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I look out across the yard, where Dallas is grinning so wide it barely fits his face. Him, Charlie, Bash, and that dumbass dog, running in the tall grass like nobody’s ever hurt a single one of them.

Then the truth threatens to break out of me like a dam cracking wide open.

“I can’t give him the one thing that matters,” I whisper, and my voice cracks wide open. “I can’t be what he needs. I can’t even⁠—”

But I stop and find myself for the second time that day locking it back up refusing to share with anyone.

Evie doesn’t blink. Doesn’t hesitate. “Lou, there’s a reason why I chose you to raise Charlie and Bash if something ever happened to me.”

I let out a bitter laugh, sharp and ragged. “Yeah? Fuck you for that.” My voice cracks under the weight of it. “Finding out you had God damn papers drawn up way before you were laid up on death’s doorstep? That was low, Eves. Real fucking low.”

The memory still haunts me—Henry’s quiet voice telling me to check under her bed for a manila envelope. My hands shaking as I pulled it out, terrified of what it meant. The weight of it. The finality. What gutted me most? That she’d trust me with the two souls she loved more than her own breath.

Evie doesn’t flinch. Just waves a hand, all nonchalance, like we’re talking about expired milk. “Besides the point.”

“No,” I snap. “It is the point.”

She lets out a long sigh, then locks eyes with me—those damn eyes of hers, one blue, one brown, always too sharp, too knowing. Like she can see the things I haven’t said out loud. Maybe she can.

“The point is,” she says quietly, “there’s no one better. No one I trust more. Not just to raise my boys if the worst happened…” Her voice wavers just a little, but she steadies it. “But to love them. Fully. Fiercely. Unconditionally.”

I look away, jaw locked tight. Because I feel it. The dam starting to crack. The part where everything I’ve worked to keep buried starts clawing its way to the surface.

“That’s the kind of love you carry, Lou,” she says. “The kind that’d tear you apart if it meant saving someone else. You’d burn the whole damn world down to keep them safe.”

She pauses. Lets that sit between us. Then adds, “It damn near breaks my heart that you don’t see that in yourself.”

I don’t mean to answer. It just slips out, hoarse and wrecked. “I see it.”

Evie gives me this look—tender and tired, the kind people wear when they’ve been through hell and made peace with it. A smile that knows me too well.

“Some part of that boy already belongs to you,” she says. “And you’d be a God damn fool to pretend otherwise.”

We sit there letting the silence enveloping us as we watch the boys run and play until dinner is done. Evie’s words haunt me all evening and on the way back home.

After tucking a bone-tired Dally into bed—his limbs heavy, lashes already brushing his cheeks—I step into the shower and crank the water until it’s just shy of burning.

I stand under the spray like it might wash off the day. Like it might scrub away Evie’s razor-edged truth and the way Henry wouldn’t even look at me on the drive home. God, I just want to go home. Pour a drink. Let the silence eat me alive.

“You almost look like a real mom.”

Dallas had said it so casual. So damn offhanded.

Yet—he may as well have cracked my ribs open.

I stay there until the steam fades and the water runs cold, until my skin prickles and my fingertips wrinkle. Then I crawl out, heavy and raw, bracing myself for what comes next. For the Sheriff.

What greets me when I step into the hallway isn’t the cold shoulder or empty silence I was expecting.

It’s him.

Laid out beside his badge, his gun, and the worn leather of his belt—my old sketchbook. The one I swore I'd buried for good. Tattered edges, dog-eared pages, and my favorite pencils tucked beside it like they never left. Like he’s been holding on to them for me all this time.

I freeze. My chest caves in around a breath I didn’t know I was holding. That sketchbook hasn’t seen daylight since the day we buried Daddy. I boxed it up and shoved it in the back of his office like if I didn’t look at it, the grief couldn’t touch me.

But now? Now I’m cradling it to my chest like a lifeline, and god, it hurts how much I missed it.

“You’ve always been shit at saying how you feel,” comes that voice—low, lazy, sinful—dragging over my skin like a slow burn.