Page 47

We’ve talked through contingencies. If Lou or I can’t make it to school pickup, Mama or Sophie will step in. We’ve built a net around him. Our village. Just in case life gets messy.

You can bet your sweet ass it will. Life always does.

Which is why tonight, we’re introducing him to Evie, Maddox, and the boys—one bite at a time. Throwing him into the middle of the Wilder circus would be cruel. Dallas met Mama a few days ago, and to no one’s surprise, he fell for her the second she handed him an apron and put him to work. They made cookies. Lou and I watched from the kitchen doorway while Dallas told Mama more in thirty minutes of scooping dough than we’d gotten out of him in days.

She said, “Busy hands make for the best idle chatter.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Most nights, Lou and I will be ghosts passing through the same house—her walking out the door for her shift at Bangers just as I walk in, too late to catch more than the scent of her shampoo in the hallway.

I catch her now, playfully bopping Dallas on the nose. He growls in protest, but I see the way his eyes cling to her like she’s gravity. Like he wants to fall but doesn’t trust the landing.

I know that look. I wear it too.

Like she just might be the answer to every prayer he’s dared to whisper aloud.

Yeah. Same, kid.

There’s something Lou keeps tucked beneath the surface—quiet, sharp, coiled like wire just under skin. I feel it before I see it. It hums in the space between us like static, raising goosebumps along my neck even in the heat.

It’s in the way she watches us when she thinks no one’s paying attention—me, Dallas, this messy little life we’re piecing together with trembling hands and worn-down hearts. Her eyes soften for just a second, and it guts me—because in that second, she’s not the sharp-mouthed, bulletproof woman the world sees. She’s wide open. Hollowed out by a longing so deep it leaves her looking like she’s grieving something she never even got to hold.

She watches us like we’re something she lost before she ever had the chance to claim it.

God, I want to grab her. Shake her. Pull her in and make her feel the truth of it—of us. I want to shout it right in her face if that’s what it takes.

Open your eyes, Louisiana. We’re already yours.

Lou clears her throat and glances over her shoulder—just as I catch myself watching her. Our eyes lock for a flicker of a second, and I swear the world shrinks down to that breath between us.

She looks away fast, biting the inside of her cheek, cheeks flushing just a shade darker. It’s like she’s caught between wanting to run and wanting to stay—between all the walls she’s built and the hope that maybe she doesn’t have to keep them up forever. I don’t tell her every night her hand slips under that God awful line of pillows she insists on keeping between us and hooks her pinkie around mine. Like touching me in sleep is the only time it’s safe.

Dallas shifts beside her, fiddling with the edge of his sleeve, and mutters under his breath, “Yeah, and you almost look like a real mom.”

Then I watch as Louisiana Wright in all her ironclad, razor-tongued glory, wilts. Not a dramatic collapse. No gasping or tears. Just…folds in on herself. Shoulders draw in. Spine stiffens. Hands twitch in her lap like she doesn’t quite trust them not to shatter.

She doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t make a sound. Just pushes up from the couch with a weak smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and mumbles, “Excuse me.”

Then she’s gone—out of the living room and down the hall like something’s chasing her.

Dallas frowns, chewing at his lip. “What’d I say?” he asks, trying for casual but missing it by a mile.

I let out a slow breath, watching him fidget with the edge of that band tee—black cotton, fraying sleeves, worn soft from wear. “You and Lou…” I say quietly. “You’re more alike than you think. Tough as hell on the outside, sure. But underneath? You both feel everything. Like open wounds trying to pass for scar tissue.”

Dallas doesn’t say anything. Just blinks at the floor like it might give him answers.

“Grief does that,” I add. “Carves you open in places no one can see. Places you don’t even know how to protect.”

He shifts. Then turns those pale eyes up to me, the blue of them sharp and a little startled. “She lost someone?” he asks, like it’s just occurring to him that maybe Lou’s been carrying something too.

I nod slowly. “When you lose the people who’re supposed to show you how love’s meant to feel—before you even know what love is—it…rewires you. Makes it damn near impossible to let anyone all the way in. Harder still to let yourself need them.”

Dallas swallows, glancing toward the hallway she disappeared down. The silence stretches between us, tight with questions he doesn’t know how to ask.

“You going to check on her?” he asks after a minute, voice small.

“No,” I say gently. “I’m checking on you.”