Chapter 46 Elena
ELENA
Part of me feels like Tyler already knows this, but saying it here, with his face in front of me, feels like a confession. “I love them,” I whisper. “Buck, Weston, Calder. All three of them.”
My husband keeps smiling back at me as emotion swells tight beneath my ribs.
“I didn’t plan any of this. I tried not to let it happen, but it happened anyway, and it’s real. They love me, and they love T.J., and they’re with me because they want a life with us, not because they feel responsible for what happened three years ago.”
My mouth trembles. “Though I think responsibility is hardwired into all of you men so deeply none of you would know how to set it down if you tried.”
A tear slips free, and I wipe it away and keep going. “I hope you’d understand.” Then I shake my head. “No, that’s not right. I know you would. They were your brothers, and you trusted them. I trust them, too, with me, and T.J., and our future.”
My eyes move from Tyler’s face to the others in the picture. To the surviving men who should have stayed nothing more than pieces of Tyler’s past, and somehow, they became the center of my future instead.
There’s no sign and no dramatic shift in the air. Yet as I stand there, something loosens deep inside me, and the peace that fills the space is so sudden and complete it almost feels external.
Not him. I don’t really believe that. But I let myself imagine it, anyway. Tyler seeing the life in front of me and not begrudging a single part of it. Tyler knowing our son will grow up surrounded by men who will walk into fire for him. Tyler letting me go without being lost or forgotten.
“Thank you,” I whisper, then stand there as the tears dry on my skin.
When tires crunch on the gravel outside, my pulse gives a small, automatic jump before reason catches up. It’s Weston’s truck, and he and Calder are back.
I wipe under my eyes and meet them at the door. “How did it go?” I ask as soon as they come in.
Weston sets a hand at my waist when I reach him, and I lift onto my toes to kiss him. He kisses me back gently at first, then a little deeper as he brushes my hair back behind my ear.
“Good,” he says when I pull away. “Better than it could’ve been.”
Calder watches me come to him with that quiet intensity of his. I slide a hand to the side of his neck and kiss him softly. His mouth parts with a low breath as he pulls me closer.
“What did she say?” I ask after giving him one more kiss.
“Lungs sound better.” His voice is still a little rougher than usual, but less than it had been. “No new concerns.”
“She told him to take it easy a few more days,” Weston says.
I study Calder’s face. “Are you going to do that?”
The corner of his mouth moves. “Mostly.”
Weston drapes his jacket over the back of a chair. “Dr. Navarro said he doesn’t get to decide what ‘taking it easy’ means.”
“That sounds like her.”
Then the front door opens again, and Buck steps in with a stack of folders under one arm. He acknowledges the other men but heads straight for me. His hand settles at my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek as he bends and kisses me. It’s not hurried, but not soft, either.
When I pull back, he searches my eyes. “You okay?” After I nod, he turns to Calder. “Doctor clear you?”
Calder repeats the checkup report.
Weston looks at the coffee table, to the empty spot where the box had been. “How did it go?” he asks me in a gentle tone.
Emotion rises so quickly I’m glad I already cried most of it out before they got back.
“It’s done. C’mon. I want to show you.” I lead them into the den, and they follow without saying anything. At the shelf, Weston comes to one side of me, Calder to the other, while Buck stops just behind me.
None of them touches me at first, but after a few quiet seconds, Weston reaches for my hand and takes it in his, just as Calder takes my other. Buck settles a hand at the back of my neck, then slides it down in one slow pass over my shoulder.
“It looks right,” Buck says after we stand in silence for a long moment.
Calder’s thumb strokes across my knuckles. “Yeah.”
I lean back just enough that Buck’s hand feels grounding more than comforting. Weston’s fingers remain laced through mine, while Calder steps closer and moves his hand to my waist.
“I didn’t know if it would,” I admit. “I thought maybe putting it all out would make it worse.”
“But it didn’t,” Weston says quietly, and he’s right.
Buck presses a kiss into my hair near my temple, Weston squeezes my hand, and Calder’s fingers flex at my waist.
None of them crowd the moment or try to fill it with the wrong words. They let me breathe.
After a minute or so, Buck says, “I’m glad you didn’t have to do this alone.”
“I did part of it alone,” I say.
“The part you needed to,” Weston says.
Calder’s voice is quiet when it comes. “And now you don’t have to be.”
I have to look down for a second, and my throat tightens, but it’s not painful this time.
I bring Weston’s hand up and kiss him there, then turn my face into Buck’s shoulder before reaching for Calder. Weston shifts closer and brushes his mouth against my temple. Buck strokes his thumb once along the side of my neck. Calder keeps hold of my waist, quiet and sure.
Between them, I feel held from every side without being hemmed in.
For one more long moment, we stay together in the den, with Tyler’s picture on the wall and the shelf beside it made into something that feels less like a shrine to loss and more like a place where memory can live beside everything still to come.