Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
officially, apparently
SOREN
Iwoke up with sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the ocean doing its steady breathing thing beyond the glass, and for the first time in weeks I felt like a person instead of a collection of barely-functioning survival mechanisms held together by spite and caffeine.
The exhaustion was still there, sitting in my bones like an old friend I'd learned to live with. But underneath that was a lightness I hadn't felt in so fucking long that it took me a minute to recognize what it was.
Hope. Actual, genuine hope that things might be okay.
Rook was already awake, propped up on one elbow and watching me with an expression that made my chest do uncomfortable things. When he saw I was awake, he leaned down and kissed me, slow and thorough, like he had all the time in the world to remind me I was wanted.
“Morning,” he said when he pulled back.
“Morning.” I stretched, feeling muscles pull in ways that reminded me exactly what we'd done last night, and grinned at the ceiling. “What time is it?”
“Almost nine. I was gonna let you sleep, but you've got a date with your siblings at my parents' house in an hour.”
Right. The siblings. I'd been so wrapped up in recovery and legal bullshit and learning how to let Rook take care of me that I'd almost forgotten the plan.
Rook's parents had been hosting Talia, Micah, and Poppy for the past few days while I got my shit together, and today we were all going to the playoff game together.
The second round. Game one against the Alberta Raiders. And apparently I was bringing my entire makeshift family to watch my boyfriend play professional hockey in the VIP section like we were people who did things like that.
The whole thing felt surreal in the best possible way.
“I should probably shower,” I said, already moving to get up. “And maybe put on clothes that don't smell like sex.”
Rook laughed and pulled me back down for another kiss. “Shower's all yours. I'll make coffee.”
By the time we pulled into the driveway of the Kincaid house an hour later, I was buzzing with nervous energy that had nothing to do with caffeine.
I'd talked to my siblings on the phone every day since I'd been discharged, knew they were safe and being looked after, but actually seeing them felt huge in ways I couldn't quite put into words.
The house was exactly as I remembered it from high school.
Two-story colonial, white trim, big front porch, flower boxes under the windows that were somehow already thriving despite it being early spring.
I'd been here maybe a dozen times back then, for team dinners and birthday parties and one memorable Thanksgiving where Martin had attempted to deep-fry a turkey and nearly taken out the garage.
It had always felt like the kind of house that knew what it was for.
Rook squeezed my hand as we walked up the front steps. “They're gonna lose their shit when they see you.”
“Good shit or bad shit?”
“Definitely good shit.”
He wasn't wrong.
The second the front door opened, Poppy launched herself at me with a scream that probably violated several noise ordinances. I caught her out of pure instinct, stumbling back a step as she wrapped her arms around my neck and squeezed hard enough to make breathing difficult.
“You're here!” she said directly into my ear. “Holy shit, you're here!”
“Language,” I said automatically, but I was grinning so hard my face hurt.
“Soren!” Micah appeared in the doorway next, looking taller than he had a week ago and wearing a hoodie I didn't recognize. He crashed into both of us, and then Talia was there too, and suddenly I was buried under a pile of siblings who were all trying to hug me at once.
I held on and let them, blinking hard against the sting behind my eyes because crying in the Kincaids' front yard felt like maybe too much emotional honesty for ten in the morning.
When they finally pulled back, I got a good look at them.
New clothes, all of them. Clean hair, clear eyes, the kind of fed-and-rested glow that came from being taken care of instead of just surviving.
Poppy had a new backpack slung over one shoulder, Micah's jeans actually fit him instead of being two inches too short, and Talia looked less like she was holding the world together through sheer force of will.
“You guys look good,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I'd intended.
“Mrs. Kincaid took us shopping,” Poppy announced. “And Mr. Kincaid makes the best pancakes in the entire world. Also they have a dog. Did you know they have a dog?”
“I did not know that.”
“Her name is Maple and she's perfect.”
Martha appeared behind them, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She looked at me for a moment with the particular expression of someone seeing a person they'd known a long time ago and were relieved to find still standing. Then she crossed the porch and pulled me into a hug.
“I remember you,” she said against my shoulder. “Rook's Soren. I always wondered where you went.”
I hugged her back. She smelled like vanilla and the same fabric softener I remembered from the handful of times I'd been here in high school, borrowing Rook's hoodie because I'd left mine on the bus.
“Hi, Martha,” I managed.
She pulled back and held me at arm's length for a moment, doing a quiet scan from head to toe. “You look better than when I saw you last,” she said. “A lot better.”
“Low bar.”
“Still counts.” Satisfied with whatever she'd found, she nodded toward the door. “Come inside. Martin's in the kitchen making cookies even though I told him we already have cookies.”
“I heard that!” came a voice from somewhere deeper in the house.
The house smelled like vanilla and cinnamon, and the inside was exactly as warm and lived-in as it had always been.
Family photos lined the walls — I spotted one from what had to be Rook's junior year, him in full gear holding a trophy, grinning in a way he almost never let himself grin now.
Shoes piled by the door. A dog bed in the corner that Maple was definitely not using because Maple was in the kitchen trying to con Micah out of a cookie.
Martin appeared a moment later, apron on, spatula in hand. He'd gotten slightly greyer since high school but the energy was exactly the same — big, loud, aggressively warm in ways that took some people by surprise and had never once surprised me.
He looked at me for a second. Just a second. Then he crossed the room and pulled me into a hug hard enough that I felt it in my ribs, and neither of us said anything for a moment.
“Good to have you upright,” he said gruffly, when he let go.
“Good to be upright,” I said.
He clapped me on the shoulder, nodded once like that settled something between us, and turned back to the oven. “Cookies in three minutes. Sit down.”
The kitchen was chaos in the best possible way.
Poppy was already stealing cookie dough from the bowl on the counter, Micah was explaining the difference between snickerdoodles and sugar cookies to Talia like it was a matter of national importance, and Maple was wagging her tail hard enough to knock over a chair.
I settled onto one of the kitchen stools and watched it all unfold, and felt something in my chest go quiet in a way it hadn't in weeks.
No tension humming under every conversation, no waiting for the other shoe to drop, just noise and warmth and the smell of cookies and a dog who kept trying to convince everyone she hadn't been fed since 2019.
Rook appeared next to me with a mug of coffee, and I took it gratefully.
“Your dad hugged me like he knew I needed it,” I said quietly.
“He did know.” Rook leaned against the counter beside me, close enough that our arms touched. “He's been worried about you. They both have. The whole time you were in there.”
I looked over at Martin, who was now letting Poppy decorate a cookie with entirely too much icing while narrating the structural engineering challenges of the design. “He didn't say anything at the hospital.”
“He sat in that waiting room for two days and brought terrible vending machine coffee to everyone and didn't leave until they told him you were stable.” Rook glanced at his dad. “That's Martin Kincaid saying it.”
My chest did the uncomfortable thing again. I looked back down at my mug.
Martha appeared with a plate of cookies and set them in front of me. “Eat,” she ordered. “You're falling behind.”
I ate three before I registered I was doing it, and when I looked up the whole kitchen was watching me with varying degrees of amusement.
“What?” I said around a mouthful.
“Nothing,” Talia said. “Just nice to see you eating real food instead of protein bars and spite.”
“I do not live on protein bars and spite.”
“You absolutely do,” Micah said. “Last month I watched you eat the same granola bar for three days in a row.”
“That's called budgeting.”
“That's called concerning.”
Poppy leaned against my shoulder, warm and solid, and went quiet in that particular way she had when she was done being funny and meant what she was about to say. “We're glad you're okay,” she said, and the shift in tone settled over the kitchen like a hand pressed flat.
I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer. “I'm glad I'm okay too, Pops.”
The quiet that followed wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind that came after something true had been said and nobody wanted to rush past it.
Rook pushed off the counter beside me. I recognized the set of his shoulders — the one that meant he'd decided to do something and was going to do it before he thought himself out of it. He glanced at me once, checking.
I nodded.
“Hey.” He said it to the room, not loudly, but with enough weight that the conversation dropped. Talia looked up from her coffee. Micah turned around. Poppy lifted her head from my shoulder. Martha and Martin both went still. “Soren and I are together.”