I understand that feeling all too well.
“You did a lot,” I say softly. “For them. For me.”
He looks at me, not sure he heard right.
“If you hadn’t taken me with you…” My throat tightens, but I push through. “I’d probably still be standing in my kitchen trying to decide what to save. Or worse.”
His jaw flexes.
“Thank you,” I say. “For thinking about my bees when you had a hundred other things to worry about.”
The table goes a little quieter.
Jesse glances up from his plate, expression gentler than his tone when he says, “Yeah, man. That was above and beyond.”
Wyatt nods, eyes flicking between us. “You made good calls last night.”
Marshall shifts in his chair, clearly unused to being on the receiving end of this much gratitude at once. Some of the harsh lines in his face ease.
He nods once, filing the words away somewhere private. “Just doing what needed doing.”
But as I take a sip of my coffee and listen to the twins argue happily about who gets the last piece of bacon, the knot of fear in my chest loosens just a little more.
Because my house might not be okay.
The fire might get worse.
The past might still be waiting to claw its way into my present.
But here at this table, with these people, I don’t feel like I’m bracing against the world alone.
Later on, after dinner, the twins’ yawns become so frequent they look like two tiny lion cubs trying, and failing, to convince us they’re still fierce. Jesse scoops them up with the easy strength of a man who’s done this bedtime rodeo every night for six years.
“Come on, monsters,” he says, nudging the loft ladder with his foot. “Up you go.”
“We’re not monsters,” Eliza insists sleepily.
“Ferocious angels,” Caleb corrects.
“Terrifying cherubs,” Jesse finishes.
They giggle all the way up.
I expect the men to scatter once the kids are tucked in. Wyatt with the fire updates. Marshall with his thoughts. Jesse pretending he’s going to “clean up” before getting distracted by something shiny.
I expect to be politely ignored.
Instead, when silence settles over the loft, they all drift back into the living room like gravity pulls them there—and, strangely, it pulls me too.
I hover awkwardly on the edge of the kitchen at first, hands wrapped around a mug of the chamomile tea Wyatt made earlier.
“You don’t have to hide,” Jesse calls from the couch. “We don’t bite.”
“Speak for yourself,” Wyatt mutters into his mug.
“Doc,” Jesse groans, “your vibe is the human equivalent of a warm blanket. You absolutely do not bite.”
“I could bite,” Wyatt says, offended.
