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“I know,” he murmurs. “But sometimes I wonder if I’ve spent so long trying not to be him, I don’t know who I am without that fear keeping me in check.”

God, I get that. Too much.

“You ever think maybe fear isn’t the worst thing to carry?” I whisper. “At least it keeps you moving.”

“Yeah,” he says, turning to face me. His eyes are soft and stormy all at once, like rain against a window. “But I’d rather be moving toward something this time. Not just away from it.”

The timer on the oven beeps.

He doesn’t move.

Neither do I.

“I think,” I say, voice barely above a breath, “you already are.”

His gaze dips to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and for a second, it feels like we’re right there on the edge of something again. Not the messy, reckless thing we used to be. But this. Whatever this is. Realer. Softer. More terrifying.

But then he blinks, and the moment dissolves, and he clears his throat before turning back to the stove.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he says gruffly, reaching for the plates. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“Starving,” I say.

For food. For safety.

For the boy who made himself into a man by surviving everything he wasn’t given—and still choosing to show up anyway.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

MYA

I’ve been off all day.

The kind of off that settles in your bones before your eyes even open. The kind that makes everything feel wrong—even the air. Like the world tilted half a degree overnight, and no one but me noticed.

It started with the dream.

Not a nightmare in the traditional sense. No monsters or shadows or screaming. Just silence. Stillness.

Fletch standing at the edge of a room, his back to me, walking out the door without a word.

Just like before.

And somehow, that hurts more than any cruel goodbye ever could.

Because it happened. Not in a dream—but in real, gut-wrenching, soul-bruising reality. Before the accident. Before the twins. When I needed him and he wasn’t there. When I was scared and he disappeared.

He didn’t say he didn’t want us. He didn’t have to.

He left.

And today? Even with him back, with things going better than I ever thought possible, I can’t shake the tightness in my chest. The weight in my lungs. This gnawing sense that everything is too good. That it’s all glass just waiting to shatter.

So I bury myself in work, clinging to Reese’s campaign briefs like a life raft. A fresh drop for Simply Reese. A new line of seamless maternity leggings and matching zip-up hoodies in the softest bamboo blend I’ve ever touched. I’m supposed to be drafting content for the pre-launch countdown, but all I can think about is the ticking clock in my own head. Reese offered to watch the twins so I could get some work done and I’m more than grateful for the slight reprieve. I need to work to keep myself distracted today.

I’m still staring blankly at a blinking cursor when the front door creaks open.

“You got a minute?” Fletch’s voice slices through the haze, warm and familiar and dangerous in the way comfort always is when you don’t trust it to last.