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And for a beat, neither of us speaks.

The hospital fades in the rearview mirror as I pull away, but the weight of it? It doesn’t. It clings to us, sticky and electric.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see this day,” I admit. “Not like this. Not with you awake.”

She finally turns, and her face is all soft lines and storm clouds. “Me neither.”

I grip the wheel harder than I need to. “The day they told me you might not wake up… I couldn’t breathe, Mya. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I just sat there. And I told myself if you opened your eyes, if you came back to me, I’d do everything differently.”

“You have,” she whispers.

I glance over. Her head’s tipped against the window, eyes heavy-lidded.

“You stayed,” she adds.

“I never left,” I say, voice low and wrecked.

She nods like she already knows that. Like somewhere in the dark corners of her coma, she felt it.

The rest of the ride is quiet.

But not empty.

It’s full of the things we’re too tired to say and too scared to hope.

By the time we reach the house, she’s half-asleep, curled in my hoodie like she’s trying to vanish into something familiar. I park in front of the wraparound porch and cut the engine, then slip out quietly. The gravel crunches underfoot as I circle to her side, help her out of the truck, and carry her bag up the steps of the house Ryan built—solid, warm, and just a short walk from where Reese and Thorin live now.

The air inside smells like lavender and lemon and the ghost of everything we lost and found again.

“I washed the sheets,” I say like it matters.

She doesn’t answer.

She just moves slowly toward the couch, sits like she’s trying not to sink through the floor, and stares at the photo I framed of the boys in the NICU. One in each arm. My hands barely able to hold how small they are.

“We’ll visit them first thing,” I say.

“I know.” Her smile is paper-thin. “I already miss them.”

“They’ll be home soon.” I say it like a promise. Because it is.

She nods again.

And then, when I least expect it, she reaches for my hand and threads her fingers through mine. Like she’s anchoring herself here.

It floors me.

Not because she’s never touched me like this before—she has. In other lifetimes, in other versions of us. But because this version? This fragile, trembling one in my hoodie with her eyes heavy and her body hollowed out by grief and grit and everything in between—this version of her needs something real to hold on to.

And somehow, she chose me.

“I started turning one of the spare rooms into a nursery,” I tell her quietly. “Back when you were still asleep.”

Her head tilts toward me, lashes sweeping low like the words weigh more than she expected. “You did?”

“Yeah,” I say, voice rough. “Painted one wall. Ordered some stuff. Crib. Changing table. But then I stopped. Couldn’t bring myself to keep going without you. It felt…wrong. Like I was building a life you weren’t coming back to.”

Her fingers squeeze mine. Just once. But it’s enough to make the ache in my chest crack wider.