“Mom—”
“I’m not mad,” she says quickly. “I just want to understand.”
I look down at my tea. The honey has already dissolved, but I keep stirring it anyway because it gives my hands something to do. “It’s complicated.”
She smiles sadly. “Love usually is.”
That word makes something ache so hard it feels physical. It sits between us, warm and impossible and too close to the truth to be accidental.
I cut in quietly, because if I stay on Jon much longer I’ll say something I can’t take back. “How did you… get over it?”
She blinks. “Get over what, baby?”
“When… when Mikhail took you.”
The room stills.
For a moment, I think I’ve gone too far. Think I’ve reached for a scar she keeps tucked under Sunday dinners and folded napkins and all the practiced softness she built around it.
Then she exhales slowly.
“I didn’t,” she admits. “Not really.”
My heart clenches.
“I survived,” she says. “I learned how to breathe again. How to sleep. How to laugh. But the fear? The memories?” She taps her temple. “They never fully leave.”
“Then how—” My voice breaks. “How are you okay?”
She reaches for my hands, wraps them in both of hers, and looks at me like she knows exactly what I’m asking. Not how she functioned. How she kept living in a body that remembered too much.
“Because of your father,” she says simply. “Because he stayed. Because he held me when I couldn’t stop shaking. Because he didn’t treat me like I was broken.”
Tears burn my eyes before I can stop them.
“And one day,” she continues softly, “I realized that loving him didn’t erase what happened.”
Her thumb strokes across my knuckles.
“It just made it smaller.”
I think of Jon. Of his hands grounding me. His voice in the dark.
The way he never looks at me like I’m fragile, only like I’m worth protecting and dangerous enough to stand beside. The way he held back even when he wanted more. The way he stayed.
It clicks all at once. Slow. Terrifying.Beautiful.
My mom squeezes my fingers. “Whoever you love… make sure he’s someone who stays.”
I nod, because there isn’t anything else I trust myself to do.
Chapter 25
Captain Jonathan
This is worse than interrogation.
I’ve been shot at, blown up, dragged through mud and blood and hell itself, and none of it compares to sitting stiffly on a floral couch in my best friend’s living room while he pretends I don’t exist. I would rather take another round to the shoulder than sit through one more second of this polite, domestic silence where every tick of the clock sounds like an accusation.
