Page 65 of Her Unending Horizon

It had taken me a second to realize what he’d done. Sneaky bastard. Started with work, slid to Fletcher, then to kids, then to Chloe. Bypassed all my usual defenses like he’d been mapping them for years.

I’d watched Chloe laugh as Zephyr sprayed water everywhere. I’d watched her dodge, her dress flaring, her face soft in a way I hadn’t seen in months.

“Honestly?” I’d said slowly. “First thing that hits is… she looks okay. Better. Gorgeous. Then it hits that I’m not the one who helped her get there.” My throat had felt raw. “Then it’s… relief. That she can still be happy. Even if it’s not with me.”

Drake had studied me in profile. “You know she doesn’t see it that way,” he’d said. “She doesn’t put ‘with or without you’ as the measure of her happiness. She loves you. That’s not in question.”

“Doesn’t change the shit I’ve done,” I’d muttered.

“No,” he’d agreed quietly. “But it changes how you move forward.” He’d tipped his bottle toward the tree. “You noticing her joy is good. Better than you staying locked in your own head.”

I’d frowned. “You here as her brother or as the shrink?”

“Both,” he’d said easily. “I’m also here as the guy who likes you and doesn’t want to see you drown.” He’d clapped a hand on my shoulder, squeezed once. “Check in with yourself sometimes, Zerek. Not just ‘how am I doing,’ but ‘how is she doing’ in your mind. You’ve been staring at your own pain so long you’re missing half the picture.”

At the time, I’d shrugged him off, made some joke about him charging by the hour.

Now, in the truck a week later, I realized exactly how much he’d gotten past my guard.

“Sneaky son of a bitch,” I muttered, turning off onto the smaller road. Gravel crunched under my truck’s tires.

He’d made me get out of my own head for ten whole minutes. Made me admit that when I looked at Chloe now, I saw more than the wreckage. I saw light coming back into her eyes. I saw strength that had nothing to do with me.

I blew out a breath, rolling my shoulders to shake off the memory.

Being on medic duty all week hadn’t been as bad as I’d expected, either. Fletcher was a good partner — mid-twenties, solid, the kind of guy who’d crack a dad joke over a blood pressure cuff just to see if a patient was still tracking.

On the last shift we had, we’d caught a call out to a playground on the edge of town. Three-year-old, possible head injury. When we’d pulled up, the scene had been textbook chaos — mom sobbing, other parents hovering, kid screaming on the mulch.

Little girl, pigtails tangled, blood matting her hair where she’d clipped the edge of a low climbing wall and split her scalp. Not life-threatening, but that much blood on that small a head? Of course, her mom thought she was dying.

“She fell— she just fell, I only turned away for a second—” the mom had gasped, voice going high and thin.

I’d dropped to a knee in the mulch, gloves on, voice calm. “Hey, I’ve got her,” I said to the mom. “She’s okay. There’s a lot of blood because scalps are drama queens, all right?”

The little girl had locked onto my face, hiccupping between wails. “Hurts,” she’d sobbed.

“I bet it does,” I’d said. “You know what that means?” I’d leaned closer, stage-whispering. “It means your brain is still in there. If it fell out, you wouldn’t feel a thing.”

She’d blinked at me, crying hiccups stuttering to a confused stop. Fletcher had shot me a look over her head that was half amused, half horrified.

“Can’t argue with the science,” he’d muttered, handing me gauze.

By the time we’d had the wound dressed and the girl on the stretcher for a precautionary ride, the mom’s breathing had evened out. She’d kept one hand on her daughter’s leg the whole time.

“Is she really okay?” she’d asked, eyes wet and wild.

“She’s going to be fine,” I’d said, meaning it. “Couple of stitches, big bandage, huge story to tell at preschool. That’s it.”

Watching them in the back of the rig — kid calming, mom finally smiling weakly — something inside me had shifted. Just a fraction. A reminder that not every kid call ended in sirens and silence. That sometimes you got to deliver good news.

Drake would probably have a field day with that realization. “See?” he’d say. “Protective instincts, still online.” Smug bastard.

My truck’s headlights swept across a rusted sign, snapping me back to the present.

CO-OP AUCTION – CLOSED, the faded letters read. Below that, an arrow pointed down a dirt drive someone had half-heartedly graveled a decade ago.

I turned in.