The call disconnected.
I stayed exactly where I was, Connor’s arms still wrapped around me, his chin resting near my temple as his breath moved against my hair. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask if I was okay. He just held me there while the world tilted back into focus, piece by piece.
“Oh my god, Teddy, he’s going to be okay,” Natalie said from the doorway. I hadn’t noticed that she’d followed me.
She crossed the room carefully, like she was approaching something fragile. Crouching in front of me, her hands lifted to my face, and her breath hitched in a way that told me she was barely holding herself together.
And then she was crying too.
That was what finally tipped me over.
A sob tore out of me, sharp and ugly. Relief tangled with fear and exhaustion, all of it spilling out.
Natalie’s arms wrapped around me from the front, holding me against her frantically beating heart, as she cried openly, too.
“He’s alive,” she kept saying. “He’s alive, Teddy.”
Eventually, the crying stopped, my breaths evening out as the adrenaline burned itself off. Natalie wiped at her face and laughed weakly through tears, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I’m going to call Micah for you. She’s been worried.”
The guilt hadn’t wavered since our messages, and timing wasn’t on my side since then either, so we hadn’t talked about anything. But, I appreciated that. I loved my friends, but I couldn’t talk until I knew more about my dad. It was all so overwhelming.
Natalie left, but Connor didn’t move. He still held me.
“I want you to stay,” I whispered, baring a part of me that I’d been trying to keep close. The confession was multi-layered, but I knew he’d understand it as staying right now. Even if it wasn’t just about tonight, or not wanting to be alone in the aftermath of the call. It was about the part of me that didn’t want to imagine him leaving at all, that wanted to pretend the horizon wasn’t already crowded with things that would take him away from me.
I held my breath, bracing for him to hear too much.
His head dipped close to my ear. “I’m not going anywhere, sunshine.”
I let myself sink into his words because everything was okay, at least for this moment.
43
Teddy
Connor left with his hands still on me.
He kissed me once at the door, slow and sure, his palm warm at the back of my neck, like he was memorizing the shape of me before he had to go. I let myself lean into it, just for the length of the kiss, before he pulled back reluctantly.
“I’ll be back in two days,” he said quietly, and I could see in his eyes the last thing he wanted to do was leave, even if it was to play rugby. “Call me if you need me before that.”
I nodded. “I will.”
He searched my face once more, then pressed his forehead to mine, inhaling deeply.
Then he left.
I moved into the living room on legs that felt a little shaky, bracing myself on the counter as I filled a glass with water. I had hardly breathed before the door opened again.
This time, there was no pause.
Arms wrapped around me from every direction, the air knocked from my lungs as familiar bodies crowded in close. Ilaughed on a broken breath, the sound half-sob, half-disbelief, as the room filled with the unmistakable sense of being claimed.
“We heard,” Lola said somewhere near my shoulder, her voice thick. “Micah texted.”
Evie’s forehead pressed briefly against my temple. “We’re so glad he’s alive.”
Delany’s arms tightened around my back, firm and grounding. “We weren’t letting you be here by yourself.”
