I’m off the other side of the bed before I’ve consciously decided anything, grabbing for my clothes from the bathroom floor. Except they’re still cold and damp from the hot tub—so I snatch the white robe from the hook instead and drag it on, knotting it twice and leaving it at that.
Harper has already pulled on fresh pajama bottoms and a camisole in the fast, efficient way she does everything.
Still, she’s barely gotten her hair pushed back from her face before Bruiser hits the door, shoving it open with the particular impatience of a nine-year-old.
And then he’s airborne, launching himself across the room at his mother with the total physical commitment of someone who has not yet learned self-preservation.
Harper goes back into the pillows with a laugh, both arms coming up to catch his full weight.
After I grab some fresh boxers and an undershirt from the guest dresser Domhnall keeps stocked with the basics and disappear into the bathroom to clothe myself, I come back and pause for half a second. I just stand in the bathroom doorway and watch them together.
Yes, Bruiser looks like me, in ways that still send a small electric shock through my chest every time I catch one—the jaw, the way his brow furrows, the ears. But right now he’s all Harper. The same laugh, the same quick energy, same refusal to do anything in half measures.
Then Harper gets her hands on his ribs, and the giggling starts.
It’s not a dignified sound. It’s all-out, helpless, almost-crying giggling, with the occasional snort.
He screeches when she finds the best spot, and tries to get her back, but she is absolutely merciless. He’s laughing too hard to mount any real defense, and it is possibly the best thing I have ever witnessed with my own two eyes.
I pick up the pillow from the floor.
Take careful aim.
Then I swat Harper on the back with it.
Bruiser’s head swings toward me, eyes going wide. Then they go absolutely feral.
“PILLOW FIGHT!” he screeches.
He lunges for the pillow at the top of the bed, gets both hands on it, and hits me directly in the face with the focused energy of someone who has been waiting his whole life for a sanctioned opportunity to do exactly this. The impact is genuinely impressive. I make a mental note to tell him that later.
I let the force of it carry me dramatically off my feet, going down in slow motion. I add sound effects on the way—a long, theatrical groan, a final wheeze, and then I hit the end of the mattress and slide to the floor in a heap.
Dead silence.
Then: “Mom.” His voice is reverent. “I got him.”
“You really got him,” Harper confirms gravely.
“I got Calb.”
The nickname hits me somewhere below the sternum.Calb.Not Caleb, not Mr. Graham, not the careful politeness of someone who doesn’t know what to call the man who suddenly appeared in his life. JustCalb,worn down by familiarity to something easier that fits in a kid’s mouth.
I grab a pillow from the floor.
“Zombie attack,” I announce to the carpet, and reach up and drag him down with me.
He goes over the edge of the mattress shrieking, flailing, completely unable to stop giggling long enough to fight back.
I gum at his forehead—not quite biting, just the idea of it—and he absolutely loses his mind.
“MOM. MOM, HE’S EATING MY BRAIN.”
“Tragic,” Harper says from the bed, pillow ready.
“I’m saving no one,” she adds, and hits me in the back of the head.
This sends Bruiser into a fresh spiral. He’s laughing so hard he’s almost silent, just shaking, his face gone red, tears at the corners of his eyes.