But Maggie’s arms are around me before I can talk myself out of it. Her hug is bone-deep. It’s home. It’s heat after cold. I sink into her grip, stiff at first, then unraveling all at once. My eyes sting. My ribs ache with the effort of not crying.
“You look good,” she murmurs against my hair. “Tired. But good.”
I don’t trust my voice, so I just nod. I press my lips tight, swallowing back the truth sitting roughly in my throat, all grit and weight.
James turns from the stove, spatula in hand. “’Bout time you two showed up. Hope you brought appetites.”
“I always bring mine,” Malachi says, voice low and rough, the sound of gravel under tires. My heart stutters. I pretend it doesn’t. But my spine straightens, same as it always does when he speaks. It’s half reflex, half hunger.
We sit at the kitchen table, and the familiarity is a punch to the ribs. Faint grooves in the wood still mark where I used to do homework. That chair stays tilted from the time I fell back laughing and James claimed fixing it would insult its character. Dragging it across the floor triggers something instinctive, a rhythm I haven’t forgotten. I’m sliding into a life I wasn’t sure had space for me anymore.
Maggie fills our plates with a tenderness that feeds more than just our bodies. I stare down at mine, too full and too empty all at once. The smell makes my stomach growl, but I can’t lift the fork. It feels too heavy, burdened with the baggage of the past.
“Malachi tells me you were thinking about getting back into training,” James says after a few bites.
My fork freezes mid-air. I don’t look at Malachi. “I said that?”
“You asked if we could spar,” he says. Simple. Unreadable. His knee brushes mine under the table—barely there. But it grounds me more than the food ever could.
Heat creeps up my neck. I flick a glance at Maggie, bracing for teasing. Instead, she watches me with pride. A steady pride that never left. That look shatters something in me. I almost flinch from it. As if affection might burn if it lingers too long.
“You still move with a fighter’s rhythm,” she says. “Still carry yourself in a way that says you’re just waiting for permission to punch something again.”
A huff escapes me. Almost a smile. “Sometimes I want to hit something. But I couldn’t afford Coach Tompkins anymore.” She already knows this. “Started working. Saving.”
“You didn’t run,” James says. “That counts.”
“I didn’t have anywhere to go,” I mutter. My throat tightens. The truth is an open wound I keep stitching shut.
So I don’t say how my dad drained what little I had. How Malachi bet on himself in that underground fight and gave me back what was stolen. I don’t know why he did it. I know he doesn’t want me to leave, but he gave me the means to. Now I carry that freedom, a grenade with the pin halfway pulled.
Malachi goes still beside me. I feel it in the shift of air pressure. A pause in the atmosphere. The whole room seems to brace for what I might say next. I don’t.
“You always had us,” Maggie says quietly. The words hit with the weight of a stone in my chest. I blink hard, jaw flexing, a half-formed lyric threading through my mind.Safe is a place you build, not find.I don’t let it rise.
I nod once, swallow hard, and stare down at my plate. Conversation drifts. James gripes about the hardware store. Maggie tells a story about a stray cat she’s half-adopted. Malachi says nothing. Just watches me, studying the storm he’s trying topredict. His silence isn’t empty. It’s electric. As if he sees all the fractures I’m trying to hide.
After dinner, Maggie presses a foil-wrapped plate into my hands.
“Cinnamon rolls,” she says. “Still warm. For tomorrow. Don’t let them go to waste.”
I scowl. She grins, already certain she won.
Malachi thanks them. I don’t. I can’t. Because I feel the risk. By opening my mouth, something might spill out I won’t be able to put back in. Gratitude. Grief. Something too close to wanting.
James starts rinsing dishes. Malachi steps outside to smoke. I hover, stuck between staying and fleeing, but Maggie touches my arm—gentle, insistent.
“Come with me,” she says.
She leads me into the laundry room. The hum of the dryer is soft and steady. Safe. The warmth wraps around me, charged with a quiet static. It’s low, rhythmic, soothing in a way I don’t want to trust. She leans back against the wall, arms crossed, eyes sharp in that way they’ve always been. Cutting through bullshit and bruises alike.
“You okay?” she asks.
I nod. Lie. “Yeah.”
She lifts a brow. Waits.
I stare at the floor. “I don’t know what I’m doing with him.”
