“Bash,” he breathes, voice cracking, and in three strides he’s there.
Sable lets him go, and Bash doesn’t hesitate, drawn forward to the man he knows. His dad.
Andrew sinks to the floor, clutching his son to his chest, his head bowed low, fingers splayed protectively over Bash’s back. His shoulders shake. No words. Just that raw, helpless grip of a father who realizes how close he came to losing his child.
I back off, giving them space.
I send JT and Will quick texts of what happened, but I don’t wait for a response. My eyes find Sable.
Frozen in the entryway, her hands hang limp at her sides, her body suddenly foreign in the absence of adrenaline. She doesn’t look at me. She looks at Andrew and Bash curled up on the couch, whispering. Her eyes drink them in with the quiet desperation of someone trying to remember what safety looks like. Someone trying to believe it's real.
I step to her. Wrap both arms around her without a word.
Sable folds into me immediately, her head pressing against my chest like her body’s just given up the fight. My hand finds the back of her head, fingers sliding into her hair, anchoring her there. I press a kiss to her temple.
“I’m not leaving you,” I murmur. “Not tonight. Not tomorrow. If I have to move into this house and post up twenty-four-seven to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, I will. I’m not going anywhere.”
She doesn’t respond.
Just breathes. Shallow. Fragile.
Then, finally, she speaks. “I don’t feel bad.”
I pause.
“I don’t feelanything,” she says, a little louder this time. “Not guilt. Not shame. Just… relief. And I don’t know what that says about me.”
Her voice breaks near the end of her words, but tears don’t fall. They just swell in her eyes, turning them glassy and wide.
I pull back enough to cradle her face in my hands.
“It says you’re a mother,” I tell her, my voice low, steady. “It says you protected your son. That you made a choice no one should ever have to make. But you made it. You survived it. You gave him a chance to grow up.”
She stares at me, eyes rimmed in red, torn between wanting to believe me and punish herself.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Sable,” I say. “You stopped someone from doing something evil.”
Her shoulders tremble.
And then she’s back in my chest again, arms around my waist, clinging like she might come undone if she lets go.
I hold her as long as she needs. We don’t move. We don’t speak.
Then, eventually, she whispers, “Can we go outside?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, baby. Come on.”
I guide her gently through the front door. The sky is soft with the beginning of twilight, the street quiet, calm. She sits down on the steps of the porch, barefoot and pale. A breeze lifts strands of hair off her face.
I sit beside her.
The porch light clicks on behind us, spilling gold over her skin.
She stares at the angelonias beside the railing. Soft purple and white petals color the edge of her house.
“They’re blooming,” she murmurs, more to herself than me.
“Yeah. They’re strong,” I say. “Took root fast. Didn’t need much.”
