“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long,” she whispered.
My tears came then, hot and unstoppable, but I didn’t care. Marcus moved closer to me, his handresting on my hair, his steady presence anchoring me to the moment.
“Hey, buddy,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “I’m your Uncle Ty.”
“Bah,” Eli exclaimed and stared up at me.
“I’ve been showing him photos of you,” Jess whispered.
I held out my hands, barely daring to hope, but Eli didn’t hesitate. He reached for me, and I lifted him into my arms, burying my face in his hair, breathing in the scent of shampoo. Pax would have been so proud—so goddamn happy—and the weight of that hit me like a freight train. Grief warred with happiness until it became one overwhelming storm in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, the pressure building and building until my lungs refused to cooperate. I focused on Marcus’s voice behind me—steady, calm, grounding—guiding me through my breaths, coaching my lungs back into rhythm while I clung to Pax’s son.
Only then could I talk.
“He’s perfect, Jess,” I whispered, and Jess snuggled into my side. Pax wasn’t here, but this was my family. Me, Jess, Eli…
… and Marcus.
SEVENTEEN
Marcus
It wasthe craziest Christmas Day I’d ever seen.
A baby in the emergency intake room, and a father on the edge of breaking, desperate for safety. Another baby arriving in the arms of Jess, standing like a ghost from Tyler’s past, carrying far more than her own grief.
And Tyler—God, Tyler—huddled in the music room with his sister for hours, the two of them picking through the last year of silence, pain, and guilt. Every time I checked in, one or both of them were crying. Sometimes there were words. Sometimes, only the sound of tears and the quiet rhythm of Eli babbling between them.
When Jess needed a break, I took Eli so she andTyler could keep talking. I sat in the corner of the music room, feeding him his bottle, rocking him while my eyes stayed fixed on Tyler. He was holding it together. Or barely holding it together.
Was I worried? Of course. Tyler had come so far, but his resilience was still fragile, and the rawness today was carving into wounds that had never fully healed. Survivor’s guilt. The grief for Pax. The scars, both seen and unseen, he carried every single day.
But through the storm in his eyes, I saw something else—release.
This wasn’t like the spirals I’d pulled him out of before. This wasn’t him shutting down, or pushing me away, or drowning under the weight of everything left unsaid. This was different.
He wasfeelingit.
It was terrifying, yes. And it was painful as hell. But it was also cathartic.
He was finally speaking aloud the words that had festered inside him for too long. Jess was doing the same. And somewhere in the middle of all that pain was Eli—a living, breathing, tiny reminder that love had survived even when everything else had fallen apart.
I glanced down as Eli finished his milk, thosewide brown eyes staring up at me all sleepy as he batted at the bottle.
“Yeah, kiddo,” I whispered to him. “Babies have turned this place upside down today.”
I shifted Eli against my chest, listening to his soft breathing, feeling the rise and fall of his tiny body. Guardian Hall was supposed to be a refuge for veterans lost in their own wars. We were equipped for trauma, flashbacks, breakdowns, and relapses. But this… this wasdifferent. Babies didn’t normally belong within these walls. And yet, today, two had arrived—both carrying different kinds of salvation and heartbreak.
The father and infant in intake—I hadn’t had the time to assess his file before Tyler and Jess’s world had imploded right in front of me. The new arrival and the baby were safe for now, exhausted, but safe. His child was stable. The crisis there could wait a few more hours.
But this moment, here in the music room, was something fragile and rare.
When I popped back an hour later, I watched as Tyler’s fingers never left Eli’s curls, as if he were afraid letting go might make the child vanish. Jess sat curled into Tyler’s side, their grief braided together into something raw but healing. Thiswasn’t the controlled, compartmentalized Tyler I knew from his first months here. This was him wide open—aching and terrified, but open.
I’d been preparing for the day that Pax would come up in real conversation. I thought it might happen in counseling, or late at night when Tyler couldn’t sleep, or maybe after one of his surgeries when his defenses were down.
I hadn’t expected this.
But now that it was here, I realized something:he wasn’t breaking.He was grieving out loud. And every second of that terrified me—but it also made me proud. Because this was what healing sometimes looked like. Not tidy. Not controlled. Messy, painful, overwhelming—but real.
