Chapter 110: LYRA
KEISHA’S POV
For a full second I just stood there.
Lyra looked back at me with the same expression, waiting for me to process her presence fully.
"Hi." She said again when I didn’t reply.
"Hi." I croaked and my voice came out smaller than I intended.
Then she stepped forward, put her arms around me and I stopped being able to say anything at all for a moment because she was here, actually here. And just like that, I felt tension leave my shoulders. God, I missed her.
"You’re here." I said into her shoulder.
"I’m here." She whispered.
"Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?"
"Because you would have told me not to." She pulled back and looked at my face properly. "You look different."
"I’ve been having a time." I smiled slightly even though my heart was racing.
Diane shifted uncomfortably in my head. "You’re screwed."
I knew that. But right now, I didn’t care.
"I can see that." She said as her eyes moved over me the way they always did when she was checking something she wasn’t going to say out loud yet. "Are you going to let me in or are we doing this on the porch?"
I stepped back.
She came inside and dropped her bag on the chair by the door and looked around my house with the expression of someone taking inventory. "It’s nice." She nodded. "Smaller than I expected."
"It’s fine for one person." I muttered under my breath
She looked at me at that and I looked at her.
"Lyra." I said. "Why are you actually here?"
"I told you." She shrugged. "I came to check on you."
"You could have done that from Coldridge." I said. "You’ve been doing it from Coldridge for months."
"The company burned down, remember?" She said simply. "I needed somewhere to go and somewhere to be and you needed — even if you don’t know you need it — someone here." She sat down on the sofa like she lived there. "So here I am."
I looked at her sitting on my sofa in her travel clothes with her bag by my door and her chin slightly up the way it always was when she had made a decision she wasn’t going to argue about.
"I applied for a job at the pack." She informed me casually.
My heart seemed to stop.
I stared at her. "You what?"
"Communications." She said. "Your office apparently has vacancies. I put an application in two weeks ago." She looked at me. "I have the qualifications. Actually have them, unlike apparently your last hire."
"How do you know about Eliora?" I asked, feeling a bitter taste in my mouth.
"Nadia texted me." She told me. "This morning."
Of course she had.
And she hadn’t messaged me yet. At least she was okay.
"Lyra." I said as I sat down across from her. "This is — I’m glad you’re here. I am. But there are things going on here that are complicated and—"
"There are always things going on with you that are complicated." She rolled her eyes at me. "That’s not a reason." She looked at me steadily. "Is there a reason you don’t want me here? An actual one?"
I thought about the prenatal folder in my drawer. I thought about Callum’s message through Dane. All three of us. Today. I thought about Dane specifically, the name sitting in my chest with a heavier weight because Lyra was here and Dane was on this estate and they had a history that I had been on the wrong side of without her knowing.
"No." I shook my head too fast. "There’s no reason."
She studied my face. "You’re lying." She said. "But I’ll let it go for now because I’ve been travelling for fourteen hours and I need tea and you’re going to make it for me."
I made her tea.
We sat at my kitchen table and she wrapped both hands around the mug and looked at me over the rim with those eyes and I looked back at her and thought — how long? How long before she sees it? Before she notices the bump that’s getting harder to hide and adds it to everything else she’s already noticing about my face.
"Not long," Diane said quietly.
Not helpful. And all it did was add to my exasperation.
"Tell me everything." Lyra broke the silence. "From the beginning. Leave nothing out."
I told her everything I could.
She listened without interrupting, which for Lyra meant she was taking it seriously, and when I finished she was quiet for a moment.
"You look tired." She pointed out.
"I’ve been saying that to myself for months." I smiled. "You know how work is."
"Not tired like work tired." She said. "Tired like carrying something tired." She set her cup down. "What are you not telling me?"
"Many things." I said honestly. "But none of them tonight. You just got here."
She looked at me for a long moment. "Okay." She said. Not because she was satisfied. Because she was letting me have the luxury of telling her in my time.
That was the thing about Lyra. She always let you have the timeline. Even when she could see the thing you were hiding clear as anything, she waited for you to be ready and she never made you feel ashamed of the waiting.
I loved her for it and felt terrible about it simultaneously.
A knock at the door made us both look up.
I went to answer it and found Nadia on the porch, hair still slightly flattened from sleep, eyes bright, already peering past me before I had fully opened the door.
"Is she here?" Nadia said. "Lyra. Is she actually here?"
"Nadia." I said. "You’re supposed to say hi, you know? I was really worried—"
But Nadia was already past me and into the sitting room and I heard Lyra’s voice go up and then both of them were talking at once and the house filled up with their voices in a way that it hadn’t in months, so I stood in my hallway and let myself have the feeling of that for a moment.
Full.
The house felt full.
I went back to the kitchen and started making more tea because there were now three of us and that was going to take a while. I stood at the kettle and pressed my hand flat against my stomach quietly, where nobody could see.
The conversation I was supposed to have today.
With Callum and Dane. It was supposed to be today.
And now, Lyra was on my sofa.
The timing of this was terrible.
From the sitting room came the sound of Nadia telling Lyra about Eliora with the dramatic relish of someone who had been waiting to tell the story to the right audience and had finally found them. Lyra’s voice kept cutting in with questions and commentary, while I stood at the kettle and thought about how to hold all of this at once without dropping any of it.
A message came in on my phone.
Callum.
"Still on for tonight?"
I looked at it, then I looked at the sitting room doorway where Nadia’s laugh was coming through.
With a sigh, I typed back: "Tomorrow. Lyra arrived."
Three seconds passed. "Okay. Is she alright?"
I looked at the message for a moment. He was asking about the fire. About Coldridge. About a woman he had known since she was a child sitting at his kitchen table eating Sunday dinners.
"She’s okay." I sent back. "Come for breakfast tomorrow. She’d want to see you."
His reply came fast. "I’ll be there."
I put my phone down and poured the tea.