I dragged in a breath, andholy fuck, it reached all the way down this time.
Fifteen years.
Fifteen years of carrying Abel around inside me like an open wound nobody could stitch closed because nobody knew where the knife had gone.
Fifteen years of my mother crying quietly in the kitchen when she thought nobody could hear her.
Fifteen years of birthdays that hurt.
Fifteen years of wondering whether my brother had been scared or cold or alone.
The grief was still there.
I didn’t think that part would ever leave. Some losses settled into your bones so completely they stopped feeling separate from you after a while.
Emotion surged so fast into my throat, I stepped into Henry and shoved my face against his chest.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered into my hair.
I know.
Henry loved me with his entire body. There was nothing restrained about it—nothing careful or partial. If the world reached for me wrong, he would’ve torn it apart with his bare hands before he let it keep me.
Maybe that should’ve frightened me.
Instead, it made me feel safe enough to finally come undone.
EPILOGUE
ARCHIE
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER…
Sunlight spilled through my mother’s kitchen windows in long golden stripes, warming the old hardwood floors and the chipped ceramic bowl of lemons she insisted on keeping in the middle of the table.
The windows were open just enough for late-summer air to drift through the screens, carrying the sound of lawnmowers somewhere down the block and kids shouting farther up the street.
Normal sounds.
For a long time, normal didn’t exist in this house anymore.
It did now… or at least pieces of it had started coming back.
“You cut vegetables like you’re preparing for war,” Rhys informed Henry from across the counter.
Henry didn’t even look up from the cutting board. “Efficiency matters.”
“You’re dicing onions, not disarming a bomb.”
“Same skill set.”
Rhys snorted into his drink while my mother laughed softly under her breath from the stove.
Actuallylaughed.
I still wasn’t used to hearing that sound without something inside me pausing in surprise first.
A lot had changed over the last few months.