Maybe my way out. Maybe my biggest mistake yet.
Either way, I was in it now.
CHAPTER 4
Riley
Three daysafter I proposed to a coworker I’d barely spoken to outside of work—someone I knew by shift schedules and shared calls, by the way he moved under pressure and followed orders—I sat across from my sister and tried to find the words to explain what I’d done.
I’d trusted him with my life in burning buildings. That was different from trusting him with Mia. Different from trusting him with the mess I’d just dragged us into. The distinction mattered. I just wasn’t sure how to explain that to a twelve-year-old who was already watching me too closely.
The kitchen table between us was barely big enough for two plates. The apartment was like that: everything compressed, nothing wasted, no room for error. I’d rehearsed this conversation a hundred times in my head. But now Mia sat there with her cereal going soggy, watching me over the rim of her bowl, eyes already narrowed in suspicion. She noticed things. Always had. And with her sitting there like that, every version I’d practiced felt wrong.
"I need to tell you something," I said, folding my hands on the table to keep them still.
Mia's spoon paused halfway to her mouth. She didn't say anything. Just waited, the way she always waited when she braced for bad news.
"I'm getting married."
The spoon slipped from Mia’s fingers and clattered against the bowl. Milk splashed the table, but she didn’t look down. She just stared at me, eyes wide and searching, like I’d suddenly started speaking a language she didn’t recognize.
"You're what?"
"Getting married. To Liam Murphy."
The name didn’t register right away. I could see her sorting through it, running it against what she knew, what fit, what didn’t. Her brow furrowed.
“Murphy?” she repeated. “The one with the ranch? The one who makes bad jokes during equipment checks?”
"That's him."
She leaned back in her chair, arms crossing over her chest, gaze drifting past me to the wall like she needed distance to think. Confusion gave way to something tighter. Not anger yet. Assessment. The kind that comes before a question you don’t want to answer.
Her mouth pressed into a thin line. She wasn’t laughing. That felt important.
“Since when have you been dating Murphy?”
The answer should have been simple. It wasn’t. I’d never dated anyone seriously. Never let anyone get close enough for it to matter. Every time I thought about handing someone that kind of power—letting them see the parts of me I kept hidden—my chest locked up and my breath stalled. Distance was easier. Safer. Keeping people at arm’s length meant they couldn’t hurt us.
“It’s not about dating,” I said. “It’s about keeping our family together.”
Mia’s face shuttered. The shift was immediate. I watched the walls go up, brick by brick—the same walls I’d taught her to build without ever meaning to.
"Mom said that too." Her voice had gone cold. "Remember? When she married Todd. She said it would fix everything. She said we needed a real family, that the court would take us away if she didn't have a husband, that this would make things better."
The words hit like a fist to the sternum.
I remembered. Of course I remembered. My mother, desperate and high and convinced that a man was the answer to everything, dragging us to a courthouse not so different from the one I'd be standing in tomorrow. Todd in a cheap suit, smiling wide while his eyes stayed flat and calculating. My mother crying happy tears while I stood in the corner and felt something cold settle in my stomach.
She'd been trying to keep us, in her own broken way. The state had been threatening to intervene. Her addiction was getting worse, her ability to hold down a job nonexistent, and someone had called in a report. She'd thought marriage would fix it. A two-parent household. Stability on paper, even if the reality was anything but.
It hadn't fixed anything. It had made everything worse.
"This is different," I said again, but the words felt thin. "Liam isn't Todd."
"You don't know that."
"I do." I reached across the table, but Mia pulled her hands into her lap, out of reach. "I've worked with him for two years, Mia. I've seen him run into burning buildings for strangers. I've seen how he treats people when no one's watching, when there's nothing in it for him. He's a good man."
