Page 186 of End Game

“I could officiate,” Dex tells him. “It wouldn’t be legal. It would be spiritual.”

Cami raises her mug. “I’d attend.”

“You’re enabling him,” I tell her.

“I know.”

Ronan has been quieter for the last few minutes. Eventually, he sets his mug down. “I’m at capacity.”

Cami looks at him. “Okay.”

“I’m going to my room for twenty minutes.”

Micah nods. “Okay.”

Dex points toward the hallway with exaggerated solemnity. “Godspeed.”

Ronan gives him a flat look.

“Quietly,” Dex adds. “Godspeed quietly.”

Ronan leaves.

Nobody asks what happened because nothing happened.

Nobody follows him. Nobody wonders whether he’s angry or whether somebody did or said something wrong.

He just needs twenty minutes.

When he comes back, his shoulders are looser.

Cami lifts her feet from the couch without looking away from something Dex is showing her on his phone. Ronan sits beneath them, and she drops her legs across his lap.

His hand settles around her ankle.

I can tell immediately that this is grounding for him.

It’s all so fucking simple that I don’t know why it hits me as hard as it does.

I get up and head into the kitchen.

Five mugs are scattered around the island. There are cinnamon-roll crumbs on the counter and Ronan’s coffee scale beside the sink. Micah’s sketchbook is sitting on the dining-room table while Cami’s glucose tabs are beside the fruit bowl because that has become one of the places they live.

From the living room, I can hear Dex laughing.

Cami tells him he’s an idiot.

Micah says something too low for me to make out.

Ronan corrects somebody about something.

I lean both hands against the island.

There used to be rooms in this house nobody used.

When I bought it—well, when Macey and I bought it—I liked the size because space to grow felt safe. There was room for roommates… children. Room to close a door after a bad shift, and enough distance that we wouldn’t have to live on top of each other.

Sometimes all that space just felt empty.