“Someone rope you in?”
My hand pauses. “You could say that.”
“Ah,” he says, glancing over. His eyes are sharp beneath the brim of the hat, twinkling despite the lines that frame them. “So there’s a woman involved.”
I choose to ignore that; he already knows the answer. Instead, I lean back on my haunches and glance toward the treehouse again, scrutinizing the climbing ivy.
I’ve never been good at things that don’t come with an expiration date. Temporary is easy.
It’s the things meant to last that scare me.
“I don’t remember much before you,” I say quietly.
Harry nods once. “You were seven. Most people wouldn’t.”
“You and Grandma… you didn’t try to replace anything.”
“No,” he says simply. “We just stayed.”
And then, without really meaning to, I follow the thread backward in my mind.
It’s not the first time I’ve tried. Not the first time I’ve come out here, looked at the treehouse, and tried to remember anything before it.
But it’s always just fragments.
The red of a tail light, my mother’s scarf on the dashboard. The sound of my dad’s laugh, though it’s distant and warped now, like hearing it underwater.
Sirens.
Cold.
But mostly, I remember Adele’s arms around me. The softness of her cardigan and the tremble in her breath. Harry’s dependable voice, cutting through the noise like an anchor, his arms folding around both of us like he could shield us from whatever came next.
Everything good came after that.
I barely remember my parents, but I remember her hands. His voice.
The smell of thyme and fresh-cut wood.
And maybe that’s what love looks like. It isn’t loud, it doesn’t demand or dazzle. It’s the people who become permanent when everything else falls away.
Who tend what needs tending and let the rest grow wild.
Grandpa nudges my shoulder with his elbow.
“You’re thinking too hard again, kid.”
I huff a breath. “Probably.”
He smiles, satisfied.
“Good. Means you’re alive.”
Chapter nine
I didn’t think it would feel like this
Carina
