"You're smiling right now, brother. I can see your teeth and everything."
I take a long pull of my beer and don't dignify that with a response.
But he's right. I am smiling.
Because two months ago, I wasn't sure I'd ever have a reason to smile again.
Two months ago, my wife was in a hospital bed, broken and bleeding, and I was covered in a dead man's blood, wondering if anything would ever be okay again.
Now I'm watching my brothers hang streamers for a sixteen-year-old's birthday party, and my wife is across the room laughing at something Kinsey said, her hand resting on the swell of her belly where our son is growing, and everything is... okay.
More than okay.
"Gonna be a dad, brother." Ruger's voice has gone serious, the smirk fading into something softer. "You ready for that?"
I watch Vanna across the room.
She's huge now—seven months along, belly round and proud beneath the soft blue dress she's wearing.
Her skin is glowing, her hair shining, her eyes bright in a way they haven't been in years.
She looks healthy. Happy. Alive.
"I've been ready for seventeen years," I say quietly. "I just didn't know it."
Ruger nods. He doesn't push for more.
That's one of the things I've always appreciated about him—he knows when to talk and when to just... be there.
"You did good," he says after a moment. "Getting her back. Getting through all of it. A lot of men would have given up."
"Giving up was never an option."
"I know." He claps a hand on my shoulder. "That's what makes you who you are, brother."
He moves off to help Aunt Ellie carry a massive cake from the kitchen—three tiers, pink frosting, probably enough to feed an army—and I'm left alone with my thoughts.
Two months.
It's been two months since the cabin.
Since Virgil.
Since I did things I'll never speak of again, things that live in the dark corners of my mind and only come out in nightmares.
Vanna still has nightmares too.
She wakes up screaming sometimes, clawing at the sheets, fighting enemies that aren't there.
I hold her through it every time.
Hold her until the shaking stops, until her breathing steadies, until she falls back asleep in my arms.
Dr. Ganacha says it'll get better with time.
That trauma doesn't disappear, but it fades.
Becomes manageable. Becomes something you carry instead of something that carries you.
