“It’s not simple. It’s terrifying.” My thumb catches a tear before it falls. “But hiding in your garage, unpacking motorcycles by yourself while we’re fifty yards away? That’s not protecting them. That’s protecting you.”
“Maybe I need protecting too,” she whispers.
“From us?” The question hurts to ask.
“From this. From feeling—” She stops, shakes her head. “I can’t do this right now. Can we please just—can you help me unload the boys’ bikes? That’s all I’m asking. Just help me unload them, and we can talk about everything else later.”
It’s deflection. Avoidance. The same pattern we’ve been dancing since yesterday.
But I nod anyway. Step back. Give her space.
“Yeah, firefly. I can do that.”
We work in silence, lifting the small bikes down, setting them up in the garage beside her Triumph. The picture they make—three motorcycles, graduated sizes, a family in chrome and paint—does something dangerous to my chest.
“They’re going to love this,” I say, gesturing to her bike. “Riding their bikes around the compound.”
“I hope so.” She runs her hand over Noah’s red handlebars. “I want them to be happy here. To feel like this is home.”
“It is home.” I lean against the workbench, studying her. “Or it could be. If you let it.”
She doesn’t respond. Just stands there among the motorcycles and moving boxes, looking young and scared and so determined to be strong it makes me ache.
I should leave. Give her space.
But I can’t stop looking at her.
“You did good, firefly,” I say quietly. “With them. With this. With building a life when everything was against you.” I gesture to the bikes, to the garage, to everything she’s created. “You did real good.”
The tears come then, silent and steady, and I move without thinking. Pull her against my chest where she fits like she was made for it. Where she’s always fit.
“I’m scared,” she whispers into my shirt.
“I know.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Not possible.” My hand strokes down her hair, soothing. “There’s nothing you could tell me that would make me hate you, Parker. Nothing.”
She doesn’t believe me. I can feel it in the way she’s holding herself, still guarded even in my arms.
I know the boys can’t be mine. There’s no possible way, but their mom?
She’s ours.
21
PARKER
“Liam!” I call down the hall. “We leave in twenty minutes!”
“I know!” His voice carries that edge of stress that means he’s spiraling. My organized child who needs everything perfect, who probably is checking his gym shoes for the third time.
I move back to my room, scanning my reflection one more time. Charcoal pencil skirt, silk blouse in dove gray, blazer tailored to perfection. Hair swept up in a twist that took three attempts. Makeup carefully applied to saycompetent professionalinstead of awoman who barely slept.
But competent professional Parker forgot to—wait, did I charge the AirTags?
I grab my phone, pulling up the app. Two little dots blink at me from the screen. Connected. Thank God. I’d sewn them into the lining of both backpacks last week, hidden under the label maker labels that mark every single item my children own because five-year-olds lose everything.
