It makes me want her.
To see her.
To touch her.
To feel her alive under my hands, breathing, real, here.
To remind myself exactly why any of this mattered in the first place.
I don’t slow down.
I don’t hesitate.
Because the only place I need to be now, is home.
With my wife.
sixty-two
Liana
I don’t know what wakes me at first.
It isn’t loud. It isn’t sudden. It’s… a shift.
A change in the air, like something has entered the space that wasn’t there before, something that pulls me up from sleep before my mind even catches up to it.
I lie there for a second, still half-wrapped in warmth, Zach’s arm heavy over my waist, Jackson close behind me, their breathing steady, grounding.
Then I hear it. Soft. Careful. The sound of the front door closing. My heart stutters.
Elijah.
I don’t think. I just move. Slowly, carefully, slipping out from between them, easing Zach’s arm off me, shifting so I don’t wake either of them. The floor is cool under my feet as I step into the hallway, my body already alert, already pulling toward him.
I see him just as he passes the bedroom.
And I stop. Everything in me stills.
Because he’s covered in it.
Dirt.
Blood.
Not just a smear, not just a mark, enough that it clings to him, to his shirt, to his skin, enough that my chest tightens before I even fully process it.
And then I see his arm and the blood there. Fresh.
“Elijah—”
I’m moving before the words even finish leaving me, crossing the space between us in seconds.
“You’re hurt.”
The words come out breathless, sharp with something close to panic as I reach for him.
He doesn’t let me get far.
