A promise without words.
I stepped out onto the porch, the screen door closing softly behind me, and the air hit my lungs like I’d been underwater too long. Warm. Familiar. Alive with the smells of earth and grass and something sweet drifting from the fields.
Home.
My momma was sitting on the porch steps, Cassie beside her, Lily tucked against her side with Sunny sprawled across all three of them like a living, breathing shield. Mason leaned against the railing, arms folded, Bo pacing the edge of the yard like he was trying to burn off energy before it turned into something destructive.
When they saw me, everything shifted.
Momma stood immediately, crossing the distance between us and pulling me into her arms with a fierceness that made my throat close. I pressed my face into her shoulder, breathing her in—the scent of laundry soap and sunshine and the safety I’d always known here.
“You all right?” she asked softly, her hands framing my face, her eyes searching.
“I am,” I said, and this time it wasn’t a lie. “I really am.”
Daddy joined us then, his hand resting warm and solid on my back. “You scared us.”
“I know.” I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Cassie studied me the way she always had when she was trying to figure something out I hadn’t said yet. “You look … different.”
Not accusing. Curious.
I smiled faintly. “I feel different.”
Lily piped up, blunt and unfiltered the way only a child could be. “Is that your boyfriend?”
The word landed like a bell rung in a quiet room.
My parents went still.
Mason choked on a laugh he tried to turn into a cough. Bo stopped pacing.
Sunny lifted his head, tail thumping once like he approved of the idea.
Heat crept up my neck.
“I—” I started, then stopped, because there was no clean way to explain something that was still unfolding, even to me. “There’s … someone I care about.”
Momma didn’t react the way I’d always half-expected she would if I ever brought a man home. No teasing. No grilling. No gentle warning disguised as concern.
She just nodded, slow and thoughtful.
“That’s new,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And he’s inside,” Daddy added, not accusing either. Just stating fact.
“Yes.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
Cassie broke it. “We’ve never seen you like this.”
Like this.
I looked down at myself, suddenly aware of the way I was standing—feet planted, shoulders back, spine straight not from tension but from certainty. A woman who had made choices. Who had stepped into something knowing it would change her.
