Chapter 28 #3
The porch goes quiet again. But it’s not a bad quiet. Not empty. Just full of things that didn’t exist between us a few weeks ago and now feel like they’ve been there all along.
I look at her then. Really look. At the woman in my sweatshirt with my future sitting all over her face whether she realizes it or not. And because I’ve apparently decided today is a great day to ruin my own emotional stability completely, I tell her the part I usually leave out.
“The worst part wasn’t losing them,” I say quietly.
Raven’s expression shifts. Softens around the edges. “What was?”
I look away before I answer. “The guilt.”
That word lands heavy. Because it always does.
“I was supposed to be in the backseat with her,” I say, voice rougher now. “My sister. She wanted me back there because she got scared in storms. I was being a little asshole about it. Wanted the front seat. Threw a fit till my dad gave in.”
Raven doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe too loud. Doesn’t make this harder by trying to fix it.
Good.
“I’ve spent years knowing if I’d just shut the fuck up and sat in the back like I was supposed to, maybe…”
I stop there.
Because maybe is a poison and I know it. Because maybe won’t bring anybody back. Because maybe has already eaten enough years of my life.
Raven sets her mug down on the porch rail and steps closer. Slowly. Giving me every chance to pull away.
I don’t.
Her hand slides over mine where it grips the railing, warm and steady and somehow more grounding than it has any right to be. “That wasn’t your fault,” she says quietly.
Normally, I’d hate that sentence. Would probably push back on instinct. But coming from her, standing here after everything she trusted me with last night, it doesn’t sound cheap. It sounds earned.
So I don’t argue. I just turn my hand over and lace my fingers through hers. And stand there.
Holding on.
***
Later, after dinner and after the kids have burned through whatever leftover energy they had by turning the downstairs hall into a racetrack and after the women finally corral the chaos into something resembling bedtime, I find myself leaning in the doorway of the room Lexi’s been sleeping in.
She’s out cold. Bunny tucked under one arm. One little hand fisted in the blanket near her face.
The nightlight plugged into the wall casts a soft gold glow over the room, catching in the wild dark curls spread across the pillow and the tiny, peaceful rise and fall of her chest.
I don’t move. Can’t, for a second. Because all at once, it isn’t Lexi I’m seeing.
Not fully.
It’s another little girl too. A different one. Brown pigtails and skinned knees and a laugh I still remember if I let myself go too quiet for too long. My sister.
I don’t think about her much on purpose. Not because I don’t love her. Because I do. Because I always will. I just learned a long time ago that some grief gets quieter if you stop looking directly at it.
But standing here now, watching Lexi sleep with Bunny tucked under her arm like the whole world can’t touch her as long as that stuffed rabbit is still close enough to grab in the dark, I can’t keep the overlap from happening.
And maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe this is the part where I stop pretending the old pain and the new love don’t live in the same place. Because they do.
That’s the truth of it.
That little girl in that bed matters to me in a way I didn’t see coming and definitely didn’t plan for. Not abstractly. Not as part of Raven.
As Lexi.
As herself. As bug and sticky fingers and impossible questions and little feet thudding down the hall toward me like she’s already decided I’m safe enough to seek out when she wants something.
And standing here in the low gold light with the whole clubhouse quieting down around us, I realize something with a force that feels almost physical.
No one takes another little girl from me. No one. Not while I’m breathing.
The promise settles in my chest without words at first.
Then they come anyway.
Private. Mean. Final.
Not this one.
I stand there another minute just looking at her.
Then I turn and head for my room. Because another thought’s been building all day, low and steady and impossible to ignore now that it’s fully formed.
Lexi needs her own room. Not a temporary corner. Not a borrowed setup. A real space. A room that says she belongs here long enough to unpack.
And Raven?
Raven doesn’t need to keep pretending there’s still some meaningful line between her room and mine and when all of me goes calmer when she’s there. That thought should maybe be more alarming than it is.
Instead, it just feels obvious.
So by the time Raven knocks softly on my door twenty minutes later after checking on Lexi one last time, I already know what I’m going to say.
She steps in wearing leggings and one of my T-shirts this time, hair still damp from a shower, face clean and soft in a way that keeps catching me low in the chest when I’m not prepared for it.
“Lexi’s down,” she says quietly.
I nod once, leaning back against the dresser while I look at her. Then I say, “Good. Because I’m stealing you.”
That gets a blink out of her. Then a faint smile. “Oh?”
I jerk my chin toward the bed. “C’mere.”
She crosses the room slowly, watching me with that cautious curiosity she still gets when she’s trying to figure out what exactly is happening in my head before I’ve said it out loud.
I wait until she’s close enough to reach, then hook an arm around her waist and pull her into me.
She goes with it immediately.
That still does something dangerous to me every time.