow invalid. And I get it, I know you're not questioning me directly, you're questioning what it means, or what I mean, but still. In your head you're spinning all these thoughts, like, oh, are we moving too fast? Is he considering me too fast? Should I slow down? Should I say less? I'm not thinking about it that way. I'm not running equations in my head, I'm just saying what I mean."
"Yeah, but you have to respect the way I'm thinking about it," I said, steadier now. "Not everything's going to line up with your way. You know that, right?"
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I do know that."
He turned, resuming his unhurried walk toward the agency doors. I fell into step beside him, the weight of the exchange pressing between us, not hostile but dense, like the thickness of fog on a street you can't quite see through.
The glass doors swung open with the faintest squeak, and we stepped into night. The city was already folded in darkness, the street lamps throwing pale circles on the pavement, the air holding that sharp bite of late autumn. Traffic hissed past, headlights cutting white streaks through the evening.
"We haven't finished what we were talking about, Bryce," I said, my voice lower, the cold air making it sound closer to my own chest.
He shrugged without looking at me. "I don't even know what we're talking about. You asked if I consider you family. I do. Whether you sleep in my bed or not, that's irrelevant. Even if none of this had happened, I'd still consider you family. Is that enough?"
I frowned. "I don't like the way you're phrasing things."
"Then what do you want? For me to give you specifics, a script, words tailored to fit the exact shape of your doubts? I don't know what you're expecting of me," he said, still walking, still casual in his movement, as if we weren't slicing ourselves open mid-conversation.
He stepped off the curb without checking the street, eyes still on me as though cars were just set dressing in his stage play.
My heart stuttered. The world narrowed to the motion of his jacket brushing against air that didn't belong to him. A horn blared, a rush of metal and light in my peripheral vision, the roar of a car flying past. I didn't think. I just caught the edge of his jacket and yanked, sharp and desperate, pulling him back so fast the fabric cut against my palm.
The car tore through the spot where he had been standing, the draft of its passage gusting cold air across my face. If I had hesitated even one heartbeat longer, Bryce would have been beneath its wheels.
My chest heaved as though the air had been knocked out of me. My fingers wouldn't let go of his jacket. I pulled him closer without meaning to, retreating backward until my knees buckled against the edge of the curb. I sank down onto the sidewalk, still clutching him like he might vanish the moment I loosened my grip.
"Oh my god," I muttered, the words spilling out raw and broken. My breath rasped, uneven, my hand pressed into the coarse fabric of his jacket as though grounding myself. My vision tunneled, not from faintness, but from the sheer violence of what nearly happened.
Bryce crouched beside me, one hand hovering awkwardly near my shoulder, his usual cocky expression stripped away. The streetlight caught the line of his jaw, the confusion and something softer settling in his face.
"Devon…" he started, but his voice thinned out like he didn't know where to place it.
I closed my eyes tight, the blur of headlights still flashing inside my skull. "If I hadn't—" My words cracked apart, my throat refusing to give shape to the rest.
For a moment neither of us moved. The city kept flowing around us—engines growling, shoes scraping the pavement, strangers passing with no idea how close the world had come to snapping. I stayed there on the cold cement, gripping his jacket, my breathing ragged, trying to slow the thunder in my chest.
And still the word family rang inside me, louder now, unshakable.
Bryce crouched lower, his knees creaking against the pavement, both hands out like he wanted to steady me but wasn't sure how to make contact without making it worse. His voice cracked through the noise of the street, thinner than I had ever heard it.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I should have been more careful. I'm sorry I put you through that. I shouldn't have done that."
His words tumbled over each other, clumsy in their rush, and I could feel the urgency behind them. I tried to inhale deep, but it only scraped halfway down my chest before stuttering out again. My lungs felt too small, my ribs pressing tight against air that wouldn't settle. I dragged another breath in, longer, steadier, but it still felt like a knife lodged in my throat. Exhale, inhale, exhale, like I was counting seconds after an explosion.
I tilted my head just enough to look at him. My voice came out quieter than I meant, but it carried. "You were walking away from this conversation, Bryce. Just walking into the road, into a car seat, like you were ready to kill yourself over the damn conversation."
His eyes widened, the streetlight painting them glassy. "No, no. I swear, I really don't hate talking to you that much. I just—" He paused, his hand going to the back of his neck like he needed to pull the words out. "I kind of forgot we were supposed to be waiting for the car. My brain just… I don't know why it thought we were crossing. Like it just defaulted to autopilot. Fogged out." He looked at me, his face uncharacteristically bare of the usual smirk. "I wasn't walking away from you."
My chest burned, the after-image of headlights still flashing behind my eyes. "You're really going to make me go insane someday, Bryce. I just… oh my god." My voice broke again, and I hated how much it betrayed me.
"I'm sorry," he said, more softly now. "I'm sorry. I won't ever do that again. I promise, okay? I won't move before you. I won't move in general if that's what you need. You can carry me around if that would make you feel better."
I turned my head toward him fully, narrowing my eyes. "Are you fucking kidding me? Are you joking right now?"
His lips parted, hesitation flickering before his shoulders sagged. "No. No, I'm not. I just… I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry."
The rawness in his tone disarmed me more than the words themselves. For once, there was no performance in him, no flourish, no shield. Just a man who had nearly been struck down because he forgot which way to step.
"Okay," I breathed, more to convince myself than him. "Okay. Let's just wait for the car to come pick us up. Call your driver, Bryce. Call the driver."
He nodded quickly, fumbling with his phone, his fingers shaking like the moment had finally landed in his body too.
I covered my face with both hands, pressing my palms hard over my eyes until colors bloomed against the darkness. It did nothing to stop the replay. The sound of the car rushing past, the tug of his jacket against my hand, the drag of momentum as I yanked him back—all of it looped like film on a reel, stuck in my head with no pause button. My fingers dug into my temples as if pressure alone could scrub the memory clean, but it only came sharper, clearer, until I thought I might be sick right there on the curb.
Every few seconds my breath caught, the memory crashing again. Him stepping off, me half a second too slow, the imagined picture of headlights cutting through him instead of empty space. I pulled my hands down slowly, dragging them across my face, and the cold air slapped my skin raw.
Beside me, Bryce sat down on the curb too, his thigh brushing against mine. He didn't speak, didn't try to crack a joke, didn't even look at me. Just sat there, waiting, the faint tremor in his leg giving him away. For once, his silence didn't feel like absence.
And still, under the roar of my thoughts, the word family whispered again, sticking like a thorn in my chest. Family, he said. And if I had missed by a second, that word would have been left on the table inside, stranded with no one to hold it.
The ride back was a silence so thick it swallowed everything. The driver didn't speak, the hum of the engine stretched like an unbroken thread, and I stared out the window at the city blurring past, each light smearing across the glass like paint on wet canvas. Bryce sat beside me, unusually still, his hand twitching once against his knee like he wanted to drum a rhythm and stopped himself. My mind replayed the curb, the horn, the jacket still balled in my fist. Over and over.
When we stepped inside the house, the air shifted. The warmth was too much after the bite of outside, pressing against me like a weight. I tugged off my jacket and set it on the arm of the couch, not ready to walk further in. Bryce tried first, his voice pitched lighter, as if humor might chip away at the tension.
I cut him short. "I just don't get it. I don't. Why do you always flinch when I ask you questions? Isn't this supposed to be real? Aren't we supposed to be actually interested in each other? So why, whenever I ask anything, do you get defensive?"
His expression cracked, and for once, there was no effort to hide it. He exploded, words spilling faster than his breath could keep up. "Because I'm scared, Devon. I'm scared that if I say anything too sentimental, you'll dissect it, doubt it, reconsider whatever the hell is between us. If I fed you too many thoughts, you'd slip into your own head and vanish on me."
I shook my head, heat burning at my temples. "And you think the right thing to do is feed me nothing at all? Starve me? You throw hella big words, Bryce, and excuse me for ever wondering if they're genuine before I swallow them whole. It's not even that I doubt you if you'd just confirm them. I ask for a confirmation, and instead of giving me one, you slice right through me."
His voice cracked, still sharp, still angry. "Some things just slip from me, alright? Like when I told you I'm falling for you—there was just this voice in my head screaming say it, say it, say it until I did. Impulsive, sure, but genuine. And today, when I said family Christmas, it was exactly what I felt at the moment. I felt like this was the closest thing to family it could get, so I said it." His chest rose and fell, words tangling in the space between us. "I don't filter the first thing that comes out, so I try to filter the second. Because I'm too much. I feel too much. I get too emotional in this suffocating way."
He moved past me toward the couch, not with his usual swagger but with a heaviness that made the room feel smaller. He dropped into the cushions, elbows braced on his knees, hands laced together as if he could hold himself steady. His head bowed, hair falling into his face, and when he spoke, the words broke faster than his breathing could carry them. His eyes shone, and then the tears broke. He swiped at his face but they kept coming, his voice unraveling with them. "All my past relationships ended because of that. Because I was too much. I gave too much, said too much, clung too tightly. And I don't know how to keep you around. I don't know how obedient I'm supposed to be, or how contained, just so you'll keep liking me."
He broke then, shoulders folding in as the words tumbled raw, sobs snapping the edges of them. "So when you ask me more questions, I get worried, anxious. I can only give you facts. You ask about my family, I can recite the whole family tree. You ask about my career, I can map out every step I've taken. But if you ask about love, about this, I start spilling poetry and panic at the same time. My emotions, right here, right now, they scare me. They scare me so bad that I feel like I have to run them through my head ten times before I let them out. And I'm so fucking tired, Devon. I'm so tired."
His crying wasn't loud, not the kind that tore through walls, but the quiet kind that hurt worse. His breaths came in stutters, two quick pulls of air before the next exhale, his chest rising unevenly like he couldn't convince his lungs to work in rhythm. His hands dragged down his face, wet with streaks he didn't bother to hide, fingers trembling as though even the act of wiping them away exhausted him. The sound of it filled the room in fragile breaks, not sharp enough to echo, but sharp enough to settle under my skin and stay there.
I understood every word, because I'd been living the same way. Walking that thin line between saying too little and saying too much, between silence that left someone guessing and words that landed heavier than I intended. My whole life had been an exercise in rationing what I gave, what I confessed, what I dared to ask for. Seeing him collapse into the same exhaustion felt like looking into a mirror, only louder, only less restrained.
I stepped closer, steadying myself before steadying him. "Bryce," I said, quiet but certain, like his name alone might give him something to anchor to.
He shook his head hard, fists pressing into his thighs. "I don't even know how to breathe around you sometimes. That's how much I'm afraid of messing this up."
I crouched down so I was level with him, my knees protesting against the hardwood. I searched his face, wet and unguarded, and spoke slowly. "You don't have to figure out how to keep me around. I'm here. Even when I'm asking, even when I sound too sharp, I'm not trying to dissect you. I'm just trying to understand."
His eyes lifted, bloodshot and brimming, as if he didn't believe it yet.
The truth was, I didn't know how much of myself I could promise him. But in that moment, what I did know was enough: we were both tired of starving ourselves in different ways, both afraid of the same absence.
I reached forward and caught his hands in mine before he could retreat further into himself. His palms were warm, damp, trembling faintly, and I brushed my thumb across the ridge of his knuckle until his fingers loosened under the touch.
"I'm thankful you explode at me," I said, holding his gaze, steadying the words as if they could anchor both of us. "I'm thankful you said all that you just said. I want that, Bryce. I don't want the silence, I don't want calculations. If this thing between us—whatever it is right now—continues, then we've got a long road ahead. You're in show business, and I'm your personal bodyguard. That's a heavy load neither of us has even begun to face. And because I do want to take further steps with you, I'll need you to talk to me. Let me ask. And please, answer me without any second thoughts. Just throw it at me. I can handle it. I swear."
His breath hitched audibly, and instead of pulling his hands back, he wiped his eyes clumsily against his shoulder so he wouldn't break contact. His voice came out softer, rawer. "Actually… I'm crying more because of the car scare. I wanted to cry right there on the spot, but you looked like you were on the verge of breaking down, so I thought at least one of us should be strong."
A short laugh broke out of me, jagged but real. I shifted closer, cupping his face in both hands. His skin was still damp beneath my thumbs as I wiped the streaks clean, smoothing along the curve of his cheekbones.
"My heart felt like it was about to stop," I admitted, my voice dropping low, as if the words themselves carried weight. "You have no idea how that scared the shit out of me. And I've seen worse, a hell of a lot worse. But that? Tonight? Oh my god, Bryce. Don't ever do that shit again."
He nodded quickly, the movement small against my hands, his eyes glistening with the last remnants of his tears. I bent down and pressed a kiss to his forehead, the contact brief but grounding. "You're so stupid," I muttered.
His mouth quirked, even as his eyes brimmed with something softer. "I like you so much too."
The sound of it made something in me ease, and for a moment the room no longer felt so heavy. A laugh slipped between us, quiet at first, then catching on itself until both of us were chuckling, worn down but lighter, sitting too close, my hands still on his face, his fingers still tangled with mine.
And for the first time all evening, it felt like we could breathe again.