“Shut up.” I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand. “And somehow—somehow—in the middle of all that, in the middle of running and fighting and keeping people alive and watching the whole world come apart at the seams, I end up getting attached anyway. To both of them. But to her…”
The word sat there, unfinished, and I let it sit.
He didn’t push.
“I watched her think I died today,” I said, my voice so quiet the wind nearly stole it. “I stood there on the shore, those things dragging me down, and I looked up and saw her face. She… she broke, Callan. Right there. Standing on that boat, watching me go under, everything in her just… came apart.”
I swallowed, my throat dry and raw, clicking with the effort.
“And that broke something in me,” I finished. “Something I can’t undo. Something I don’t think I want to undo, and that scares the hell out of me more than anything dead.”
Callan absorbed my words, turning them over, giving them the weight they deserved.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “That tracks.”
I let out a tired, unsteady breath, rubbing both hands over my face, dragging my palms through the grime and dried salt.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with any of it,” I admitted. “Never learned. Never wanted to. And now I’m sitting here in the dark, half-dead, talking about my feelings like some kind of—”
“Human being?” he offered.
I glared at him.
He grinned.
“Welcome to it,” he said. “It’s terrible. You’ll hate every second.”
“Already do.”
“Too late to go back.”
I looked out at the water. Twenty miles of dark nothing, and I’d made it across. Still breathing. Still bleeding. Still here, with people waiting up the hill, worth every inch of it.
I planted my hands on the dock and shoved myself upward with a grunt. My legs shook beneath me, my body protesting the shift from horizontal to vertical with a symphony of cracks and groans that made Callan wince in sympathy.
“Let’s go,” I said, steadying myself, squaring my shoulders as best I could. “I’ve got people to get back to.”
Callan grabbed the carrier—Doc Fluffbutt letting out one more quiet, exhaustedmrrpfrom within—and fell into step beside me.
“Fair warning,” Callan said as we walked. “Libby’s a wreck. Lock tried to talk her down for two hours; she finally went into your room and passed out. Fiona’s barely holding it together, and Lily has been rotating through various stages of grief since she got here.”
“Great,” I muttered. “Can’t wait.”
“Also, Lock made soup.”
I glanced at him.
“Soup.”
“From the garden. It’s actually pretty good.”
“The world ended, and Lock is making soup.”
“The man handles crises in his own way, Finn.”
I shook my head and kept walking, the carrier bumping gently against Callan’s leg with each step, the cat silent.
The path wound upward through the trees. With every step, the house drew closer—a shape in the darkness, warm light glowing in the windows, solid and real, and mine. Something I had been bracing against, without quite knowing it, began to go quiet.
