Page 53

The confession bubbles up like carbonation, fizzy and fragile. “Sometimes… I feel guilty.”

Reese frowns. “About what?”

“About him,” I say, voice thin as tissue paper. “Fletch.”

Even saying his name feels like picking at a scab I swore I’d leave alone. “On the rare occasion I think about him—like when Kingston’s at practice, or I’m alone in the shower—I get this pang in my chest. Not because I miss him, but because I wonder if I should. Or if thinking about him at all somehow makes me disloyal.”

Reese’s brows pinch together as she comes over and crouches beside me. “Mya… thinking about someone who broke your heart doesn’t mean you want them back. It means you’re human.”

I rest my hand on the swell of my belly. Two tiny kicks echo beneath my palm, perfectly timed. “It’s taken me time to breathe again, Reese. Like—really breathe. But I am. Slowly. And I’m… I don’t know. Settling. In a way I didn’t think was possible. Not this soon.”

She smiles then, a slow bloom of relief and pride. “Good. That’s so good.”

For a moment, we sit like that—her on the floor, me in the chair, the air thick with layered history and the scent of leftover garlic bread. Then she clears her throat and shifts.

“I think Fletch is starting to realize what he’s done,” she says, almost reluctantly. “Thorin says he’s not himself lately. That he’s distracted in the studio. Doesn’t talk much. You come up more than you probably should.”

I snort. “A little late for soul-searching, don’t you think?”

Reese shrugs. “Maybe. But the band’s going to be in New York in two weeks. Are you… ready to see him?”

The question slices through the air like a scalpel. Clean. Brutal.

I shake my head slowly. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.” My voice wobbles, and I don’t bother hiding it. “He walked away from me, Reese. From us. From his sons. He didn’t fight. Didn’t even look back.” I blink fast, but one treacherous tear makes a break for it anyway. “How do you come back from that?”

“You don’t,” Reese says gently. “Not really.”

“But then there’s Kingston.” I say his name like a prayer. Like it’s laced with all the quiet, steady things I’ve never known. “He’s… here. Always. He holds me without expecting me to be okay. He talks to the twins when he thinks I’m asleep. He makes pancakes shaped like dinosaurs and gets pissed when they come out looking like blobs. And he wants me.” My throat tightens. “All of me. Even the broken parts.”

Reese exhales, eyes glassy. “It’s rare,” she says, voice hoarse. “Given the circumstances. A man who sees your worst day and still chooses you anyway? That’s… that’s rare, M.”

I nod. “I know.”

There’s another beat of quiet before she asks the inevitable. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to Horseshoe Bay?”

My laugh is small. Sad. “I don’t know. I mean, that place raised me. It ruined me, too. But here… this apartment, this city, this life?” I glance around Kingston’s penthouse, which still smells like paint and cedarwood and the start of something new. “It wasn’t what I planned. But it’s mine. And I want to make the most of it.”

Reese rises and tugs me into a hug that smells like lemon shampoo and unshed grief. She doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I.

Because sometimes the loudest kind of healing is the kind you don’t need to put into words.

Reese doesn’t say anything at first. Just looks at me like she’s trying to memorize the way my face settles when it’s not pretending everything’s fine. And we stay like that for a second—no filters, no facades. Just two girls in sweatpants with too many emotions and not enough time.

We stay up later than we should, talking about everything and nothing. Baby names we don’t hate. Celebrity crushes. Why chocolate chip cookie dough will always beat out rocky road. It’s the kind of girlhood chaos I didn’t realize I missed until now. The kind that doesn’t apologize for taking up space. The kind that lets you breathe without holding your breath.

By the time I finally crash, it’s well after two.

The next morning hits harder than it should.

Maybe it’s the way the apartment feels quieter without her voice cutting through it like sunlight. Maybe it’s just the way goodbyes never really get easier. Not the real ones, anyway.

I walk Reese to the curb, keys in one hand, her suitcase in the other. It’s misty out, not quite raining, but the kind of air that clings like memory.

Reese wipes under one eye. “Ugh, I swore I wasn’t gonna cry. It’s only two weeks.”

“I know.” I smile, watery and raw. “But still.”

She pulls me in, arms tight around me like she’s holding the version of me she’s proud of and scared for all at once. And maybe she is.