Sophie reached out and nudged my knee with her fingers.
“I like him because he loves you,” she finished simply.
I couldn’t speak. I leaned forward carefully and wrapped my arms around her, holding her as tightly as I could without hurting her. She hugged me back at once, warm and fierce and still my little sister in all the ways that counted most.
“You okay?” she murmured into my shoulder.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
And for once, it was the truth.
When I pulled back, Sophie gave me a small, smug smile. “Also he’s really hot, so nice job.”
I laughed then, and the sound felt so good in my chest I almost wanted to cry.
“Get some rest, menace.”
“Bring him back,” she ordered as I stood. “And tell him I want black with silver details. Maybe a dagger handle. Or rhinestones. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Naturally.”
“And Emily?”
I looked over my shoulder from the door.
Sophie smiled, softer now. “I’m really glad you came home.”
My throat tightened. “Me too.”
She hesitated for only a second before adding, “But it’s also okay for you to leave and thrive there. You don’t owe me or this family your whole life just because we love you.”
That only made me feel like I owed her more than ever.
But I nodded.
“I love you, kiddo. I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go make out with your hot boyfriend.”
I laughed under my breath and slipped out into the hallway lighter than when I’d walked in.
By the time we were back on the plane, Seattle already felt different in my memory.
Not smaller, exactly. Not less painful either. Sophie’s surgery had still happened. Adam had still stood in front of me with his smug, poisonous smile. My parents were still my parents, loving in the ways they knew how to be and blind in the ways that hurt most.
None of that had magically changed.
I had.
I felt it in the quiet aftermath of everything, in the strange steadiness sitting where fear used to live. I went home and faced the ghosts waiting there. I looked Adam in the eye and not folded. I let Pietro see the ugliest, most bruised parts of my past and not lost myself in the telling of it.
And now, somewhere high above the clouds with the cabin lights dimmed low and the world reduced to the soft hum of the engines, I realized I felt lighter than I had in years.
Not completely healed. But freer.
Pietro must have sensed something in me changed, because his hand found mine where it rested on the seat between us and turned it until our fingers threaded together.
“What?” I asked quietly.