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Relief made sense, and so did the anger that kept surfacing whenever I remembered how long he’d known the truth about my mother. What I hadn’t expected was the emptiness underneath both, because for eight years my father had occupied a permanent space in my head whether I wanted him there or not. Every unknown number might have been him, every unexpected message came with the same sick drop in my stomach, and even the good things in my life had been shadowed by the knowledge that eventually he would find some way to reach into them.
Now he couldn’t.
There would be no more midnight deadlines or demands for money, and I would never again look at my phone and wonder whether this was the call where he finally destroyed everything I’d built.
I’d spent so long imagining what freedom from him might feel like that I’d expected something bigger when it finally arrived.
Instead, it mostly felt strange.
Max sat beside me with one hand resting on the armrest between us, close enough that I could take it if I wanted but without touching me unless I made the first move. He’d been doing that since the barn, and I noticed because of course I did.
He wasn’t withdrawing from me.
He was waiting for me.
There was a difference, and after everything we’d said to each other, the fact that Max had finally learned how to leave a choice sitting between us without trying to influence the answer mattered more than I could explain.
Eventually, I turned my hand over and slid it beneath his.
His fingers closed around mine immediately, not tightly enough to hold me there but with enough pressure to tell me he was glad I’d reached for him.
“You’re thinking loudly,” he murmured.
I looked toward him. “Apparently that’s contagious.”
The corner of his mouth moved, and for a moment, I could almost pretend the last two days had been normal.
Then the flight attendant appeared from the front of the cabin and told Ignatius we’d be at the private terminal in less than ten minutes.
He thanked her before glancing toward us, although he’d been giving Max and me privacy ever since he and Doryu collected us from the farm. I suspected that was partly kindness and partly because Max had told him enough before takeoff to make him realize there was a conversation coming that none of us could avoid.
Doryu closed his laptop. “You still want to do this tonight?”
“Yes.”
Max’s hand tightened around mine by a fraction, but he didn’t answer for me.
That mattered too.
Doryu nodded. “Then we’ll go straight to the house. Drake and Keegan aren’t there, so you won’t have an audience.”
Ignatius smiled faintly before looking at Max. “And you’re certain you want this discussion with Ash present?”
I felt Max go still beside me, and for half a second, I wondered whether instinct would win. Old Max might have answered automatically because he was still learning that protecting me and deciding for me weren’t the same thing.
Instead, he turned his head and looked at me.
It was such a small thing that nobody else in the cabin would have understood why it mattered.
“I want whatever Ash wants.”
I met Ignatius’s gaze. “I’m there.”
“Then you’re there.”
That simple.
Nobody tried to protect me with secrecy or decide what I could handle, and for the first time since Max had told me what lifebound meant, some of the pressure behind my ribs eased.
