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Then Willow’s humor faded. “So what are we gonna do?”

That question settled between us differently.

I turned toward the hospital window at the end of the hallway.

Outside, Hallowridge was still dark, the city almost peaceful from several floors up, as if our entire life hadn’t been turned upside down in less than two hours.

“I don’t know yet.”

Willow studied me. “We can stay here tonight with Granny.”

“We will.”

“And after that?”

I didn’t have an answer.

She reached over and squeezed my hand. “We’ll figure everything out tomorrow. Tonight, let’s just make sure Granny is settled and try to get some sleep without solving the next six months of our lives before daylight.”

I nodded because there was nothing else to say.

A few feet away, Kaidence had curled sideways in the waiting-room chair with his tablet resting against his stomach. His eyelids were starting to droop, but he was fighting sleep like he had been personally assigned to stay awake until the crisis ended.

I had packed up my life and driven four and a half hours home because Granny needed me. I came back believing I could organize everything the way I always did.

I would take care of her, get Kaidence settled, find another job, and build some version of normal around us. Now I was standing in a hospital hallway trying to calculate hotel costs, replacement clothes, food, transportation, insurance, repairs, and how long we could realistically live out of suitcases.

I didn’t know when the house would be safe again, and I had no idea what the next few weeks were supposed to look like. What I did know was that Granny needed somewhere safe to recover, Kaidence needed stability, and Willow was going to need considerably more supervision than I had previously accounted for if she was willing to run into a burned house over a handbag.

It was times like that I wished Caspian was still there because he would have known exactly how to keep all of us calm, especially me. He had always been good at that, whether it was pulling me into his chest and telling me to breathe, taking control of whatever had me overwhelmed, or, if I was wound up badly enough, fucking the stress right out of me until I forgot what I had been worried about in the first place.

Caspian had a way of making the world feel manageable, even when it wasn’t. He would have taken one look at me in that hospital hallway, known I was two seconds away from carrying everybody else’s fear on my back, and told me to sit my ass down while he handled the rest.

And when it came to my granny, he would’ve made one phone call and had her moved somewhere comfortable, another call and had rooms booked for all of us, then somehow had contractors, insurance people, and whoever else we needed lined up before breakfast.

That was who Caspian had been.

When something went wrong, he didn’t panic; he took control and made the problem smaller for everybody around him.

Sometimes life feels so damn unfair.

I had spent six years learning how to live without Caspian, yet the moments when everything fell apart were still the ones that made me miss him the hardest. I wanted somebody to tell me I didn’t have to carry all of this by myself, even if only for one night.

But wanting Caspian there wasn’t going to change anything.

I also could’ve called Yonas, and if I was being honest, his response probably would have been similar to Caspian’s… just a lot more anxious and dramatic. Caspian would have handled everything with that calm, matter-of-fact attitude of his, while Yonas would have been doing the absolute most before I even finished telling him what happened.

Yonas’s instinct would have been to step in and take over, and right then, I couldn’t afford to fall back into depending on him just because life had gotten hard. I had already ended things because I knew I couldn’t give him what he deserved. Calling him then, even though I was worried and desperate, would’ve blurred a line I had worked hard to draw and given me another reason to keep depending on a man I had already admitted I couldn’t fully love the way he needed. So as much as I knew he would have helped without hesitation, I didn’t reach out to him.

This time, I gotta figure it out myself.

Being the oldest didn’t mean I always knew what to do, but right then, I had to come up with something.

I had raised my son, built a career, and taken care of my family through years of uncertainty. None of that made the fire any less devastating, but it reminded me that I wasn’t helpless. I didn’t have to solve everything that night. I just needed to figure out where we went from there.

Chapter six

Caspian