Honesty had been the family religion. Secrets were what happened in other people’s houses.
So, when Levi disappeared, my child-brain wiring had interpreted it the only way it knew how: if someone who loves you won’t talk to you, they don’t love you enough.
Tonight, watching a man who’d faked his death rather than talk to his family sit ten feet away, I realized Levi had grown up in the opposite church.
Silence was his love language.
Protection by omission.
They’d spent decades making ghosts out of themselves so their loved ones might live.
And Levi, predictably, had learned that lesson too well.
“I don’t know what you’ve done for Dominion Hall,” I said. “I don’t know what names you’ve crossed off what lists, or why your file is in places it shouldn’t be. But I’m done assuming the worst of you without demanding the whole story first.”
I took a breath.
“And I’m not leaving you to navigate this alone.”
Levi stared at me like I’d just tossed him a live grenade and a map out of the kill zone.
“Why?” he asked, almost hoarse. “After everything I did?—”
“Because I love you,” I said.
The room went so quiet I could hear the faint buzz of the chandelier.
My own words echoed back at me.
There it was again—that click.
I’d said it without intending to, the way people blurt the truth when they’re tired and the part of their brain that normally controls leaks is overrun.
Once, I would have grabbed for a qualifier. Loved. Past tense. Loved the idea of you. Loved the version of you I thought I knew.
I didn’t.
I looked him in the eyes and let the present tense stand.
“I love you,” I repeated, softer. “I have for a long time. It didn’t vanish just because I was angry. It just put on armor and pretended it was something else.”
Levi’s eyes shone, wet at the edges. His throat worked, once, twice, like the words he wanted to say had too many edges to swallow.
“I—” He broke off, exhaled, tried again. “I don’t deserve that.”
“Probably not,” I said, because softness had never been our default setting. “But it’s not up to you.”
A half-laugh, half-sob escaped him.
He lifted our joined hands and pressed his mouth to my knuckles, a brief, reverent kiss that felt more intimate than anything we’d done in the hotel.
Byron looked away, giving us the courtesy of privacy in a room we absolutely did not have to ourselves. Charlie cleared his throat and muttered something about checking on his wife, retreating with a tact that told me he’d seen enough people break open in here to know when to exit.
That left the three of us: the father who’d built a fortress out of secrets, the son who’d been drafted into that war without consent, and the woman who’d finally chosen a side.
“We’re not done,” I told Byron. “Not with Dominion Hall. Not with the card at dinner. Not with whoever’s poking at your foundations from the outside. I still have a story to chase.”
“I assumed as much,” he said dryly.
