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But then he died, and with him, it felt like all of that died too.

The table was empty. The chair where he used to sit felt so cold, so wrong. I couldn’t bring myself to even look at a sketchbook after that. I couldn’t touch the paints or the brushes. It was as if the very act of holding a pencil would be an admission that he was gone, that everything we’d built together had vanished.

I couldn’t go there. Not yet. I couldn’t bear to pick up the pieces of something that once felt so alive between us. I wasn’t sure if I ever could again.

For years, I didn’t touch a thing. The art supplies gathered dust, buried in the back of a drawer, untouched. I told myself I didn’t need it anymore—that I didn’t need him in that way. I couldn’t bear to feel the grief it would stir up, the brutal reminder of everything I’d lost.

Then Maddox opened The Boxing Den, a place where he poured his anger, his rage—the things he couldn’t say out loud, the pain he swallowed whole. Then one night, there I was—drunk, numb, standing in the middle of it all. It felt like the world was spinning around me, but I wasn’t part of it anymore.

Without thinking, my hand reached for a paintbrush.

It was like muscle memory took over—like that part of me still remembered what I couldn’t say. I wasn’t doing this for me. Not to find my way back to art, or to the girl I was when Daddy was here. Not to reclaim what felt lost forever. Hell, I didn’t even care about the strokes on the wall or whether it looked perfect.

I did it for Maddox. I picked up that paintbrush because I couldn’t find the words to tell him that he wasn’t alone. I didn’t need to understand every inch of the hell he carried to see that it was eating him alive. I couldn’t fix it, but I could bleed out my own grief beside his. I could leave something real on those walls—something raw and honest and quietly screaming—so he’d know someone else had been wrecked too.

Not the same way.

But wrecked, all the same.

Now, here I am, standing in a room meant for new life—brushing color onto bare walls like it doesn’t cost me anything. Like it doesn’t crack something open inside me every time the bristles meet the paint.

The nursery smells like fresh paint and baby powder—Evie brought a whole box of stuff in last week, unboxed tiny clothes and soft blankets like it wouldn’t shatter me. I didn’t tell her it did. I just nodded, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work. Because this baby…she’s the silver lining in a storm that’s swallowed more than her parents should’ve had to survive.

I set the brush down on the tray with a quiet clink, flexing my fingers, stained in sage and cream and something almost like hope. The mural’s half-finished, but it’s enough to start becoming something real.

I sigh, the kind that catches in your chest before it escapes, and turn to face my best friend—the one who always sees way too damn much, even when I wish she wouldn’t.

“Seriously,” I say, wiping my hands on my paint splattered overalls, “if he finds you in here, he’s going to blow a gasket.”

Evie leans against the doorframe, arms folded under her chest, the soft glow from the hallway catching on the auburn strands in her dutch braids. “I can handle the big guy, don’t worry.”

I snort, dragging my paint-smeared forearm across my forehead. “I don’t know, Eves. He’s been more intense since you got pregnant—as if he wasn’t already walking around like a grenade with the pin pulled.”

Evie rolls her eyes softly, but her voice barely rises above a whisper, thick with something she’s trying hard not to show. Her hand moves slowly and gently over the side of her belly, like she’s holding a fragile secret.

“He’s scared, Lou. More scared than I’ve ever seen. This baby…she’s everything he wants, but he still can’t shake the feeling that he doesn’t deserve her. Like it’s some cruel trick hope handed to him just to break his heart all over again, and nothing tears me up more than watching him reduce himself down to unworthy.”

“All that’ll change when she gets here.” I smirk. “I rag on him, but I get it. Aunt Joe though? She’s one bad mood swing from going full exorcist. He had her so riled up over some lopsided-ass baby blanket she’d been knitting. She stormed into Bangers with a flask in one hand and a crochet needle in the other, screaming about ancestral betrayal and demanding Crew ‘peel like a banana, nice and slow’ so she could align her stitches with his abs. I think she hexed the jukebox. It’s been playing nothing but Prince ever since.”

“That fucking blanket is black and Prince is a pussy.”

Evie and I both jump, hearts slamming against our ribs. I snatch the paintbrush like it’s a grenade, spin on a dime, and toss it over my shoulder. The damn thing arcs through the stale air, landing with a sloppy plop on Maddox’s chest—smearing a fat streak of paint across his dark shirt like a God damn war paint.

“Jesus Christ,” I snap, my voice riding that thin edge between sarcasm and a scream. “It’s not normal to be built like a damn freight train and move like a fucking ghost.”

Maddox lifts his hands slowly, palms out, that shit-eating grin already spreading across his face like he’s proud of himself.

I glare, heat prickling up my neck. “And don’t say the p-word in front of me,” I bite out, jabbing the air with my paintbrush like I might actually stab him with it. “It gives me the ick. Like, full-body shudder, bleach-my-ears kind of ick.”

Evie tries to stifle a laugh but ends up snorting, and Maddox just shakes his head, glancing down at the streak of paint with exaggerated dismay. “Nice aim,” he mutters, making me roll my eyes even harder.

Maddox slightly tilts his head, his dark gaze staring right through me and because I know Maddox, I know what’s coming next.

“I forgot, the only Wilder man allowed to say pussy around you is the oldest one.”

See? Fucking told you.

Evie slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter, but it bubbles out anyway—sharp and unfiltered. I shoot her a look, slow and pointed.