I didn’t move. Didn’t want to break the spell.
I didn’t know what to do with this. Didn’t know what to do with a man who showed up at 2 AM and didn’t ask for anything in return, a man who sat there, solid and present, until the shaking stopped.
My whole life, I’d been the one who stayed. For Mia, for survival, for the promise I’d made myself at eighteen. I’d stayed through bad apartments and worse jobs. I’d stayed through fire academy and custody battles and threats that would have broken someone weaker.
No one had ever stayed for me.
Until now.
The dawn light grew brighter, painting the hallway in shades of gold. Liam stirred beside me, his eyes opening slowly, finding mine.
For a moment, neither of us moved. Just looked at each other in the early morning quiet, something unspoken passing between us.
Then Mia’s door creaked open, and she appeared in the hallway, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Why are you guys on the floor?”
Liam cleared his throat. “Strategic positioning.”
“That’s weird.”
“We’re weird people.”
Mia considered this, then shrugged. “Okay. Is there breakfast?”
She wandered toward the kitchen, leaving us alone in the hallway, still sitting on the floor, still closer than we needed to be.
Liam looked at me. I looked at him.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn’t pull away.
CHAPTER 11
Liam
Three months into the marriage,and I’d stopped reminding myself it was supposed to be temporary.
The realization hit me somewhere between my third cup of coffee and the rag I was dragging across the already-clean counter. I’d been wiping the same spot for two minutes. Thinking about Riley. About the way she’d laughed at dinner last night—a real laugh, surprised out of her—when Mia did an impression of Honey’s indignant snort. About the way she’d looked at me afterward, like she wasn’t sure what to do with her own happiness.
I knew the feeling.
The restraining order had gone through three days ago. Emergency protective order, granted the morning after Todd’s voicemail, based on the recording Riley had saved and the pattern of harassment documented in the custody file. Five hundred feet from Riley, from Mia, from the ranch. Violation meant arrest.
It should have felt like a victory. Instead, it felt like putting a bandage on a wound that needed stitches. Paper didn’t stop menlike Todd. It just gave you something to wave at the cops after he’d already done the damage.
But Riley had slept through the night for the first time since that phone call. And Mia had stopped checking the locks three times before bed. So maybe the paper was worth something after all.
My thirtieth birthday had come and gone.
The crew had surprised me at shift change. Owen blocked the apparatus bay doors while Cal wheeled out a cake from the station kitchen. Chocolate, slightly lopsided, withHappy 30th Old Manwritten in frosting that was already starting to slide. Thirty candles crammed onto the surface like a fire hazard waiting to happen.
“You’re the one who’s supposed to prevent these things,” Cal had said, gesturing at the small inferno. “Blow it out before we have to file an incident report.”
The whole crew had gathered around, laughing, someone starting an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” that devolved into creative improvisation by the second verse. I’d stood there, surrounded by the people who’d become family over the years, the smell of smoke and industrial soap and too-strong coffee hanging in the air like always.
And then I’d looked up and found Riley.
She was standing at the edge of the group, watching me. When our eyes met, she smiled. The kind of smile that made my chest do something complicated.
