"Deal."
I kissed her again. Slower this time. Savoring it.
"Where's Zoe?" I asked against her lips.
"Sleepover at Madison's. She won't be back until tomorrow."
I felt the grin spread across my face. Slow. Deliberate.
Maya's eyes widened. "Shane?—"
Before she could finish, I bent down and threw her over my shoulder.
"Shane! What are you doing?"
"What does it look like?"
She was laughing now, the sound muffled against my back, her fists giving a halfhearted pound against my shoulder blades. "We should talk?—"
"We've been talking." I pushed through her bedroom door. "We're done talking."
I kicked the door shut behind us.
Two months.
Two months of rebuilding. The school. Our relationship. Ourselves.
Two months of Maya waking up next to me, still looking surprised that I was there. Two months of Zoe rolling her eyes at us, making pancakes together on Sunday mornings, then stealing all the bacon when she thought we weren't looking.
Two months of ordinary moments that felt like miracles: grocery shopping, grading papers on her couch while she fell asleep against my shoulder, fighting over the remote, and always letting her win anyway.
At the end of March, Maya turned thirty-one. She'd tried to pretend it wasn't a big deal, that she didn't need anything, that a quiet dinner at home was fine. I ignored all of that. Zoe and I planned a surprise party at the firehouse. It was her idea, mostly, though I took credit for the cake.
The whole crew came. Brian made a toast that was equal parts roast and genuine affection. Rodriguez's kids made her a card with more glitter than paper. Maya cried, then pretended she wasn't crying, then gave up and let Zoe hand her tissues while the guys pretended not to notice. It was the first birthday in years, she told me later, that she hadn’t spent just surviving. This one felt like celebrating.
A week later, I took them to meet my mom.
She still lived in the same house in Astoria where I'd grown up, the one my dad had painted every five years, whether it needed it or not. I'd warned Maya that my mother had no filter and would probably ask about grandchildren within the first ten minutes. I was wrong. She waited fifteen.
But she also pulled Maya into a hug the moment we walked through the door, held on longer than necessary, and said, "Thank you for making my son happy again." Maya had gone still in her arms, and I'd watched something crack open in her expression, the look of a woman who hadn’t been mothered in a long time.
Zoe, meanwhile, had been adopted within the hour. My mom taught her how to make my grandmother's cookies, showed her photos of me as a gap-toothed seven-year-old, and sent her home with a box of brownies and a standing invitation to come back whenever she wanted.
"I like her," Zoe announced in the car afterward.
"She likes you, too," I said.
"She told me you cried at your first Little League game."
“She’s a traitor. I’m disowning her.”
Zoe grinned. Maya reached over and took my hand.
We'd started apartment hunting. Maya's place was too small for three people, and mine was a bachelor's disaster zone that Zoe had taken one look at and declared "unacceptable for human habitation."
So we spent weekends touring two-bedrooms in Astoria and Sunnyside, Zoe vetoing anything without enough natural light or a decent kitchen to her standards. She had opinions. Strong ones. I loved that about her.
Sloane's article came out six weeks ago. The New York Times had run it as a three-part series: the arsons, Tommy's story, and the systemic failures that had let a ten-year-old fall through the cracks and stay lost for nine years.
