That one lands somewhere under my sternum and stays there.
Daniel is brief in the way Daniel is always brief, all compression, no waste. He passes me on his way to the door, gear already on his back, and he stops and gives me a single, curt nod. The kind of nod that carries a full paragraph inside it.I see you. You held. Good.Then he walks out.
Kaila is last.
She stops in front of me and does not say anything at all for a moment. She looks at me with those clear, direct eyes, and then she reaches out and takes my hand in both of hers. Her grip is firm. Certain. The grip of a woman who has survived things she does not talk about and recognizes the same architecture in someone else.
“You’re not alone in this anymore,” she says. “Whatever happens next, you’re not alone.”
She squeezes once and lets go.
The door closes behind her.
The cabin is quieter now. Nick and Rafe and the hum of equipment and the remaining weight of everything still unfinished.
I look up.
Rafe is standing near the far wall. He has not moved much since I came back in. He holds a water bottle loosely in one hand, and his golden eyes are already on me when I find them, like he has been watching the whole time and did not bother pretending otherwise.
We look at each other across the room.
He does not speak. I do not speak. There is nothing to say yet and we both know it. His golden eyes move over my face, reading, cataloguing, storing, and something in them is not accusation and not relief. It is a third thing I do not have a name for yet. Something patient. Something that has already decided it is not going anywhere.
Then his gaze drops for a fraction of a second to the small of my back. Back up. He takes a slow drink from his water bottle and turns toward the tactical map on the counter.
That is all. That is enough.
The smell of pancakes drifts from the kitchen, and my feet are moving before I make the decision to move them.
The kitchen is small and warm and completely absurd.
Jude stands at the stove. He is in full tactical black, cargo pants, fitted long-sleeve, boots that could kick a door off its hinges, and he is flipping a pancake with the focused, unhurried attention of a man defusing something delicate. The cast-iron pan is too small for his hands. He makes it work anyway.
Tyra sits on the counter beside him.
She is perched on a folded dish towel, both small legs dangling off the edge, kicking rhythmically at the cabinet face below. Her grey stuffed wolf is propped against the backsplash between the paper towel holder and a jar of instant coffee, facing the stove like a very serious supervisor. Tyra has a small spatula in one hand and a look of deep professional investment on her face.
“Now?” she asks.
“Not yet,” Jude says.
“Now?”
“Still no.”
“How do you know?”
“Bubbles,” he says. He points at the surface of the batter in the pan. “When the bubbles stop moving, it’s ready to flip.”
Tyra leans forward and studies the pan with the gravity of a scientist confirming a hypothesis. “The bubbles are slowing down,” she reports.
“Good catch.”
“Can I flip it?”
“You can flip it.”
Jude wraps his massive, steady hand over her tiny ones. “Together, trouble. On three.”