The words spark something bright in my chest. Excitement, sharp and buzzing, the kind I haven’t felt in a long time. I woke up before my alarm, heart already racing, mind jumping ahead to lesson plans and classrooms and the smell of oil and metal in a place that isn’t mine to keep afloat.
For once, the day ahead doesn’t feel like a list of things that could go wrong.
It feels like possibility.
I can’t wait to get started. To walk into that building knowing I belong there. Knowing I earned this. Knowing this job is mine because people saw me and trusted me and believed I could do it.
Hope feels strange in my body, light and unfamiliar, like a muscle I haven’t used in years. I almost don’t trust it.
But it’s there all the same, humming under my skin, pulling me forward.
And for once, I let myself feel it.
He nods. “You’re gonna crush it. It’ll be nice to have a solid job.”
“I’m still keeping the shop open Wednesdays and Saturdays,” I remind him. “I need to. Those will be long days.”
“I know,” he says. “We’ll make it work.”
We’ll.
The word catches on something inside me and tugs harder than it should.
It’s small, and casual. Ollie probably doesn’t even realize he said it. But it lands heavy in my chest all the same, warm and terrifying all at once. I’m so used to everything beingIthat hearing him include himself without hesitation makes my breath hitch.
We’llfigure it out.We’llmake it work.We’llhandle it.
The idea of not doing this alone feels unreal. Like stepping onto solid ground after years of bracing for the drop. I want tolean into it, let it settle, let myself believe in the safety of that word.
At the same time, it scares me.
Because getting used towemeans trusting that he’s not going anywhere. Means letting go of the instinct to do everything myself and accepting that this isn’t just pretend in the ways that matter.
I swallow and nod like it’s nothing. But inside, that one little word keeps echoing, reshaping the edges of my world in quiet, dangerous ways
I swing my legs out of bed and head for the bathroom, pausing at the door.
“Hey,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. For this. For all of it.”
He looks at me like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Always you.”
I shut the door and lean against it, heart pounding. “Always you,” I repeat back. Something we’ve said to each other since we were teens, when life got hard. We are each other’s ride-or-die. Always you.
This isn’t fake. Not really. Not all of it can be fake when we’re always that for each other.
And that thought both terrifies me and makes me smile as I get ready to start the rest of my life.
Chapter 13
Ollie
Burning House by Kameron Marlowe
“You’re nervous,” I say casually as I wander into the kitchen, pour myself a cup of coffee, and lean back against the counter like I don’t feel it buzzing off her in waves.
