Page 92

Maybe we both do.

The hoodie swamps her frame.

My hoodie.

It hangs off her like grief in fabric form—oversized, threadbare, stubbornly clinging to what’s left of me. Of us. But she wears it like armor, and maybe that’s what kills me most. That I’ve become her armor after everything I’ve put her through.

The hallway is long. Too long. A sterile tunnel with scuffed floors and flickering fluorescents that buzz like they know I’m one wrong breath from falling apart. Mya grips the railing, her knuckles pale, steps slow, each one a tiny rebellion against everything that tried to take her from me.

“I can walk,” she says, and it comes out defiant even though her knees say otherwise.

“Not without making me nervous,” I murmur, close but not hovering, hand out but not touching—unless she needs me. God, I’m always two seconds away from needing her to need me.

It’s been two weeks since she woke up.

Fourteen days since her lashes fluttered like broken wings and her voice cracked open the silence that lived in my bones.

A hundred and forty thousand minutes since I started counting again.

She’s here. She’s breathing. And today, they’re letting her leave.

But the boys aren’t. Kingston and Kody are staying behind. The NICU still needs them, still holds them in its gentle, humming womb of warmth and machines and white noise lullabies. They’re stronger now—fighters like their mom—but not ready to come home. Not yet.

Mya hasn’t said it out loud, but I know the guilt is clawing at her ribcage. I see it in the way she looks back at the NICU every ten steps, like she’s tethered to them by invisible thread.

I hate this.

I hate that I can’t fix it.

But I hold the discharge papers in one hand and her elbow in the other, and when we finally make it outside, the air slaps us with cold, damp clarity. The clouds hang low and gray, like they’re waiting for someone to shatter.

She lowers into the wheelchair like it’s a throne she didn’t ask for. Her exhale is long and tired, like it’s dragging the weight of the world behind it. I kneel to buckle the strap over her lap and look up—because I have to see her eyes. I need to.

“You ready?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “To go home?”

Her gaze lifts. Meets mine.

And I swear, it cracks me clean open.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “I’m ready.”

But it’s not just about home. It’s not the walls or the bed or the way the sheets still smell like lemon detergent and second chances. It’s about them. The tiny boys we left sleeping under lights and wires. The ones we named together like we were anchoring them to this world.

Kingston.

Kody.

My sons.

God.

I push her gently toward the car like she’s porcelain and I’m afraid of breaking what’s already so fucking fragile. I open the door, help her in, adjust the seatbelt twice just to keep my hands busy. Then I slide behind the wheel and sit there for a second, watching her tuck her knees up like she’s trying to make herself smaller.

Like she thinks there’s no space for her in this new life.

“You okay?” I ask.

She nods, but she doesn’t look at me.