Iwake reaching for her, but my hand drags across cool sheets.
My eyes open properly, blinking against the pale stripe of sunlight cutting through the curtains. The room smells faintly like Penny’s shampoo and the coffee she made earlier, but the space beside me is empty.
I lie there and listen for her. For movement in the hallway. For the music she told me she’d put on again. A cabinet door opening and closing, or Gus’s nails clicking after her across the floor.
Nothing.
“Pen?” I call, but when there’s no answer, I reach for my phone, and it lights up on the nightstand.
Lucky Pen:Needed some time away. I’m okay.
Lucky Pen:I love you.
I stare at the message for a moment, then I stare at it again.
I love you.
My thumb hovers uselessly over the screen while my brain catches up to the words, replaying them slower this time, like maybe I read them wrong. But there they are, small and bright on my phone. Too small for the way they land.
Penny loves me.
Heat floods low and sudden through me, sharp enough that I actually suck in a breath. Because Penelope Easton says things with her whole heart when she means them. She doesn’t throw words around carelessly. Every soft thing she gives feels earned.
And she’s never said she loves me before.
Not directly, anyway. She’s said it in every other possible way. In packed lunches and penguin notes. In coffee timers and sleepy kisses. In the way she looks at Elle like there’s nothing in this world more precious. In the way she reaches for me when the room gets too loud, even when she’s convinced she shouldn’t need anyone at all.
And fuck. I haven’t told her, either. But Christ, I’ve known it for months now.
I knew it watching her dance around my kitchen in fuzzy socks, and the first time Elle crawled into her lap without hesitation. Felt it at the lake. Knew in the grocery store, and half asleep beside her at three in the morning when she’d tuck her cold feet under my leg.
But every time the words climbed up my throat, something happened. A callout. Elle interrupting us. Stacey. The fire.
And after the tower, I couldn’t say it then either. Couldn’t let the first time she heard it be tangled up in smoke and fear and an almost.
My thumb lowers toward the keyboard. I could send it back right now. Three words. Easy.
But not like this—not for the first time. Penny doesn’t get my love in a text message while she’s off somewhere convincing herself she’s easier to leave than keep.
She gets my face. My voice. The truth, where she can hear it.
That I love her just because I do. Because my life feels wrong when she’s not in it.
And because somewhere along the way, Penelope Easton became the best part of it.
I scrub a hand down my face, staring at the text like it might disappear if I blink too long. The cold feeling settles in slowly after that.
It’s the exact same feeling that’s lived under my skin since the second I saw her car outside the tower. It’s the same feeling I felt this morning when she asked me if I think some people are just bad luck.
The anger in me flares at this story she’s telling herself.
That she’s unlovable. Dangerous to know. That she ruins good things.
And after I go get my girl, I’m going to go find the people who put these ideas in her head and make sure they know how damn lucky they are to have ever had her in their lives.
Because the luckiest thing I know is the way my heart thunders for blonde hair tipped in blue, and a musical laugh. Someone who has courage and kindness in equal measure and somehow still thinks she’s the thing people need to survive.
And if she thinks she’s not worthy of being someone I’ll run toward, she’s out of her fucking mind.
