"Be good," he said against my hairline. Warm. Fond. The exact tone you'd use with a kid sister you were dropping off at summer camp.
Then he was gone. The front door opened and closed with that deliberate quiet, and his truck started in the driveway, and I stood in the bedroom doorway with my fingers pressed to my lips and the taste of his stubble on my mouth and a new crack forming in the foundation we'd been building so carefully, brick by careful brick.
He'd dodged me.
I replayed it three times in the space of ten seconds, the way my brain replayed everything now, obsessively, frame by frame. I'd leaned up. I'd aimed for his lips. He'd turned. Redirected. Forehead kiss. Be good.
Like I was a child. Like the idea of my mouth on his was something to be gently, kindly,devastatinglyavoided.
I walked back to the bed and sat down on the edge, picked up my coffee, and stared at the note he'd left. The banana pieces in the fridge are NOT too small. - Daddy. The handwriting blurred. I blinked hard, refusing, absolutely refusing, to cry about this. I had cried about needles and nightmares and Maria Volkov's weaponized concern. I was not going to cry because a man who'd held me through four weeks of withdrawal and vomiting and screaming nightmares didn't want to kiss me on the mouth.
Except I was. Obviously. Because the tears were already there, hot and insistent, and my throat was doing that terrible tightening thing, and the Maria-voice in my head, the one I'd been beating back with Xavier's words for two weeks, was sittingup straighter, adjusting its metaphorical skirt, and saying I told you so.
He doesn't see you that way, the voice said, calm and reasonable, but absolute. He sees a broken thing he's nursing back to health. A baby bird with a splinted wing. You don't kiss baby birds on the mouth, Molly. You feed them with an eyedropper and set them free.
But he’d said he did, I reminded myself. Except we hadn’t talked about it since. Had that just been the real test to see if we could have a relationship? He’d behaved like I was a child, not like I was a Little. Not his—not his woman. Not someone he wanted. Just someone he was responsible for.Be good.God. Even the words. The exact words you'd say to a six-year-old.
I was spiraling. I knew I was spiraling because Doc had taught me to recognize the signs, the racing thoughts, the catastrophic interpretations, the way one word became an entire thesis in the space of a heartbeat. I knew I should call Xavier. I knew I should use the phone on the nightstand with his number pre-programmed and say I'm having a hard time and let him talk me down with that voice, that steady, immovable voice. Or at least find Doc who'd be sat in the corner of the study with his book open.
But I couldn't call him about this. I couldn't call the man who'd just dodged my kiss and say why don't you want me when he was on his way to work to help find a missing girl named Penny who was trapped in the same hell I'd just crawled out of. I couldn't make this about me. I couldn't be that selfish, that needy, that—
Burdensome.
The doorbell rang at ten.
I'd almost forgotten they were coming. The morning had collapsed into a blur of spiraling and coffee and Doc checking in twice with his calm, narrated approach, and both times I'd smiled and said I'm fine with the particular conviction ofsomeone who was absolutely not fine but had gotten very good at performing fineness.
I heard Doc open the front door, heard the murmur of voices, female, warm, familiar in a way that tugged at something in my chest, and then footsteps in the hallway, and two women appeared in the living room doorway like a pair of mismatched angels.
Clare looked exactly the way I remembered and completely different. The same delicate bone structure, the same enormous brown eyes, the same quiet, contained energy of a woman who seemed content in her own skin.
Emily was beside her, and the contrast between them was the kind that told a story without words. Where Clare was all careful stillness, Emily screamed confidence and capability. Her hair was in pigtails too, matching pink ribbons, and the detail made something inside me ache with a longing so sharp it had edges. Matching ribbons. Like they'd coordinated. Like they belonged to a world where Littles wore ribbons in their hair and it was normal and safe and unremarkable.
"Molly." Clare's voice cracked on my name, and she pressed both hands to her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears so quickly it was like watching a dam break. "Oh, Molly, you look so much better."
"If you cry, I'll cry," I warned, and my voice was already wobbling. "And I've already cried once today and it's not even noon."
"Once? That's practically stoic for a Little in recovery," Emily said, and the matter-of-factness of it, the casual, unself-conscious use of the word Little, applied to me like it was just a fact about my biology, like eye color or blood type, hit me somewhere I wasn't prepared for. "I cried twice yesterday after a bad day at work, and one of those was because Dion bought the wrong kind of juice boxes."
"There's a wrong kind of juice box?" I asked, and the question came out almost normal. Almost like a person having a conversation instead of a trauma survivor performing one.
"Apple. He bought apple. Everyone knows grape is superior." Emily set her bag on the couch and looked at me with those big brown eyes that held both warmth and a wariness I recognized, the wariness of someone who understood that the line between okay and not okay was thinner than most people realized. "Can I hug you?"
I nodded, and she hugged me—quick and firm and somehow exactly right. Then Clare, whose hug was longer and softer and accompanied by a small, hiccupping sound that told me she was crying despite my warning.
"When Maddox called and said they had you, I sat on the floor of my playroom and just sobbed. Like an absolute mess.” Clare hesitated. “We both went through something similar.”
My eyes widened, understanding Clare’s reaction.
"But Maddox brought her grape juice," Emily added, settling onto the couch with her legs tucked underneath her in a way that made her look about twelve. "Because her Daddy understands juice hierarchy."
I laughed. It came out thin and watery, but it came out, and Clare's face brightened like I'd handed her a gift.
We settled into the living room—me in the corner of the couch that had become mine over the past two weeks, the spot where Xavier's arm usually rested along the back and where the cushion still held the impression of his body beside mine. Clare sat at the other end, angled toward me, and Emily claimed the armchair.
Doc brought tea before retreating back to the study. Chamomile for me—Xavier's standing order, because more than one cup of coffee was apparently a violation of some caregiving code I hadn't been told about—and English breakfast for Clareand Emily. He set the mugs on the coffee table with his quiet, professional efficiency and left with a nod that said I'm here if you need me without the intrusion of actually saying it. I sighed. It didn’t look like he was willing to actually leave the house.
"So," Emily said, wrapping both hands around her mug and looking at me over the rim with an expression that was simultaneously gentle and pointed. "Tell us everything. Or nothing. Or whatever's in between. We're here for all of it."
