Chapter 3 Arrivals
THREE
ARRIVALS
DECLAN
Istood near the arrivals gate with my hands shoved in my jacket pockets, watching the board flip through flight numbers and times that meant nothing to me except the one I'd memorized.
The display showed a fifteen-minute delay, which meant I'd been standing here for forty minutes already, early because the alternative was sitting at home counting down the minutes until I had to leave.
Mara had offered to come with me. Said it might be easier with a buffer between us.
I'd told her no. This was between me and Troy, and it always had been.
The board updated to show his flight had landed.
My stomach clenched, and I told myself it was nerves, the way any man would feel walking into a conversation he'd been dreading for six years.
People started streaming through the gate, business travelers in suits, families hauling tired kids, couples reuniting with an easy affection that looked effortless from a distance. I scanned faces, looking for the one I'd know anywhere even if six years had changed everything else about it.
Then I saw him, and the plan died on the spot.
He looked different. The boy I'd raised was gone entirely, replaced by a man who moved through the crowd like he was braced for a fight.
He had on a black jacket and dark jeans, boots that had seen better days, and an expression that said he'd already clocked every exit in the building and found them all inadequate.
He also looked tired, worn down in a way that had nothing to do with the flight and everything to do with whatever life he'd been living since he left. Since I'd let him leave.
He spotted me. Our eyes locked across the terminal, and for a second neither of us moved, just stood there staring at each other across twenty feet of polished floor while people flowed around us like water around stones.
Then my body made a decision my brain hadn't authorized.
I crossed the distance, pulled my hands from my pockets, and wrapped my arms around him.
The second I did it, I knew it was a mistake.
Troy had never been easy with contact, not with me.
He'd spent most of his teenage years flinching away from anything I tried to initiate, making it clear that whatever we were to each other, physical affection wasn't part of the arrangement.
But I couldn't take it back. My arms were already around him, one hand between his shoulder blades, the other at his lower back.
He was solid under my grip and smelled like airports and stale coffee, and underneath all of it there was a scent that was just his, unchanged, the same as it had been when he was seventeen and came home bloodied from who knows where.
He froze. I felt it through every line of his body, that instant of total stillness while he decided whether to pull away or say something cutting or just stand there until I got the point.
Then, slowly, his arms came up and settled around my ribs. The grip wasn't tight and it wasn't comfortable, but it was there, and he didn't pull back, which was more than I'd expected from him.
We stood like that in the middle of the terminal, locked in an awkward and tense embrace that neither of us knew how to end gracefully. I could feel his heartbeat against my chest, faster than it should have been, and the small hitch in his breath before he steadied it back out.
I knew I needed to let go, needed to step back and defuse the moment before it turned into an exchange neither of us was ready to have.
I held on for three more seconds anyway, feeling the weight of him, the solid fact of him standing here after six years of not knowing for certain if he was all right.
Then I made myself release him and stepped back. My hands fell to my sides and had nowhere useful to go.
Troy put a deliberate foot of space between us, and his expression locked down into a flatness I remembered well, everything readable behind it sealed off before I could catch a glimpse.
“Hey,” I said. A brilliant opening. Six years of separation and that's what I led with.
“Hey.” His voice was rougher than I remembered and pitched lower. “Thanks for the pickup.”
“Yeah. Of course.” I reached for his bag before he could argue about it and slung it over my shoulder. “Flight all right?”
“Long.” He glanced around the terminal like he was still casing it. “You didn't have to come yourself. Could've just sent a car.”
“I wanted to come.”
“Right.” The word landed flat, sitting somewhere between indifference and disbelief.
I let that sit. “Car's this way.”
He fell into step beside me with a careful distance between us, at least two feet, like he'd measured it and decided that was the minimum he could get away with and still look like he wasn't making a point.
We walked in silence through the terminal, down the escalators, through the sliding doors, and out into the parking garage that smelled like exhaust and raw concrete.
Snow had started while I'd been inside, light but steady, dusting the cars and turning the pavement slick.
My truck was on the third level, covered in road salt and a thin skim of fresh powder.
I unlocked it, tossed his bag in the back, and climbed into the driver's seat.
Troy got in beside me, pulled the door shut, and immediately turned his attention to his seatbelt like it was the most complicated mechanism he'd encountered in years.
Snow melted off his boots onto the floor mats and left dark wet patches on the rubber.
I started the engine, cranked the heat, and pulled out of the spot. The wipers scraped across the windshield as I navigated toward the exit ramp. The silence in the cab got heavier with each floor we descended.
Keep it casual. Keep it light. The plan was gone but I could still hold the basic shape of it. Just act normal, whatever normal was supposed to look like when the person you'd spent six years trying not to think about was sitting two feet away from you.
“You look different,” Troy said.
I glanced over. He was watching the windshield, tracking the wipers, but I could see the set of his jaw and the way his hands had locked around his knees.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He looked at me then, eyes moving across my shoulders and arms and the way my shirt pulled across my chest in a way I pretended not to notice. “What the fuck have you been doing to yourself?”
“Working out.”
“That's not just working out. You look like you've been sleeping in the gym.”
“Maybe I have.”
That landed and he let it sit, which told me he'd caught the weight behind it. He turned back to the windshield. “Still got the same truck.”
“Runs fine.”
“Yeah, that's you all over.” There was an edge under it that he wasn't bothering to hide. “If it works, don't change it.”
“That a problem?”
“Didn't say it was.”
“Sounded like it.”
“It was an observation.” He shifted in the seat, putting his shoulder toward the door. “Forget it.”
We fell quiet again. Chicago slid past the windows in a blur of lights and wet streets I could navigate with my eyes closed, snow piling up at the curbs in dirty gray mounds the plows would just push somewhere else until spring.
“You cut your hair,” I said, after another stretch of silence.
“Needed a change.”
“Looks good.”
“Thanks.” The word came out like it cost him. “You grew yours out.”
“Seemed easier than getting it cut every week.”
“Lazy.”
“Gets the job done.”
He made a low, unimpressed sound. “Six years and you've gotten worse at taking a compliment.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“Jury's still out.”
I almost smiled at that and managed not to.
The drive home took twenty minutes and felt longer.
We hit a stretch where neither of us said anything for a full five minutes, and the silence got a weight to it that made even breathing feel like a deliberate act.
Troy kept looking at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
I could feel his gaze tracking over my profile and my hands on the wheel, and each time I glanced over he was already watching the window, jaw tight, shoulders set.
I was doing the same. Stealing looks at him when the traffic stopped.
I pulled into the driveway, killed the engine, and sat there a beat with my hands still on the wheel, looking at the house.
Small, functional, nothing special. But having Troy in the passenger seat looking at it made everything feel displaced, like I'd been living in a holding pattern for years and hadn't let myself notice until right now.
“Home sweet home,” I said, and it came out more awkward than I'd intended.
Troy didn't respond. He got out, pulled his bag from the back, and stood on the sidewalk staring at the front door with an expression I couldn't read from where I was standing.
I climbed out, locked the truck, and walked past him toward the house. He followed a few steps behind, close enough that I could hear his breathing, far enough that the gap felt deliberate.
Inside, I hit the lights and watched him take in the space.
His gaze moved the way it always had, methodical and thorough, cataloging changes before he let himself settle anywhere.
The furniture was the same. The layout the same.
But I'd repainted a few years back, fixed the ceiling, replaced the couch after the old one finally gave out.
“Looks different,” he said.
“Did some work on it.”
“Hm.” He set his bag down near the door and shoved his hands in his pockets. Then, quieter, almost to himself: “She would've liked it.”
I didn't answer that. Couldn't.
He seemed to realize what he'd said, and his jaw tightened. “Where do you want me?”
“Guest room's upstairs. Sheets are clean. Towels are in the hall bathroom.” I kept my voice even. “You eat on the plane?”
“Not really.”
“Want food?”
“I'm good.”
“Troy.”
“I said I'm good, Declan.”
“When's the last time you had a real meal that wasn't out of an airport vending machine?”