Neither of us fits neatly into those memories anymore.
“We don’t tell them,” I say.
He glances back. He knows exactly what I mean.
“I agree,” he says. “That’s best for now.”
We already made the decision last night. This is just saying it out loud again. Confirming it.
The knock comes about ten minutes later.
Dane opens the door, and Christina is through it almost immediately, moving with the kind of momentum that comes from being forced to wait too long.
She stops when she sees him.
Just stops.
Then she crosses the room and takes his face in both hands.
“Michael Dane—” Her voice breaks. “I didn’t know if it was really going to be you.”
Her eyes move over him, taking him in—the jaw, the eyes, everything the years have changed.
“But it is you.” She lets out a shaky breath. “And you’re a man.”
“I’ve been a man for a while, Mum.”
“You were only a boy when I last saw you. Driving away with Ryan—” Her voice catches on his name, and she can’t finish.
Dane pulls her into him.
She folds against his chest, arms wrapped tightly around him, her face pressed into his shoulder. The sound she makes is quiet, but it sounds like fourteen years of grief finally breaking open.
Grandad walks through the door and straight into my arms, tears running down his face.
“Thank God you’re both alive,” he says into my hair.
For years, it’s only been Dane. Only one person’s touch. One person’s presence. This feels different. Familiar, but distant too. Like something from another life.
“I missed you, Grandad.”
He leans back and looks at me, his gaze moving across my face as though he’s trying to reconcile memory with reality.
“You’re beautiful,” he says. “All grown up. It’s hard to believe.”
Then he pulls Dane into a hug just as fierce.
“I looked for you for years. There was nothing. No wreckage. No signal. We thought the yacht went down. We thought you were gone.”
Dane rests his forehead briefly against his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Grandad. There was no way to know. No one could have.”
When they separate, Dane’s hand brushes the small of my back.
“You remember Charlotte?”
Christina turns her attention to me. “Of course I do. I’m glad Dane wasn’t alone.”
