She’s spent four months rebuilding her strength, watching the bruises fade, helping her relearn her body without wincing, coaxing her out of nightmares, and holding her when she falls asleep sitting up because lying flat still aches on certain days.
Four months of gratitude every damn time she laughs.
Like she does now—head thrown back, eyes bright, voice carrying across the yard.
“Come on, boys! At least one of you needs to land a shot!”
“We’re warming up!” Emerson yells.
“You’ve been warming up for twenty minutes!” she fires back.
Rowan grips the ball and shouts, “Watch this, baby!”
He proceeds to absolutely brick the shot off the backboard so violently that it bounces over the hedge and into the rose bushes.
Berk snorts.
A real, unfiltered snort.
Fuck, I love her.
I didn’t think I could love her more than I did when we were teenagers, sneaking touches and sharing glances that felt too big for our bodies back then. But those feelings were nothing compared to now. They were paper. This is steel.
Every time I look at her, my chest tightens until it aches.
Every time she smiles, a hard edge in me eases while another part locks into place.
Every time she says our names, touches us, or even breathes close, I swear my heart sinks roots and refuses to move.
We got her back.
We almost didn’t.
Sometimes, late at night when she’s asleep between us, Emerson whispers about the what-ifs. Rowan stares at the ceiling like he’s bargaining with ghosts. And I lie awake, listening to her breathe, knowing that if she hadn’t survived… none of us would have survived in any way that mattered.
Maybe Emerson would still be here physically for Kimber because he’d force himself.
But Rowan and me?
We would have followed her into the dark.
I shoot the ball, sinking a clean three-pointer, and do the dumbest celebratory dance I can conjure just to hear her laugh again.
She claps wildly. “You’re all ridiculous!”
“Ridiculously handsome,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows.
She grins, eyes sparkling. “Ridiculously something.”
I jog toward her, pretending to need water, but really, I just need to brush my fingers against her thigh, to feel the warmth of her skin, to hear the way her breath stutters when I get close.
She’s so much stronger now—healed enough to move faster, open enough to let us love her harder, alive in a way that goes beyond mere survival. And every single day, I fall deeper.
We wrap up the game in a mess of shit talk and sweat, all of us breathing hard, chests damp, adrenaline humming through our veins like we’re eighteen again. Rowan is bent over with his hands on his knees, pretending he isn’t dying. Emerson flops onto the grass like a fish out of water. I am, of course, the picture of athletic grace.
At least that’s what I tell Berk as she laughs at us from her lawn chair.
“Game champions coming through,” I announce as we close in around her, a wall of sweaty tattooed idiots with one very specific target.