Page 193 of Bend

He was already in the bed with us in every way except the one that mattered.

The empty space.

The hoodie I was wearing.

The sheets that still smelled like him.

The fact that the last time I’d been here, there had been four people in this strange, complicated thing we were building, even if none of us had quite figured out what to call it yet.

Now there were three, and none of us knew how the fuck we were supposed to move on from this.

Eventually exhaustion won.

I don’t remember falling asleep, only waking sometime later with Draygon still curled around my back and Thorne’s hand wrapped loosely around mine between us.

For one horrible, blurry second, I didn’t remember.

Then I smelled Wolfe on the hoodie, and it all came back.

By the time my father arrived, I had already learned that grief could make two days feel like two hours and twenty years feel like nothing at all.

He flew in as soon as Sayshen called him.

Not because of me, at least not at first. But because Wolfe had died, Talon and Sayshen had just lost someone who was as much a brother to them as they were to each other, and the whole team had been ripped open right down the middle.

Their dad heard that his sons were hurting and got on a plane.

He came because they needed him.

Because the guys needed someone who loved them enough to cross an ocean when everything went to shit.

And somewhere between the airport and the house, Talon and Sayshen had to tell him there was something else waiting for him when he got there.

A daughter.

Me.

The daughter he never knew existed.

The one who had planned to introduce herself eventually.

Just… not like this.

My father is sitting across from me at the kitchen table, both hands wrapped around a mug he hasn’t touched in a while, when I finally let myself really look at him.

He looks different from the photos I found before I came to Tampa.

Older, obviously, but not in a way that surprises me. More in a way that makes him feel real. The old racing pictures caught him in leathers, helmet under one arm, looking like every bit of pain in his body was still years away.

Now there’s gray threaded through his hair, deeper lines around his eyes, and the kind of stiffness in the way he shifts one leg beneath the table that makes me wonder how many crashes he still carries around with him.

His eyes lift and catch mine, and something in his face changes when he realizes I’m studying him.

For a second, neither of us says anything.

Then he looks at me a little harder too, like he’s finally allowing himself to.

“You look like her.”