Chapter Fifty-One
Brooklyn
The fire has been reduced to a low, steady burn, the orange coals pulsing like a heartbeat, the kind that refuses to quit even when the body has been pushed too far. Boston keeps feeding it carefully, not to make it brighter, but to make it last. Light is a signal. Heat is survival. We choose survival.
Caleb sits near the entrance, back to the stone, shoulders angled so he can see both in and out. His posture is easy, but it’s not relaxed. He’s waiting. Listening. Reading the storm like a language.
The wind outside still claws at the shelter, but it’s changed. It’s not one long scream anymore, it comes in rhythms. Gust, silence, gust. Like breathing or footsteps. I don’t let myself name which.
My hands stay settled over my stomach, not in a gripping manner, but just holding. I think the warmth there is more in my mind than in my skin, but I need it. I need the reminder that I am not who he made me to be.
“Drink,” Boston says quietly, offering the tin cup of melted snow. His voice is gentle in a way most men don’t know how to be. He’s built like his brothers with broad-shoulders and mountain-solid, but where Dal is force and Linc is precision, Boston is weight. The kind of weight that holds when everything else collapses.
I take the cup and sip slow. The water is cold enough to ache as it slides down, but the pain is clean. It's something that's real and belongs to now, not before.
Boston watches me just long enough to see that I’m steady, then turns his gaze back to the fire, making sure to not hover or push, but staying present.
Caleb doesn’t speak yet. He seems tobe the kind that waits until words matter, he saves them, like bullets, only used when necessary.
The storm hisses outside as the snow brushes across the rock opening in whispering waves.
“Do you think they’re okay?” I ask, even though I already know fear is shaping the question before it leaves my mouth.
Caleb doesn’t look at me, but his voice is steady, “If something happened to them, we’d hear it in the storm.”
I frown, confused and ask, “What does that mean?”
He shifts slightly, adjusting the knife strapped to his thigh, thinking before answering. “It means the mountain tells the truth. Gunfire carries. Wolves stop moving. Birds take cover. Snow settles differently.” His gaze flicks toward me. “There has been no death out there.”
The words land in me like warm weight.
Boston’s voice enters the silence next, not of reassurance but of something firmer. “Jackson is coming back,” he says it the same way he breathes, like there's certainty in his words.
I nod once, heart pulling tight. “I know.”
But knowing doesn’t quiet the tension crawling under my skin. The shelter feels too small, the air too thin and the waiting feels like its own kind of danger.
Not the loud kind but the old kind, the childhood kind. The kind where footsteps meant hide and silence meant prepare. The kind where your own heartbeat could betray you.
My fingers tighten slightly over the blanket and Caleb notices, not because I make a sound, but because he sees the world in details.
“You’re not there anymore,” he says, quiet, not demanding eye contact. “Whatever part of you learned to disappear to survive…you don’t need her now.”
I swallow, throat tight. “I know.” And I do know, at least a part of me does, but another small part, the part who still feels like that scared little girl, doesn't know that.
The fire crackles softly and Boston turns toward me, slow, careful, respectful. “You don’t have to be strong right now,” he says.
“I’m not,” I answer. “I’m just…holding.”
“That’s strength,” Caleb says and the words hit harder than they shouldm, maybe because I want to believe them or maybe because I’m afraid to.
I look down at my hand and find that they’re shaking, just a little, not from fear but from memory. My pulse is steady, but my muscles remember things I don’t say aloud.
“When I was a kid,” I begin, voice thin, “I used to think that if I could just stay quiet enough, still enough, maybe I could disappear from him. Not physically—just inside myself. Like if I could become something with no sound, no needs, no edges, he wouldn’t see me.”
Boston closes his eyes. Not because he can’t hear it. Because he can, too well.
Caleb’s jaw tenses. “That was survival. That was intelligence.”
I shake my head. “It became habit. And habit became life. I didn’t know how to stop disappearing. So when I left home, I didn’t know how to be seen. I didn’t know how to choose myself. I just… existed in other people’s spaces. Other people’s needs. Other people’s hands.”
The fire pops, sharp, like something breaking.
“And then Jackson,” I whisper. “He didn’t want anything from me. I gave myself to him anyway, expecting that's all that he wanted. But he didn't. Not a piece. Not a performance. Not a version. He just… saw me. He wanted to help me. And I didn’t know what to do with that.”
Boston gives a rough exhale. “He’s always been like that.”
Caleb nods, slow, as if knowing even after such a short amount of time in his presense. “He makes room. He doesn’t take it.”
I laugh, the sound small and tired, but real. “Yeah. He does.” I think of Jackson’s hands, their steadiness, and how they're warm and gentle in ways hands aren’t supposed to know how to be. I think of the way he says my name like it’s something whole.
I think of the baby.
Hope feels terrifying.
But it also feels like choosing breath.
My chest loosens, just a little.
The storm shifts outside, just one gust and then there's stillness, but not the normal kind of stillness.
Boston lifts his head and Caleb’s hand goes to his knife, not fast or dramatic, just ready.
I feel it too, in my bones, in my memory, in the part of me that has known danger longer than safety.
He’s close.
But so is Jackson.
And this time, I’m not the one running.
This time, I am the one waiting.
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
