Page 113 of Reckless

“You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

Simple words.

But somehow, they’re harder to sit with than anything else she could have said.

I look down at the table. “Didn’t have much choice.”

“I know.” Her voice softens. “That’s the part that pisses me off.”

My eyes lift to hers.

“You were a kid, Ghost. You shouldn’t have needed to understand the system well enough to survive it because the adults around you couldn’t get their shit together.” Her fingers move over the corner of the file, smoothing it down. “And I’m not saying that because I feel sorry for you, so don’t even start.”

The corner of my mouth pulls despite myself. “Wasn’t going to.”

Her eyebrow lifts. “Bullshit.”

That almost gets a laugh out of me—almost.

She looks at the file again, and when she speaks this time, some of the fire has left her voice. “Is that why you never once treated this like a favor to me?”

“It was never a favor.” I hold her gaze, because I’ve gotten better at that too. “This case stopped being just yours a while ago. I just didn’t say so until now.”

She watches me for a moment, and I can almost see all the things she wants to ask.

Which home?

What happened?

Where were my parents?

How bad was it?

Sage doesn’t ask a single one—instead, her hand crosses the table and finds mine. “Okay,” she says quietly.

My fingers close around hers.

She leaves the file sitting between us and doesn’t try to drag another piece of my past out of me just because I cracked the door open. She stays, her hand in mine, giving me room to leave the rest where it belongs.

Turns out, that’s enough.

We sit like that for a while before her eyes drop to our hands. Something shifts in her expression, and when she finally pulls away, it isn’t to reach for another file.

She leans back in her chair, takes a breath, and I know before she says anything that we’re not talking about me anymore.

She doesn’t wait for me to ask about her.

That’s the part that undoes me.

After everything I’ve just handed her, she gives something back.

I sit across the table, laptop still open and coffee gone cold for the second time, and let her get there without pushing. I’ve learned by now that Sage gets to the hard things on her own timeline, and trying to hurry her only makes those walls go higher.

So I stay quiet.

But she starts talking anyway. “My dad left when I was seven,” she says, and the words come out steadier than I expect. “Piper was five. One day he was our dad, and then he just… stopped being one. Stopped calling, stopped showing up. Eventually, we stopped expecting him to.”

I stay exactly where I am, fighting the urge to reach for her because I know if I break the rhythm now, she’ll stop, and I won’t get the rest. Instead, I listen, the way I listen to everything, completely, careful not to miss a line.