Something worth it.
I glance down at my phone one last time before I pocket it. Her message still open. Her words still sitting there.
And for the first time since I walked into this arena, I feel steady. Grounded. Ready.
I step forward and face the cameras.
fifty-two
Zach
The moment we step inside the apartment, I feel the difference.
Not in anything obvious. Nothing loud or dramatic. No single moment I can point to and say that’s it.
It’s quieter than that.
Deeper.
The kind of shift you only notice when you’ve been holding tension in your body for so long that the absence of it feels almost foreign.
The apartment breathes differently.
And then I see them.
Lia is standing near the couch, turning toward us as the door closes, and Elijah is already beside her, not watching, not hovering, not holding himself rigid like he’s afraid of getting too close.
He’s just… there.
With her.
There’s ease in him that hasn’t been there since we pulled her out of that cabin. It’s in the way his shoulders sit lower, in the way his attention is on her without that sharp edge of control cutting through everything.
And Lia, God, she looks lighter.
Not completely untouched by everything, not magically healed, but back. There’s warmth in her expression again, something soft and steady that had been missing, something that tells me whatever happened between them while we were gone, it mattered.
Relief settles into my chest before I can stop it.
Jackson doesn’t hesitate.
He’s across the room in seconds, his entire focus narrowing onto her like the rest of the world has dropped away.
“How’s my sweetheart,” he says, voice warm, bright with something that wasn’t there yesterday, “and our little baby princess?”
His hand slides to her stomach, rubbing gently before he crouches, pressing a kiss there like it already belongs to him.
Lia laughs, the sound soft and real and exactly what we needed.
“How do you know it’s a girl?”
Jackson looks up at her with that grin, that unshakable certainty that somehow always works.
“Because I just know,” he says. “We’re gonna have a little girl to spoil.”
His hand stays there, warm and steady.
“And her mom is definitely going to make her a princess.”
