Mia studied me for a moment longer. I held my smile, held her gaze, and refused to look away first.
Finally, she nodded and went back to her homework.
I turned back to the stove and let the mask slip, just for a second. The weight of everything I wasn't saying pressed against my ribs like a physical thing. The hearing. Todd's filing. The caseworker's voice in my head,two-parent household, two-parent household, like a drumbeat I couldn't escape.
Mia fell asleep at nine, worn out from school and homework and the exhausting work of pretending to be okay. I checked on her twice. Old habit, leftover fear. I watched from the doorway as her chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of deep sleep.
Her hands were loose on the pillow instead of fisted. No bad dreams tonight. It was easy to forget, watching her sleep like this, that she still flinched at raised voices. That she hadn't smiled properly since our mother died.
I closed her door gently and climbed out onto the fire escape.
The night was cool, the sky hazy with light pollution, the city sounds muffled by distance and exhaustion. I pulled my knees to my chest and let myself feel it. All of it, everything I'd been holding back since Sandra's call.
I thought about how it must look to a judge—how out of control it probably seemed. I’d known that for a while. I’d just been pretending otherwise, the way I pretended about everything else. My salary covered rent and groceries, barely. The legal fees were a slow bleed I couldn't stop, eating through savings I didn't have, piling up like a debt I'd never pay off. The apartment was too small, the neighborhood sketchy enough that I worried every time Mia walked home from school. My schedule was unpredictable, my job dangerous, my support system nonexistent.
Two-parent household.
I almost laughed. What man in his right mind would volunteer for this? Walk straight into a trap with a woman in the middle of a custody battle, a traumatized twelve-year-old, and a job that kept her away for days at a time. I wasn’t exactly a catch. I was a cautionary tale.
And even if someone did—even if by some miracle I found a person willing to take this on—I didn't know how to let someone in. Didn't know how to be soft, to be vulnerable, to hand someone else the weapons they could use to destroy me. I'd spent twenty-six years building walls. They were the only reason I was still standing.
But they were also the reason I was alone.
I thought about Mia, asleep in her too-small room, trusting me to fix this. I thought about Todd, probably drunk right now, probably celebrating whatever small victory his lawyers had won this week. I thought about the hearing in two months, the judge who valued traditional families, the caseworker who meant well but couldn't actually help.
I needed something to change. I needed a miracle.
The fire escape was cold against my back, the night quiet except for distant sirens. Somewhere out there was an answer. Away to keep Mia safe. A way to give the court what it needed to see. A way to stop running on empty.
I just had to find it.
And I was running out of time.
CHAPTER 3
Liam
The firehouse kitchensmelled like burnt coffee and regret.
I'd been sitting at the worn table for an hour, working through my third cup of the sludge that passed for caffeine around here. The stuff had been sitting on the warmer since morning, turning bitter and thick, but I kept drinking it anyway. Gave my hands something to do. Something to keep me from thinking too hard about what came next, enough to make me lose my grip.
Cal sat across from me, nursing his own mug, not saying much. That was the thing about Cal. He knew when to talk and when to just be there, solid and quiet, letting you work through whatever was eating you without trying to fix it. He always did what needed to be done.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting everything in that flat, institutional glow that made three in the afternoon look like three in the morning. A few crew members drifted through, grabbing snacks, checking the schedule, but something in my posture must have warned them off. They took one look at my face and kept moving.
"Three months," I said, the words coming out louder than I intended. "Three months, Cal. That's what I've got."
He nodded without asking what I was talking about. He already knew. I’d told him the same refrain again and again since the lawyer’s call, and Cal had been patient enough to let me circle.
"Patricia called again this morning. Confirmed the deadline was real. If I’m not married by my birthday, Derek gets everything." I laughed, but it came out wrong. "My cousin, who hasn't set foot on Murphy land in fifteen years. The guy who thinks ranching is for people too stupid to make real money. He's going to sell it to developers, Cal. Every acre my parents built. Every fence post my father set. Gone."
Cal took a slow sip of his coffee. "Your grandmother didn't know this would happen."
"No." I stared into my mug, watching the dark liquid settle. "She thought she was helping. When she wrote that will, Claire and I were solid. Or at least she thought we were solid. Gran saw us together, saw how happy I was, figured the wedding was just a matter of time." I shook my head. "She wasn't trying to trap me. She was trying to look out for me, trying to make sure I didn't end up like the other Murphy men. Alone on that land until it swallowed them whole."
"But things didn’t work out the way she planned."
"Yeah." The word tasted bitter. "They didn’t."
