59. Harmony
Harmony
Three Months Later
The world is soft again.
Not in the way it used to be, before the darkness swept in and shattered everything I knew. But in the way Reese holds me in the morning, the way his thumb brushes the curve of my spine like he’s drawing a map only he understands.
Three months have passed since the bleeding stopped.
Since the hospital sheets stopped sticking to my skin.
Since the terror behind my eyelids finally started to fade.
I live in a quiet house now—his house, though he’d never call it that. It’s ours. Even if we haven’t said it out loud. Even if my boxes are still half-unpacked and my clothes live mostly in drawers, not closets. It feels like mine because of him.
He wakes up early, but never too far from me.
He still moves like a soldier, careful and calculated.
Always listening. Always watching. But the way he looks at me is different.
He watches me like I’m a sunrise, like I’m something that never should’ve survived but did—and now he won’t dare look away.
I open my eyes to the smell of coffee and cinnamon.
I don’t move right away. I just breathe it in, listening to the hum of his music playing softly from the kitchen.
Probably some old vinyl he rescued from a garage sale.
I tease him about being an old man trapped in a young body; but secretly, I love it.
I love the scratch of his records, the way he pretends not to dance when he thinks I’m not watching.
I roll onto my side, eyes landing on the photo on his nightstand.
It’s us. One of the only real pictures we have. We’re lying in the grass outside the hospital, sun in our eyes, his head tipped back in laughter, and my hand wrapped tightly around his. We look… happy. And for once, we were.
I sit up slowly, careful with my healing side. It still aches when I move too fast, the scar a constant reminder of how close I came to not making it.
The door creaks open.
“You’re awake,” he says, carrying a tray with two mugs and a cinnamon roll the size of my face.
“I was pretending to sleep. Your music was too good.”
Reese chuckles, setting the tray on my lap. “Fleetwood Mac again. Don’t act surprised.”
“I’m not. You’ve been in a Stevie Nicks mood for a week.”
“She gets me.”
“I get you.”
He stops mid-motion, eyes on mine, something quiet and tender blooming across his face.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “You really do.”
We eat in bed. He tears the roll in half and hands me the bigger piece, no argument. I let my head rest against his shoulder, soaking in the warmth of the coffee, the blanket, his skin.
“You know what I was thinking about this morning?” I ask, licking cinnam on from my fingers.
“If it’s how much you love my ass, I already know.”
I snort. “That’s a given. But no—I was thinking about the first night here. When I couldn’t sleep, and you laid on the floor beside me like it was nothing.”
“I didn’t want you to feel alone.”
“I never do when you’re here.”
He kisses the top of my head. “That’s the point.”
We fall into silence, the comfortable kind. I can hear birds outside, the occasional car rolling past, the world going on around us. But here, in this bed, time slows.
“Do you think we’re okay?” I whisper. “Like… really okay?”
Reese leans back, pulling me with him until I’m half on top of him, my hand resting on his chest.
“Better than okay,” he says. “I think we’re whole.”
“Even with everything we lost?”
He nods. “Especially because of it.”
I bury my face in his chest, letting the quiet stretch again. His heartbeat is steady beneath my ear, anchoring me.
He hums a little, some song I don’t recognize, and I smile.
Later, we move to the couch, blankets wrapped around us. We don’t turn on the TV. Don’t need to. Just sit, legs tangled, his fingers tracing lazy shapes along my arm.
He asks me what I want for lunch. I tell him nothing. He brings me soup anyway.
We shower together—not in the steamy, movie-scene way, but in the real, beautiful, I’ll-wash-your-hair-and-make-you-feel-safe way. He kisses the scar on my side like it’s sacred. Like it’s a story only he gets to read.
We nap in the afternoon sun, his hand never straying from mine.
We talk about nothing. About everything. About how I want to learn to garden, and how he wants to build a deck in the backyard for “us” time.
“You say that like you’re gonna stop hovering over me with a rifle,” I tease.
He smirks. “Nah. I’ll just plant lavender while I do it.”
I kiss him then, laughing against his mouth.
“I like this version of us,” I whisper.
He brushes my hair behind my ear. “So do I.”
That night, we curl into bed again, and I read to him from a book I found at a thrift shop. He listens, eyes closed, a soft smile on his lips.
“Do you ever think about the future?” I ask quietly, closing the book.
“All the time.”
“What do you see?”
He turns to me, gaze dark and soft all at once.
“You,” he says. “And everything else is just noise.”