Chapter 35
Silas
It happens mid-drill.
We’re running a neutral-zone regroup in Charleston, pucks snapping tape-to-tape, and my legs finally feel like they belong to me again. Thorn passes his board off to the goalie coach before answering his phone. Don’t ask me how I know it isn’t a good call.
Thorn sees my eyes cut to the corner and blows the drill dead. “Water,” he yells to the team then points at me. “Harrison. Here.”
I coast over, chest rising, lungs burning clean. He doesn’t bother moving close enough for the guys to eavesdrop—he just holds his phone out so I can see there is a call on speaker.
“Go.”
Thorn’s cousin, the officer, speaks in a calm voice that makes the blood drain from my head. “We’re at your residence. Everyone’s safe. Repeat—everyone is safe. Suspect left the property before units arrived.”
Suspect. They won’t say his name, but I hear it anyway.
Brian Harrison. My father.
“Put me through to Oakley.” I’m already climbing the boards, already stripping my gloves as I hit the bench. “Now.”
“She’s with officers inside,” the officer says. “Both girls are shaken but safe. Get home if you can.”
“Copy,” Thorn says for both of us and kills the call.
“I’m going.” I’m not asking for permission. I’m not waiting for protocol. “Flight, bus, car—I don’t care. I’m going.”
“I know.” Thorn’s voice is steady. “Rooks, grab his gear.” Then to me, quieter, he reiterates what we were just told. “They’re okay.”
Rooks is already vaulting the bench, tugging at his helmet strap. “I’ll drive. We can be on the road in five.”
“Practice is over,” Thorn calls to the ice without taking his eyes off me. “Shower if you need it then hotel. Jacobs and Harrison are out.”
I’m halfway down the tunnel, skates clattering on concrete, before I realize I’m still wearing them. I kick them off at the threshold, jam my feet into sneakers without socks, and sling my bag over my shoulder. My fingers don’t work right. My brain’s two minutes behind my body.
In the truck, the seat belt feels too restricting. I need to be in Steele Valley. I should have never left. Rooks peels us out of the lot and onto the highway, and the world turns into a smear of lanes and taillights.
“Talk to me,” he says, eyes flicking between the road and my face.
“He was on my porch.” I suck in air between clenched teeth. “They said he left. They said they’re safe.”
Rooks reaches for the console with one hand and pops a water bottle into my palm. “Drink. Breathe. Text Oakley so she sees your name.”
I don’t think; I just type.
Silas: I’m coming. Are you hurt? Are you with her?
My Girl: We’re okay.
Silas: I'm freaking the hell out, Kates. Gonna need more than that.
My Girl: Aubs was a rockstar and stayed hidden. I didn't let him inside.
Silas: Love my girls.
My Girl: Get home soon, 32.
We’re still several hours out, but she doesn’t need the number. What she needs is proof that even from states away, I’m already on my way home. I’m betting Rooks will break a few traffic laws to get us home faster anyway.
“Do you want me to call Noah?” Rooker asks.
“Yeah.” My voice is gravel, and I’m thankful he’s taking the reins here.
While Rooks makes the calls, I stare at the blue glow of my phone like I can force another text to appear. Nothing from the unknown number. No hey, son, no come and stop me. He won’t say it. He’ll lurk and he’ll test and he’ll try to make me feel like the one who screwed up.
I grip the handle above the window and breathe until my knuckles stop shaking. The radio’s off. The truck hums. The wipers keep time. Still, I can’t stay grounded.
“Talk to me about the house,” Rooks says, like he can sense the way my thoughts are spiraling. “Cameras set. Sensors up. We synced the front lights last week.”
“And I changed the code Tuesday.” I swallow. “He knew I was gone. Knew we were in Charleston. He’s watching the team’s feed.”
“Then we starve him. No more public schedules, no real-time posts of you. We lock it down.”
I’m mad at myself for leaving, at my father for getting so damn close to taking what’s most precious to me. At the way fear makes a liar out of every promise you ever wanted to keep.
I picture Aubrey’s door half-open at night, the glow from her unicorn lamp. I picture Oakley Kate sitting on the floor across from it, back to the wall, boot propped on a pillow, whispering into the dark like she could bar a wolf out with words.
Hold, I tell myself. Hold until you can put your hands on both of them. Everything else is noise.
When we crest the last hill before our street, I spot it: a cruiser parked at the curb, lights off now but presence loud enough to quiet the neighborhood. Even that little bit helps soothe the panic. Not enough, but some.
Rooks barely has time to put the truck in park before I’m out the door. The air is cold enough that it shaves a layer off my lungs, and the smell of wet leaves knocks me sideways with a memory of being nine and waiting on the porch for a mom who didn’t come home on time.
Not now. Not here.
An officer with an uncanny resemblance to Thorn Cason is on the porch steps with his hands in his jacket pockets, posture loose in a way that’s meant to tell me I can breathe.
“Where is he?” I hear myself ask, voice low.
“Gone.” His jaw flexes like the word tastes bad. “Units canvassed, but he was smart. No plates on the truck. No cameras on the side street yet.”
“Yet?”
“Sheriff’s ordering more.” He nods toward the door. “Reid Cason,” he says as he offers his hand.
Something in my chest gives at that. “How are they?”
His mouth softens. “Oakley was…solid. Better than most would’ve been.”
Of course, she was. She always is.
“Let me see them,” I say.
He steps aside. “Go.”
Inside, the house has that after-storm quiet that makes you speak softer without knowing why.
A box sits on the counter, the snow globe from last night with a tech dusting it for prints.
My stomach rolls. I find my Katibug in the living room, perched on the edge of the couch like she hasn’t decided whether sitting or pacing helps more.
She looks up, and the relief that breaks across her face nearly puts me on the floor.
“Hi,” she says. It’s a whisper and a laugh and a sob all in one word.
I cross the room in three strides and stop in front of her, because if I pull her in too fast, we’ll both shatter. “You okay?” I ask, because questions are easier than the torrent behind them. “Did he—”
“No.” She’s quick to cut me off, like she knows how the worst pictures paint themselves in my head. “He never got inside.”
I breathe out hard enough I have to put a hand on the back of the couch to steady myself. Then I do what I should’ve done first: I touch her. Just her cheek, the swipe of my thumb along her skin to prove she’s here.
“Lightning,” I say.
Her mouth wobbles. “She waited just like you taught her.”
I nod, because the words won’t go where I need them. I swallow, finally finding the ones I can manage. “Good job, Katibug.”
She huffs an almost-laugh. “I didn’t feel like it.”
“You don’t have to feel like it to be it.” My hand slides down, finds hers, and I notice for the first time the faint tremor still running through her fingers. I curl my own around it until the shake has somewhere else to go.
Behind us, a floorboard whispers. Reid Cason is in the doorway, giving me a look similar to the one his cousin gives a player he wants an answer from but doesn’t want to pry. “Statement tonight or in the morning?”
“Morning.” My eyes don’t leave Oakley. “I need to make sure we’re all okay.”
“Figured as much.” He tips his chin. “Patrol will loop till sunup. I left my number on the counter if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” I say, and mean more than the word holds.
Reid nods once and sees everyone else out of the house.
I drop to a knee so we’re eye-level. “Tell me.”
Oakley does. Not the sensational version.
The exact one. The knock. The eyes. The way his voice was so calm it made her think she was the crazy one for a second.
The way she didn’t look toward the hall when Aubrey moved.
How she closed the door. How she locked it. How she called. How she kept breathing.
By the time she gets to the end, my hands are fisted so tight it’s a miracle I’m not bleeding. “I’m sorry,” I say, and it comes out like a cut. “I shouldn’t have gone to Charleston. I should’ve made y’all come with me. Maybe—”
“No.” Her voice is sharp enough to slice the apology free of my mouth. “Don’t start that.”
“He came to my house.”
“Our house.” She sets my own words back in my hands like a weight I can carry. “He came to our house because you won’t let him have what he wants. He came because he’s losing.”
I know what she’s doing. I let her do it anyway, because she’s right. Guilt is a liar.
“Did he touch the handle?” I ask, because logistics are easier to fight than ghosts.
“Yes.” She gestures to the door. “They dusted it, but he had gloves on.”
I stand, needing a moment to release some of the tension that’s been compounding over the last few hours.
I check the lock a useless second time, check the window latches.
I know all the sensors are active. I’ve checked twice since I walked in the door.
It doesn’t matter. I still do a sweep of the perimeter with my eyes, then I come back to her.
“You sleep any?” I ask.
She lets out a breath that isn’t a laugh. “I sat on the kitchen floor until the lights hit the window. Does that count?”
“It’s rest.” I don’t say that counts for tonight, but I think it hard enough I hope she hears it anyway.
A tiny shape appears on the stairs, quiet as a mouse. “Bubba?”
Aubrey’s hair is a nest, her unicorn shirt rumpled, eyes huge in the low light. I’m at the stairs before the second syllable hits the air.
“Hey, baby,” I say, scooping her up. “Best damn hider ever.”
She nods against my neck, and her voice is a whisper. “I heard him.”
“I know.” My throat closes; I push past it. “You did perfect.”
“Was Kate scared?” she asks into my shoulder.
“For a minute,” Oakley answers from the bottom of the stairs, honesty soft and fierce. “But then I remembered the game.”
Aubrey leans back to look at me. “You scared?”
“Only until I got here,” I tell her, because I don’t lie to her and because it’s true.
She considers that with the solemnity only kids have. “Okay,” she says finally, and tucks her head under my chin with a little sigh that shoves something broken inside me closer to right. “Bubba?”
“Yeah, little bit?”
“Can you call and check on my mom? I don’t want to talk to her, but I don’t want him to hurt her either,” she whispers, and I think the sound of her plea may be more heartbreaking than anything else I’ve heard today.
We pile onto the couch together as I promise to call her mom’s center once we’ve had a few hours of sleep—Aubrey sprawled half on me, half on Oakley, our own little triad of limbs and heartbeats.
I wait until her breathing evens out then shift just enough to pull the blanket over her.
The snow globe on the counter catches the lamp and throws a scatter of glitter across the ceiling.
I hate it and I leave it there anyway, because the little girl in our lap smiled at it.
Oakley watches me watch it. “You think that was him?”
“No. I think he’d have asked you about it or bragged in some way.” The honesty sits heavy between us as I make a promise to the three of us. “There won’t be a next time.”
Her eyes find mine. “How can you know that?”
“Because I’m done playing his game.” The words come slow, like I’m laying bricks. “He wants us rattled. He wants a reason to say I’m unstable. He expects me to be his carbon copy. I’m not giving him any of it.”
“Then what?”
“Quiet,” I say. “We lock it down. Keep the lawyer in the loop. She’s already got a protective order drafted and ready to file.
I’ll add a few more cameras, including one angled toward that side street.
You don’t open the door for anyone without calling my name first even if you think it’s Santa Claus. ”
Her mouth twitches. “If it’s Santa, I’m opening the door.”
“Fine. But only if he knows what you asked for when you were five.”
It wins a fragile laugh that does more for my lungs than oxygen. “Okay, Captain.”
A text from Noah lights up my phone:
Noah: Want me to swing by in the morning? Coffee + donuts + glare into space?
I send thumbs-up emojis, because my hands are busy holding the two people who make life worth living.
“Si?” Oakley says after a minute.
“Yeah?”
“I was terrified.” She doesn’t look at me when she says it.
“I know.” I squeeze her fingers once. “Me, too.”
“I haven’t been that scared since we lost our baby boy. I just kept thinking ‘I will not let him take our girl,’” she says, like she’s reminding both of us of a truth we keep forgetting.
I look down at the little blonde head breathing even and sure against my chest. At the woman whose hand is laced in mine like there was never any other way it fit. The anger in me doesn’t go away. It changes temperature. It turns into a low, steady heat I can use.
“I need you to hear me,” I say, quiet enough that it’s only for her. “He will never get her. This little girl is ours. And the minute you are ready to add your name to her custody papers, we will start the paperwork.”
Her eyes shine, but her voice is steady. “I know.”
“And he’s not hurting you, either. You’re mine.”
Her breath catches. “Okay.”
We sit like that long enough for the house to remember what normal sounds like—appliances humming, heater cycling, the soft tap of rain beginning on the windows.
Every so often I glance at the door camera feed and then force myself to put the phone down again.
The red dots hold. The sensors blink their tiny reassurance.
Eventually, Oakley’s head tips onto my shoulder. I shift, easing us all into something that looks like comfort if you squint. Aubrey’s hand curls in my shirt. Oakley’s fingers stay threaded through mine even as sleep pulls at her. I let the weight anchor me.
The storm can pound and it can posture, but inside this circle—this couch, this room, this family—I draw a line.
No one crosses it.
Not again. Not ever.