I stood there, holding Liam, watching the world spin down to normal speed. He was alive. Emilio was safe. The future—ours—stretched out, white and flat and possible.
I said, “You’re not allowed to do that again.”
He laughed, voice shaky. “Next time, you get to be the bait.”
I grinned, held him tighter.
The rest of it didn’t matter.
Not the guns, not the blood, not the memory of a life spent waiting for the bad thing to happen.
I had what I’d come for.
And nothing was going to take it away.
Chapter Twenty
~ Liam ~
It was still dark. The kind of dark you get only when the sky’s so thick with snow you can’t even tell where the night ends and the next day is supposed to start.
In the kitchen, the under-cabinet light—burnt orange and no brighter than a traffic cone—was the only thing fighting back against the dark, and even it seemed to be on its last nerve.
I was up before dawn because Emilio was up before dawn, and we’d long ago ceded control of the household schedule to the kid’s inferior digestive system.
He was, at present, a damp, vaguely sweet-smelling loaf of bread with legs, pressed hard to my chest in his usual position: head on my collarbone, fists jammed under his own chin, daring the world to try anything.
I’d done the full drill—diaper, bottle, obligatory back-patting—by 5:35, which left approximately two hours to kill before I could admit I wanted to be awake at all.
The house was so quiet you could hear the fridge cycle on from the next room, the low compressor thump dovetailing with the breathy huff of snow against the kitchen window. Not another sound: not the pop of the baseboard heater, not a single boot step from upstairs, not even the telltale shuffle of Hooper’s usual morning prowl.
I set Emilio in the crook of my arm and padded over to the sink. My socks, the thick kind with the band of red at the top, made a whispering noise against the linoleum, the kind of noise I’d trained myself to listen for in other houses, other lives.
Here it was just a reminder that the floors had been lived on, maybe even before the war, maybe by men who drank their coffee and left by six and never once imagined their grandkidswould be standing in the same place, measuring their worth by the weight of a sleeping child.
The coffee maker was already loaded, a leftover act of kindness from someone who must have sensed the storm coming. I flipped it on and let it do its hissing, spitting thing, filling the room with the sharp, nearly burned smell of off-brand grounds and hot water.
I’d grown to love it, the way the scent clung to everything, the way it meant you were somewhere people expected to be awake and doing things.
Outside, the snow was coming down in unhurried sheets, falling so slow it looked like the air itself was turning to paste. There were no tire tracks at the main junction. No headlights bouncing off the tree line, no figures walking the fence. Just the steady layering of snow on top of snow, like the world was wrapping itself in white bandages, erasing every sharp edge or trace of the day before.
I watched the yard fill up, Emilio radiating heat against my sternum, his hair sticking up in the back in a way that looked engineered for static. He made a low, throaty sound—an artifact somewhere between a snore and a curse—and I shifted my grip on him, careful not to break the spell.
For the first time in months, I noticed that I was not waiting for anything. Not waiting for a knock, not for the hum of an approaching engine, not even for the radio on the windowsill to crackle to life with some new list of problems. The silence was not a warning; it was just silence.
I stood at the window for a long time, watching the world get buried. I could feel my own jaw tightening, the old, automatic part of me cataloguing all the ways in which peace and quiet could be a trick, a setup, the calm before a thing that was already inbound. But there was nothing to be done about that, not now,not with a baby burrowing his face into my t-shirt like a truffle pig.
I took a breath and made myself look back out at the snow, as if the sheer act of seeing it would make it real.
The coffee was done. I reached for a mug—bottom shelf, chipped on one side, heavy enough to use as a weapon if things went to hell—and poured with one hand, balancing Emilio with the other. He did not stir. I set the mug on the counter, steam curling upward in a lazy, noncommittal loop.
That’s when Hooper came in. Shirtless, or nearly—he had on a flannel, but it was open to the waist and looked like it had been retrieved from the dryer during a halftime sprint. His hair was sleep-mussed, eyes red at the edges, but he wore the look with a kind of deliberate, practiced casual that said he had more important things to do than put on a show for the kitchen audience.
He walked straight to the coffee, poured himself a mug without a glance, then turned and leaned against the counter, shoulder to my shoulder. Not facing me, not opposite—just lined up so the warmth of his arm bled into mine at the elbow.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask about the baby or the weather or whether I’d slept. He just sipped his coffee, his mouth twitching into a half-smile when he noticed I’d started without him.
For a long minute we stood there, the only sounds the quiet clink of ceramic, the faint breath sounds from Emilio, and the steady, patient scrape of snow against the glass.
