10
Lila
My day off started with pounding on my apartment door loud enough to rattle the frame, which told me two things immediately: Evan had arrived, and he had no intention of beginning the day quietly.
I was still wearing leggings and one of my oldest sweatshirts when I opened the door, coffee in hand, and found him leaning against the frame in sunglasses large enough to qualify as a disguise and a scarf that had no business existing in weather like this.
From the couch behind me, Jade looked up from her sketchbook, caught sight of him over my shoulder, and said, “Guncle Evan, you look like a recently divorced magician.”
Evan clutched his chest and swept inside as though he had been welcomed into a palace instead of my apartment. “Gemstone,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “your cruelty only enhances your beauty.”
“Good.” Jade grinned. “I was aiming for devastating.”
He crossed the room and bent to kiss the top of her head with all the ceremony of visiting royalty. She tolerated it with the long-suffering patience of a girl who had known him long enough to enjoy his attention while pretending she absolutely did not.
“You look suspiciously pleased with yourself.” Evan narrowed his eyes at her. “I don’t trust it.”
“That’s because I have news.”
He drew in a sharp breath. “Scandal?”
“Horror,” she corrected.
I had barely reached the kitchen counter with my coffee before Jade sat straighter and announced, “Lewd Jude had the nerve to finagle himself an invitation to family dinner.”
Evan froze halfway through removing his scarf. “No.”
“Yes.”
His expression turned stricken. “No.”
She nodded gravely. “Yes. Grandpa turned dinner into some twisted parent-trap situation for Mom and Jude.”
Evan pressed one hand to the wall as though he needed help remaining upright. “I need a moment.”
“You and me both.”
I leaned against the counter and watched them with the exhausted affection of someone who had lost control of the conversation the second it began.
Evan had disliked Jude on sight years ago and had only grown more theatrical about it with time.
Jade had inherited my instinct for annoyance and sharpened it into an art form. Together, they were a menace.
“He brought wine,” Jade added darkly, presenting it as final proof of his character.
Evan’s mouth fell open. “Of course he did.”
“And Grandpa kept trying to force common interests into the conversation like he was hosting a deranged matchmaking special for people with baggage.”
A noise of genuine pain left Evan. “Your grandfather remains committed to psychological warfare.”
“At one point, I considered faking appendicitis.”
“That would have been valid.”
“I know.”
“That is enough,” I said, though a smile had already begun tugging at my mouth. “And Evan, stop encouraging her.”
Jade pointed at me from the couch. “I’m not the one being encouraged. I encourage him.”
Evan folded both hands over his heart. “She sees me.”
“Unfortunately,” I muttered.
Jade tossed her hair over one shoulder like she had won something. “You’re welcome.”
I set down my mug and looked at her properly. “I’m going to Blue’s for the afternoon. What are your plans?”
“I’m going to Chloe’s.” She sat up a little straighter, already bracing for the maternal follow-up. “And yes, I’ll be home in time for dinner.”
“You say that like you’ve been interrogated before.”
“Because I have.”
Evan bent toward her and lowered his voice. “Oppression is often disguised as structure.”
Jade nodded solemnly. “That tracks.”
I gave them both a look. “I hate the two of you together.”
“That’s because we’re fun,” Evan said.
“That’s because you’re exhausting.”
He brightened. “Also true.”
Jade hopped up from the couch and hugged me before heading to her room to get ready. The embrace came quick and warm, the kind of affection she had become more sparing with as she grew older, which made me treasure it even more when she offered it.
“Bye, Mom.”
“Bye, baby. Text me if your plans change.”
“I will.” She leaned around me and called, “Bye, Guncle Evan.”
He covered his mouth with one hand. “Every time she says it, an angel gets its wings.”
“She doesn’t say it often enough for that many angels,” I said as I grabbed my bag.
He followed me through the door anyway, muttering about my hostility toward joy.
The drive to Blue’s was quieter than usual at first. Evan had spent most of his opening energy on Jude outrage and Jade worship, and I was tired in a way sleep never seemed to fix anymore.
Work accounted for some of it. The rest came from the worry Jackson had planted beneath my skin, settling in so deeply that even a day away from the hospital couldn’t loosen it. My body had forgotten how to unclench.
Evan glanced at me once while we waited at a stoplight and didn’t make a joke.
That was how I knew I looked bad.
Blue answered the door in soft clothes and bare feet, one hand resting automatically over the round curve of her stomach. Strain remained in her face, but she had somewhere to put it today. She had people ready to catch whatever slipped loose.
“It’s my first full day off in weeks,” she said as we entered. “I’m not on call. There’s no pager, no scrubs, no antiseptic clinging to my skin. Just sunlight, snacks, and the low hum of ordinary life.”
Her apartment was warm and lived-in, though something inside me had forgotten how to settle anywhere lately. I took one end of the couch, tucked a leg beneath me, and wrapped both hands around the mug she pressed into them.
Evan perched in the armchair like a flamingo in designer shoes, all long limbs and contained anticipation. He watched Blue for perhaps five seconds before the pressure of his restraint began showing in his face.
Blue noticed too.
“I’ve been sitting on this,” he said, his voice far too careful to sound casual, “because you needed time. But now that you’ve had time…”
“Evan, you know I don’t…” Blue warned.
“Okay.” He raised both hands immediately. “But you need to talk this through, so we’re here and we’re listening.”
Blue lowered herself into the chair across from us, both hands moving toward her stomach as though she could brace herself against the conversation before it began. Anger lived in her face. Hurt sat beneath it, with something rawer threaded through both.
“He broke into my apartment,” she said, and the words still landed with a sharp edge. “Not emotionally or metaphorically. Literally. He took that choice away from me.”
Evan nodded without interrupting or trying to soften what she had said. Beneath all the glitter and nonsense, that was one of the things I loved most about him. When it mattered, he could hold a hard truth still and let it remain ugly.
“I know he thought he was helping,” Blue continued. “I know he told himself it was romantic, but that doesn’t make it okay. I didn’t give him permission to decide when I was ready to see him.”
I stayed quiet. Blue didn’t need anyone rushing in with explanations yet. She needed room.
“No,” Evan said gently. “It doesn’t make it okay.” He tilted his head, careful with her in the way only people who loved her knew to be. “But it does sound like a man who panicked rather than one who wanted to hurt you.”
Blue released a humorless laugh. “Intent doesn’t erase impact.”
“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.” He paused before adding, “I also don’t think he realized how much control he’d already lost over the situation. Or himself.”
“That isn’t my responsibility.”
“It isn’t, and it shouldn’t be.” Evan’s voice softened. “I just don’t think it was about power for him. I think it was fear.”
I spoke then because the distinction mattered. “Fear can still hurt people.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It can.”
Blue sat back and folded her arms beneath her stomach. “Which is why I don’t owe him understanding merely because he finally figured out what he wants.”
Recognition tightened something inside me. Sometimes the reason behind the hurt wasn’t the part that mattered most. The damage lived in what happened afterward, in everything that remained unsaid and all the years Jackson’s absence had demanded I survive alone.
“I’ve had time to unpack it,” Blue said. “The frustrating part is that I do understand why he did it.”
She looked tired rather than weak, carrying the worn expression people developed once the truth stopped being clean.
“I don’t forgive it,” she continued. “But I unfortunately understand it.”
There was a difference. I knew that too.
Blue closed her eyes for a second before looking at us again. “He told me Sadie isn’t pregnant with his baby. She set up the conversation. She knew exactly how to phrase everything so I would hear what she wanted me to hear.”
Evan came halfway out of the chair. “That bitch.”
“Evan.”
“If she didn’t already have her own basketball under her shirt,” he said, bright with outrage, “I would drop-kick her into next week.”
I winced. “Violence is not…”
“I said hypothetically.” He exhaled and dropped back into the chair. “Sorry. Continue.”
Blue’s expression hardened. “He said she wanted me to believe she was carrying his baby. She knew what it would do.”
“That isn’t insecurity,” I said. “That’s strategy.”
“Yes.” Blue’s hand moved over her stomach. “And it worked.”
The room quieted around us.
“And Priest?” I asked.
Blue looked down before answering, and I knew from the way her mouth softened that some part of what he said had reached her.
“He told me that when he realized I was gone, it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room.” Her voice had lost some of its anger, which made it more dangerous because softness meant she had believed at least part of him.
“He said he broke every rule for me, that he’d been lying to himself, and that he thought he was protecting himself when really he was afraid. ”
Her throat tightened on the last word.
“And then he looked at me, at my stomach, and told me the moment he saw I was pregnant, not wanting babies flew out the door.”