It was the “for now” that hooked me. I tried to focus on my eggs, but my hands had started shaking again. I dropped the fork, barely catching it before it clattered off the table.
Burke didn’t comment. He just leaned back in his chair and said, “You can stay here as long as you need, you know. Jojo’s already drawing up a chore chart. And if you want to finish school, we’ll figure it out. This place is big enough for everyone.”
I stared at him. Not because I doubted him, but because nobody had ever offered me that before. A place to just…stay. To exist, without strings attached or rent due in pain.
The words got stuck in my throat. I blinked hard, looking away so he wouldn’t see the tears that threatened to betray me.
He let the silence sit. Not the awkward kind, but the kind that said take your time, there’s enough of it here for both of us.
When I finally trusted myself to speak, I said, “Thank you. For…all of this. For not letting me go back there.”
He smiled, and for the first time since I’d met him, it wasn’t cocky or sarcastic. Just simple and sincere. “It’s nothing,” he said, but it wasn’t.
I forced down another bite, tried to steady my hands. The food helped, a buffer against the rawness of the morning. For a little while, we just ate, the sun crawling up the kitchen wall, the world outside moving at half speed.
When I finished, he took my plate, rinsed it, and set it in the dishwasher. Like it was the most normal thing in the world, a stranger washing up after making you breakfast and saving your life.
I watched him, feeling the smallest seed of something I hadn’t dared imagine in years. Hope, maybe. Or just the absence of dread.
Either way, it was enough for now.
The eggs and toast settled in my stomach like ballast, holding me steady against the tidal pull of what came next. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t scared of the day. Just… adrift, maybe, in the way people get when they realize the map is gone and the only thing left is to make new lines.
After breakfast, Burke insisted on giving me a tour of the house. He said it was “important for guest orientation,” but I think he just didn’t want me alone with my thoughts.
He led me through the living room, pointing out every weird artifact—signed footballs, vintage radio equipment, a taxidermied muskrat named “Captain Fluff”—like he was auditioning for a show on hoarders.
Every room in the place was alive with evidence of people who belonged, people who didn’t expect the world to end every time a door slammed.
I liked the living room best. It had a fireplace with a stone mantle wide enough to sit on, and the couch was big enough for a family of six. There was a rug that looked like someone had murdered a zebra and then regretted it, so they made it into a centerpiece. The coffee table was covered in coasters and half-read magazines, but on top, dead center, was a laptop. It wasn’t there last night.
I hovered at the edge of the room, watching Burke watch me. He picked up the laptop, flipped it open, and turned it so the screen glowed with a welcoming, brand-new login prompt.
“Carter set it up this morning,” Burke said, looking almost sheepish. “Said he loaded all your programs and found your school files on the cloud. He’s kind of a freak about digital hygiene.”
I blinked at the machine, not sure how to process it. The last time I’d seen my own laptop, it was in two pieces and bleeding out its battery onto the carpet. This one was new, sleek, with keys that shone like they’d been dipped in bronze. I ran my fingers over the lid, feeling the smoothness, and for a second I just wanted to cry.
Instead, I asked, “Are you sure this is for me?”
Burke snorted, but gently. “I don’t look like a computer science major, do I?”
I grinned, even as my throat tightened up. “I mean… you’re more the type to break things than build them.”
He sat next to me on the couch, close enough that our knees almost touched. “I’m a fixer, too,” he said, voice softer than usual. “But Carter did all the real work. You shouldn’t have to put your life on hold because of what he did.”
The “he” was obvious. I tried not to think about Dennis, or what he’d taken, or the way he’d always found a way to reach into the future and snap it in half. Instead, I stared at the glowing screen and tried to remember my passwords.
Burke leaned over, typed in the guest account—“It’s set up as ‘OmegaBoss’ until you change it”—and gave me a sideways glance that made my cheeks go warm. I was already logged into my email, my class portals, even my dumb social feeds. The photo of my old cat, the one I’d had to give up when Dennis got allergic to her, was the desktop wallpaper.
I blinked. “You even got my stuff off the old hard drive?”
He shrugged, like it was nothing. “Carter’s the best. He says nothing’s really deleted, not if you know what you’re doing. I made him promise not to look at your memes.”
I laughed, the sound rusty and raw. “He’s going to regret that.”
Burke grinned, and for a minute we just sat there, the blue light of the screen painting both our faces. He smelled like soap and coffee and something wild I couldn’t name.
I let my eyes close, just for a second, breathing it in until my heart slowed to something closer to normal.
