“How’d the students treat you?” I ask, meeting her halfway.
“I only made one kid cry,” she says excitedly. “Oh, and I cried in the supply closet for thirty seconds,” she admits softly. “Then I washed my face and handed out ice packs like a tyrant.”
“Proud of you,” I say for the third time today, and it still doesn’t feel like enough. “Any pain?”
“Some.” She lifts her ankle like a negotiator offering terms. “I sat more than I wanted. Walked more than you wanted.”
“Fair.” I clear my throat. “Warrant?”
“Lieutenant Cason made the arrest himself,” she says.
I let the information settle where it needs to. It doesn’t fix everything. It fixes one thing. That’s how this works now.
Aubrey barrels in, blonde hair flying behind her as she nearly crashes into us. “Kate! You’re home!”
Oakley scoops her carefully, and for a second, all I can do is stand there and watch the two halves of my heart remember they’re better as a whole. Aubs chatters about spelling words. Oakley answers like nothing else in the world exists. Maybe for thirty seconds, nothing does.
“Pizza night?” I ask when the monologue slows.
“Obviously,” Aubs says, aghast that I would even pretend there are options on a Wednesday. “And movie. And couch fort.”
I feign consideration. “Terms?”
“Unlimited pepperoni. One soda. Two blankets each.”
“Counteroffer: two pepperoni, one soda, one blanket each, because last time I almost died under a textile avalanche.”
She leans into Oakley’s side and stage-whispers, “He’s dramatic.”
“Facts,” Oakley whispers back.
We settle on the economy of our little country—twenty-four pepperonis total, one soda cut with water because I’m a monster, and the kind of couch fort that would pass a building inspection.
Later, after movies and bedtime and the soft thud of a unicorn hitting the floor, Oakley and I end up in the kitchen with the lights dim and the house finally, blessedly, steady.
“Can I ask you something?” she says, hip braced against the counter, hair pulled up, the line of her throat a map I could trace in my sleep.
“You can ask me anything.”
“When you said ‘our house’ the other night,” she starts, eyes on her hands, “did you mean it, or were you trying to calm me down?”
I step in close enough that she can feel the heat off me. “I meant it.”
Her chin lifts. “And ‘our girl’?”
“That, too.”
Her breath shivers in a way that makes me want to pick her up and take us both somewhere quiet where the world can’t find us. I don’t. I press my palm to the counter next to hers, anchor instead of pull.
“I’m going to keep being scared sometimes,” she admits, voice barely above the hum of the fridge. “Even if he’s nowhere near us. Even if the paper says he can’t be. I’m going to want to check the locks twice. I’m going to need you to tell me it’s okay to go back outside.”
“I’ll tell you,” I say. “And when you tell me I’m holding too tight, I’m going to try to loosen.”
“Try?”
“I’m not going to get it right every time.” Honesty sits heavy and clean between us. “But I’ll try. The right amount of control.” Thorn’s words, not mine, but they fit here.
She leans in, forehead to my chest. I wrap an arm around her and feel that restless part of me settle like a dog finally lying down after pacing a long night.
