By the time the food is spread out around us in plastic containers, the bottle of wine on her side of the blanket is already a glass down.
Hers, not mine—because I’ll never go near it. Not after the shitshow of a childhood where the only thing more predictable than her parents’ next high was the bruise it’d leave behind on her precious skin.
We eat and talk, falling into this way with each other that feels as if we never lost all that time. We laugh the way we used to, andmaybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s just one dinner on a rooftop, but I can feel it. She’s right here with me, not just physically, but in every way that matters.
She’s giving this a chance and letting herself have tonight. One night to feel out the version of me she used to know—the one she trusted without question—and maybe she’s hoping to find that Phoenix again.
“Tell me about college… You didn’t play for long, did you?” I shake my head, still propped up on one elbow, my legs stretched out in front of me while she sits cross-legged, turned toward me like we’re fifteen again and the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
“I’ll be honest, baby. I couldn’t get my mind off you, so no, I didn’t. I didn’t give a shit about the game or school because nothing in my life mattered after I lost you.”
“You didn’t even try?” she asks, genuinely surprised. “I know you, Phoenix. You would’ve pushed yourself to fit wherever you thought you needed to.”
“That was me once. Before I fucked everything up. After that, I never tried to fit in again.”
I sit up straighter, leaning closer to her. “I don’t fit anywhere you’re not. That’s not me being dramatic. That’s just… fact. Some people wake up every day for their dream careers, or their families, or whatever the fuck else gives their life meaning. I’ve been waking up every day hoping you’ll look at me the way you are right now.”
“There has to be more you want.”
“You wanna know my dream life?” She nods, and something in her eyes tells me she’s been waiting for this. “Financially, I’m set. I’ve made more than I should have, doing things most people don’t even know exist, but I like it. I like digging through people’s shit, finding out what they really hide and what keeps them awake,wondering if someone’s gonna find it. When you know the truth, you own the fucking room. You control the play, and when you care about someone enough, that kind of control becomes protection.”
“The way you’ve protected me.”
“Always you. Even when you probably wouldn’t have wanted me to.”
Her lips curve around the rim of her glass, but she doesn’t argue. She knows it’s true.
“Cain—Lucien’s twin—he’s a different fucking breed. He’s smart as hell, but he’s reckless, and he’s gotten himself into some dark shit that me and Lucien have had to clean up more than once.”
The memory claws its way up—sirens cutting through the night, red soaking the pavement, my hands stained with Cain’s blood while he laughed like he didn’t have a bullet lodged in him. That pain in the ass raw-dogs danger like it’s nothing, and he’s had more close calls than I can count. Stupid, stubborn fuck. I didn’t ask for him, but now he’s part mine, whether I like it or not.
“I’ve only ever really gotten my hands dirty for you, but I’d do it for them too.”
“How did you meet them?”
“Through my roommate in college. I got close with Lucien first, and he walked me through a door I’ve never come back out of.”
That first night, he sat across from me with a laptop open, lines of code streaming across the screen faster than I could follow, and the look in his eyes told me I was either in or I needed to forget I’d ever been there.
“He and Cain brought me in and taught me everything I know—how to break into systems people have spent millions protecting,how to pull information that could destroy lives or save them, depending on who was paying. Sometimes it was for people who deserved the help, people who’d been fucked over by someone with too much power. Sometimes it was for people who didn’t deserve shit but paid well enough that we didn’t ask questions about what they’d do with what we found, and I went with it because I had nothing to lose.”
“Will I ever meet them?”
“Yeah, baby, because that leads me into the rest of my dream, which has always been you. I wanna marry you. I don’t care where, as long as it’s you walking toward me, choosing forever. I should probably invite them, or they’ll have my balls, especially since they’ve listened to me talk about you for the better part of a decade. So you’ll definitely meet them then. Then one day, when you’re ready, I’ll give you two babies. Two little pieces of us who get to grow up knowing what it feels like to be safe and loved every single day. And we’ll move somewhere where we can look up at the sky again, somewhere the stars aren’t drowned out by city lights, and you can actually see the whole universe stretched out above us.”
I look at her like it’s already real, as if I can see it playing out in front of me, moments away from happening instead of some distant dream I’ve been holding onto for years.
“It’ll be you, me, and them.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
“Parts of it started the day we met.” I reach out and wrap a strand of her red hair around my knuckle. “I know we don’t need to rehash that day. I know you know I had nothing to do with what happened, but I’m sorry for every way I failed you leading up to that. Jesus, everything could’ve been so different if I hadn’t fucked it all up.”
“I wouldn’t have what I do now if it hadn’t gone down that way.”
And that hits harder than anything else she could’ve said because she wouldn’t trade those years back. She wouldn’t undo what tore us apart, even if she could.
Not for us.
