Page 122 of Dissonance

“I may have put it in when you were taking everything out to the car.” Meeting my eyes, she tries to look unfazed, which would work if her cheeks weren’t turning pink. She throws up her hands with a huff. “It was one email. Mae had a question, and it was quicker if I just—”

“Isn’t that what Claudia’s for?” I ask, mentioning the new manager Thea’s dad helped find to cover her during her maternity leave.

“Maybe,” she quips, holding my gaze, then the corner of her lips twitch, and she looks away, rolling her eyes.

It’s not a proper maternity leave by any stretch. She checks in more often than not, answers queries she doesn’t have to, and ignores the rest. But for Thea, that’s as close to switching off as she’s ever come. I stopped expecting her to months ago. It’s not something to fix; it’s just Thea. Even from a cabin, in the middle of the Canadian woods, with extremely expensive and extremely reliable internet.

And I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

“You were talking about me,” she says, innocently changing the subject.

I nod. “So, you were eavesdropping.”

“I was coming up to check on my child,” she huffs.

“Aye. Of course you were.”

She tilts her head and looks up at me, the firelight catching the green of her eyes, the loose strands of hair at her temple, her face open and unguarded, the way it only ever gets when there’s no one watching but me.

“I love you,” she says, easy, certain.

My hand finds her jaw, thumb tracing the line of it slowly, the way I do everything with her. I tip her face up to mine and kiss her, the kind that doesn’t need to go anywhere because it’s already exactly where it’s meant to be. She sighs into it, her palm resting against my chest, right over my heart, where it always ends up.

When I pull back, she’s squinting at me, lips curved, the fire warm on both of us.

“She’s got your eyes,” she says. “I thought they might have changed, but they’re definitely yours.”

“She’s got your stubbornness.”

“She’s six months old,” Thea says, a short laugh escaping her. “How can you possibly know that?”

“She demands to be held after her bottle,” I say. “Very clear about what she wants.”

Thea swats me with the back of her hand, and I grin, pressing my lips to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her jaw. She tilts into it, lacing her fingers through mine where they curl around her waist. We stay like that, watching the fire burn lower, the cabin quiet around us.

Twelve years of almost.

And now…a daughter asleep upstairs in a room I built for her, in a cabin I finished in her mother’s image, because I knew before I admitted it that she was the shape of every space I’d ever want to live in.

Mo Chridhe.

My heart.

Both of them.

Epilogue

Lockie

Five years later

“Daddy!” Callie shrieks, running into the kitchen, her lower lip already out before she’s even reached me.

“What, baby?” I lean down and scoop her up, settling her on my hip.

“Ziggy won’t give me back my drumsticks.”

Cooper chuckles from across the kitchen, shifting Freddie to his other shoulder and patting his back, trying to get him to burp. The baby blinks at the room with that vague, unfocused expression before his eyes dart around, trying to figure everything out.