I bury my face in his hair and breathe him in like oxygen.
A soft creak from the hallway. I don’t need to look.
Nova’s there. I can feel her.
I glance up and catch her watching us from the doorway, arms folded, eyes wet but shining. She’s not moving. Juststanding there like if she steps forward, the moment might dissolve. Like she doesn’t want to wake the dream.
Her hand presses to her chest, right over her heart. That’s all the movement she makes.
I hold Dar a little tighter.
“You wanna help me with something?” I ask.
Dar nods eagerly.
“We’re gonna make a pillow fort. You and me. But shh, we can’t let the instructor know.”
His eyes go wide with mischief. “A stealth op?”
I grin. “Exactly.”
We pull every blanket from the couch, every cushion off the chairs. Dar drags a lampshade across the room before I intercept it.
“Not the lighting rig, little gremlin.”
He giggles, rolling in a sea of fabric. The stars from the lamp overhead shift as we build, casting slow-moving galaxies on our faces. I wedge a pillow under his belly and declare it “the bridge,” and he salutes.
“Captain Dar ready for duty!”
Nova steps in finally, voice soft. “Permission to come aboard?”
Dar spins. “Only if you have cookies.”
She smirks. “Always.”
She disappears into the kitchenette and returns with a handful of tiny star-shaped biscuits. Dar cheers and grabs two, one for himself and—without prompting—one for me.
My throat tightens all over again.
We pile into the fort, the three of us squeezed under the blanket roof, starlight spinning above. Nova curls to my right, Dar nestled between us, already blinking slow and soft.
He yawns.
“I wanna sleep here forever,” he murmurs.
Nova kisses his temple. “You can, baby.”
His breathing evens out, soft and rhythmic. A small hand curls around my thumb.
Nova watches me over his head.
Her voice is almost too quiet to catch. “You told him.”
I nod. “He already knew.”
Tears shimmer in her eyes. “Of course he did.”
We lie in silence for a long while, listening to Dar’s dreams whisper through the dark.
