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My throat tightened.

“I don’t feel fearless,” I murmured.

“Of course you don’t. Fearless people never do. They just keep moving.” She leaned forward.

The porch went quiet around us, or maybe I stopped hearing everything else. Just Bella’s voice and the truth sitting between us like something that had been waiting to be said.

“One of you has to stop pretending this doesn’t matter,” Bella said. “That can be you. But do not confuse moving with fixing. You can move toward what you want without carrying what he owes you.”

I sat there, hands folded in my lap, feeling the heat from the coffee cup near my knee. The yard breathed around us. A dog barked. Mack lost another argument to a child and accepted defeat with suspicious dignity.

And somewhere inside me, a piece that had been out of alignment since Case Whitfield published my photographs under his name clicked into place. Not dramatically. Just a quiet internal sound, like a lens finding focus after a long time shooting blind.

“You’re right,” I said.

“I know.”

“No, I mean…” I looked through the porch railing at the yard. “You’re right about all of it. About him and about me. I’ve been waiting for him to be ready, but I’ve been hiding behind that too.”

Bella’s eyes softened. Not much, because Bella’s eyes did not do soft easily, but enough.

“There she is,” she murmured.

There she is. Still Sam.

The same words from the bar. Different now. Deeper. Recognition of readiness.

“Well,” I said, reaching for my coffee. “That’s settled then.”

“Oh?” Bella arched a brow. “What’s settled?”

“I’m done hesitating.”

“Now that,” Bella said, “is the kind of decisive energy I like to see.”

The screen door opened behind us, and Mamá Rey appeared with a small plate of pan de polvo, because apparently the woman had a spiritual alarm that went off whenever emotional clarity required powdered sugar.

“You girls eat,” she said.

“Mamá, we’re talking,” Bella said.

“Talking needs food.”

She handed me the plate first, because of course she did.

I took one cookie. Let the sugar dust my fingers, the crumb soften on my tongue, and the sweetness settle somewhere I had not realized was still hungry.

Then I pulled out my phone and looked at the time.

He would still be at the facility. He always stayed late on days when his head was loud. And his head had been loud for weeks.

Bella watched me, her expression shifting from triumph to something warmer. She did not ask what I was planning. She did not need to. She had spent the last twenty minutes building the runway, and now she was watching the takeoff.

“Go,” she said.

“I haven’t finished the cookie.”

Bella took the plate from my lap. “I’ll handle the evidence.”