Aria's POV
I didn't tell Lucian about the message until morning, which made me a hypocrite, given what I'd said to him yesterday about sitting on information.
I knew that. I made the same calculation he had, let him sleep, the message isn't going anywhere, one of us needs to be functional and I hated that it felt justified.
He was going to point that out and I was already prepared for it.
He read the message at six AM, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hair wrecked and his eyes still half-closed, and I watched him go through the same sequence I had at two in the morning. The read, the re-read and the stillness.
"Thirty-one," he said.
"Yes."
He looked at me. "You got this at two AM and you didn't wake me."
"You needed sleep."
He looked at me for a long moment. I held his gaze and didn't apologize.
