Chapter 373: Cyan-nap pt 2

Noah

The heels arrived first. They were tall, black, and made a sharp, loud sound against the asphalt as Cyan swung his legs out of the vehicle, instantly making himself the most noticeable thing on the entire street.

I stared at his feet in disbelief. "You drove a sports car through downtown traffic in those?"

"I asked Cassian," Cyan said, ignoring me entirely as he marched across the pavement. He reached out, his long fingers grabbing both of my shoulders before I could even think about stepping backward.

"He said yes. You are completely free for the rest of the afternoon. Now—"

"You asked—wait, Cassian said yes?" The words caught in my throat. The thought of Cyan calling Cassian to ask for my release made my head spin. "Are you sure?"

"You can check with him later," Cyan muttered, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked me up and down.

Before my brain could process what he was doing, Cyan bent down with a sudden, fluid movement. One of his arms swept behind the backs of my knees, and the other clamped down hard against my upper back.

With a single, heavy hoist, he lifted me clean off the ground, flipping me over his shoulder like a sack of grain. A very light, very confused, very public sack of grain.

My vision tilted instantly, the grey sidewalk replacing the sky as I hung upside down over his back.

"Wait—CYAN—put me down! What are you doing? People are looking at us!"

Cyan didn’t even pause, turning on his heel and walking back around the hood of his orange car toward the passenger side, completely unbothered by the three pedestrians who had stopped dead in their tracks to stare.

"You are ridiculously light," he complained, his voice vibrating through his spine against my chest. "Do you ever actually eat anything?"

"I eat three meals a day! Put me down right now!" I yelled, my face growing incredibly hot as the blood rushed to my head.

"Your brother is much heavier," Cyan remarked casually, his tone as light as if we were discussing the weather while he reached for the car door handle.

I froze, my hands dangling near his lower back as his words hit me. My brother? "My—what do you mean, my brother? How do you know how much Nick weighs?"

Cyan opened the passenger door with his free hand, ignoring my question entirely. With a quick, firm movement, he shoved me downward into the low leather seat.

Before I could scramble back out, his hand came down in a single, loud pat against my backside.

"IN."

I turned a deep, violent shade of crimson that went all the way from the collar of my shirt to the tips of my ears.

"You did NOT just do that," I sputtered, my voice cracking as I stared up at him from the passenger seat. "There are literally people watching us from the bakery across the street, Cyan!"

Cyan leaned down, his face filling the open window frame as he looked at me with a surprisingly soft expression.

"Cassian really did say you could go, Noah. I already spoke to him. You’re completely free today. Just breathe, okay?"

Before I could answer, he straightened up and walked back around to his side of the car, the sharp click of his heels on the asphalt sounding like little punctuation marks against the roar of the engine.

I sat frozen in the leather seat, my face feeling like it was currently the temperature of a hot radiator, acutely aware that at least four people on the sidewalk were still staring directly at me.

Cyan slid into the driver’s seat, his movements quick and energetic as he shifted the car into gear.

I opened my mouth, my voice shaking slightly. "Cyan."

"Yes, darling?" he asked, checking his side mirror before pulling out into the lane.

"What did you mean just now? When you said my brother is heavier."

There was a tiny beat of silence, a fraction of a second where his hands tightened on the steering wheel so small that I would have missed it completely if I hadn’t been watching his face. Then he let out a breezy, careless laugh.

"Just an observation."

My brain did the math slowly, then all at once, the pieces slamming together in my head.

’He’s lifted Nick. That’s the only way he would know that. He actually picked up my brother."

"You’ve met again? When did you see Nick? Why would you ever have to lift him?"

Cyan was already turning the wheel, his voice rising to drown out my questions as he launched into a completely different topic.

"I made a very specific list for today, Noah. Unfortunately I haven’t restocked for my boutique so we are going to Étienne’s first because you desperately need a completely new wardrobe, and I will not allow you to argue with me about it."

I sat back against the headrest, my mouth still half-open to finish my previous sentence, but the city was already blurring past the window as the car sped up.

I decided to keep the question about Nick away under things I needed to revisit later, mostly because Cyan was currently explaining our shopping itinerary with the kind of intense, detailed focus usually reserved for a major military operation.

And beneath the embarrassment, a strange, quiet realization settled into my chest.

I had been completely miserable all morning, drowning in the silence from the office, but Cyan was loud, warm, and currently filling the entire car with an energy that had absolutely nothing to do with grief or distance.

Maybe, just for today, that was exactly what I needed.

The boutique didn’t look like a store from the outside. It was tucked away on a quiet, tree-lined side street, behind a beautiful, completely unassuming wooden door that gave absolutely nothing away to people passing by.

But the moment we stepped inside, the noise of the city vanished. The walls were a brilliant, spotless white, illuminated by soft, hidden lights, and the air held that unique, heavy silence that only ever exists around incredibly expensive things that have been arranged with immense care.

A man appeared from a curtained doorway in the back, moving as though he had been instantly summoned by the exact frequency of Cyan’s presence in the room.