Chapter Thirteen #2
I realize I’m still holding my breath, too.
Once they’ve disappeared I drop the act. “Did you really have to pull that out in front of him?” I spit at her, my hand hovering over the fucking binder.
Her cheeks flush a deeper, shameful pink, and her fingers twitch at the chain around her neck, winding and unwinding it like it might save her.
“I—I—” she starts, but I cut her off.
“You think he doesn’t know what’s in that binder?” My voice cuts clean through the air, sharper than I mean it to. “Every report, every shattered home, every fucking failure that’s followed him like a shadow? You think he hasn’t memorized that misery by now?”
She blinks, and her lips part like she wants to speak, to explain, but no sound comes. Just a tight nod, her breath hitching in the back of her throat.
I’m not trying to rip her apart. But Jesus—he’s nine. Nine. And that binder? That binder is every scream he couldn’t escape, every night he didn’t sleep, and a stark God damn reminder he wasn’t enough. It doesn’t just document pain. It is pain.
She flinches like I slapped her, and maybe I did, just not with my hands. Her eyes go glassy, lips parted but frozen, and her breath stutters like she can’t quite remember how to breathe under the weight of it all.
I didn’t want to humiliate her. But that fucking binder might as well be a tombstone. It doesn't just catalog pain—it cements it, makes it permanent. Something cold and clinical that strips his grief down to bullet points.
She nods, stiff, like the motion hurts. And it should. Because now that weight, that sorrow he’s carried his whole damn life? She’s touched it. Mishandled it. The shame on her face tells me she knows it.
“Now, you don’t have to give me the cliff notes, Henny already did that.
” He didn’t but he fucking will because I don’t think I can open that fucking binder after watching how much it affected Dallas.
I snatch it from the table, and slide it under the couch hard enough I hear it bounce off the wall.
Rue stares at me eyes wide before clearing her throat.
“Listen, I really do care about him, and just want what's best for him.” Her voice cracks, making my bitchy demeanor soften just slightly.
“Dallas deserves all the love in the world, he’s a special kid who was born not to stand a snowball's chance in hell, but he deserves one.” Her hands tremble as she dabs the corner of her eyes on her cardigan.
“He is going to test every limit you have to see if you’ll give up on him, but something tells me he’s met his match with you.” She smiles warmly, making me squirm. A woman who isn’t woman enough to have children is being lectured on not giving up on a child. Oh, the motherfucking irony.
Even after this little facade ends I’ll still be in his life, just more as a super fun aunt like I am to Charlie and Bash.
Once Rue finishes her inspection and Henry shows Dallas the last of the house, she steps toward me with a polite but unreadable smile. She presses her card into my palm like it’s a verdict.
“I’ll be in touch to schedule the formal home study sometime this week,” she says. And just like that, she’s gone—leaving the door swinging shut behind her and something heavier hanging in the air.
We gather at the kitchen table without speaking, the silence thick with everything we’re feeling but can’t say. Fatigue. Hope. Fear. It’s all there in the way we slump into our chairs.
Dallas is the only one who can’t stay still. His eyes keep darting—door, Henry, door again. He’s trying to be subtle, trying to play it cool, but I know him too well. I see it in the tight set of his jaw, in the restless twitch of his fingers.
He’s already halfway gone, lost inside his head.
I lean forward, my voice low but firm—measured, the way you speak when someone’s standing on a ledge and you’re begging them not to jump. “Dallas, I wouldn’t think of running if I were you.”
“Don’t you mean ‘honey’?” Dallas shoots back, his voice sharp with that mocking edge he’s been practicing.
“Honey, Sheriff, Henry,” I say with a lazy wave, like it’s all the same—like my heart isn’t hammering from the emotional minefield we’re tiptoeing through.
Dallas turns to Henry, maybe hoping for backup, but Henry just leans back in his chair, arms crossed, the corner of his mouth tugging into something like amusement. He’s watching us like we’re his evening entertainment.
Then my gaze lands on the fresh scratches marring Henry’s face—a reminder of the wild territory we just found ourselves in. My stomach twists.
I jab a piece of chicken like it insulted me and point my fork squarely at Henry. “We don’t hit in this house,” I say sharply. “You’re angry? Fine. Punch a pillow. Go for a run. Scream into the woods. But we do not lay hands on each other.”
Dallas doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t roll his eyes or crack a joke. He just looks at me, and when he speaks, his voice is low—steady, but raw.
“What if that doesn’t work?”
God, the way he says it—quiet, broken—it carves right through me. He’s not trying to be difficult. He’s asking because he genuinely doesn’t know. Because he’s drowning in something too big for fists or feet to outrun.
My throat tightens. There it is—the ache of knowing this boy isn’t just trouble. He’s hurt, and no one’s ever shown him what to do with the pieces.
I lean in, lowering my voice. “Then I’ll take you to the baddest motherfucker I know to work that anger out.”
“Lou, watch your mouth, for crying out loud!” Henry scolds, but I don’t flinch. I don’t even blink. I just keep my gaze locked on the boy across from me, because I can see it—the question rising in his mind like steam off a too-hot plate, and it makes me laugh.
I nod toward Henry without looking away. “Not him, kid. His brother.”
That’s when I see it—that flicker behind his eyes, the shift. The moment he chooses not to bolt. At least not tonight. A part of me wants to collapse in relief, but I swallow it down. This isn’t a victory. It’s just the beginning.
“What kind of name is Louisiana?” he asks, his mouth full of chicken, eyes still testing every inch of me.
I lift a brow. “What kind of name is Dallas?”
“So, you were named after a state?”
“So, you were named after a city?”
He shrugs. “Guess I was, Louis.”
“Guess you were, Dally,” I say with a slow grin, dragging my fork through my food before scraping it across my teeth as I take a bite.
That’s when the staring contest starts—him, all wounded pride and caged-animal tension; me, too tired to back down and too stubborn to let him win. It stretches long and taut between us, a silent dare passed over dinner.
His fingers tighten around his fork, knuckles turning white. He’s fighting something—me, himself, maybe the whole damn world. And for a moment I wonder if he’ll explode again, if the pressure inside him will blow the roof right off this house.
But then—he nods. Just barely. A slight, shaky nod.
Then he goes back to eating.
So do I.
Inside, I’m so damn relieved I could cry—but I can’t show that. Not here. Not now. I’ve learned how to wear stillness like armor.
Then I glance up—and Henry’s staring at me.
There’s a softness on his face that shouldn’t be there, not for me. It’s quiet and steady, almost reverent, and it cuts deeper than anything else could. Because that look? That look is hope.
And he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know he’s pinning it to a dying star.
One that flickers but can’t sustain. One that’ll never burn bright enough. One that was never meant to be enough—for anyone.
Least of all him.
“Did you put all the sharp objects away?” I ask over my shoulder, voice low, as Henry steps back into the kitchen after showing Dallas how to work the shower.
He doesn’t answer right away. Just leans against the counter, arms crossed over his chest—every line of muscle flexing, tattoos shifting like shadows over skin.
His eyes are on me, quiet and unreadable, while I wash the dishes from earlier.
I can feel him looking, like a hand pressed to the small of my back.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “Then I lingered for a second. Just to make sure he was okay.” He pauses. “ He called me a pervert.”
I let out a short laugh, but there’s no real humor in it. Just a tension valve releasing the smallest bit of pressure.
When I glance over, he’s watching me. Not casual. Not distant. Like if he looks long enough, maybe he can decode what’s broken in both of us.
He pushes off the counter, steps closer. “He reminds me so damn much of you,” he murmurs softly. “All that fire. All that fury, and nowhere to put it.”
I turn, towel clenched in my hand. He’s closer than I realized. Close enough to make it hard to breathe. His hand lifts—callused fingers catching on a stray lock of my hair, twisting it slowly, like muscle memory he can’t stop himself from following.
“But like you were so eager to remind me,” I murmur, keeping my voice cool, even if my pulse isn’t, “I had someone in my corner.”
His eyes search mine—not for answers, but for something heavier. Something he’s scared to name out loud.
“I’m sorry, Louisiana.” My name sounds like it breaks something in him. “That wasn’t the point. I just—I panicked. Thought if we let him walk out, he’d end up doing something worse to escape. He’s just a kid.” His voice softens at the edges, like he’s already bracing for the backlash.
I meet his gaze and don’t flinch.
“And you thought I’d turn my back on that?” My voice is sharp, quiet. Not angry—wounded. “Thought I’d say no to a scared little boy with nowhere to go?”
Henry’s hand falls away as if I slapped it. His jaw flexes, breath catching in his chest.
“No, wildflower,” he says, and that word is thick with everything we’ve left unsaid. “I was the gamble. I knew you wouldn’t turn him away, but you’ve been saying no to me for so long…I didn’t think I could handle you turning away again. Not this time.”
Fuck, if that doesn’t knock the breath out of me.
He just doesn’t understand—. I carry too much shame to admit how small I feel, how broken.
And yet, I am still too God damn chicken shit to tell him to move on.
I’ve tried in every way that doesn’t involve my mouth.
Because I know—I know—the second I speak it aloud, something inside me will snap, and my world isn’t ready for that kind of devastation.
Not yet.
I yank the dish towel off my shoulder, hands shaking as I dry them too fast, too hard. “You don’t fucking get it—”
The words die on my tongue as Henry steps forward and wraps his arms around me.
No warning. No room to escape.
I squirm, instinct flaring, but he just holds me tighter—anchoring me in place with arms that feel like they were made to catch me. Citrus and cedar rise up, hitting me in the chest, and suddenly I can’t breathe for an entirely different reason.
“No, wildflower,” he murmurs in my ear, “I don’t get it. But I know you keep thinking you’re empty…and I keep seeing you full.”
God, I want to hate how good it feels—the warmth, the weight of him. The way that bottomless pit inside me starts to fill just from the press of his chest against mine. I don’t want to need that. Don’t want to believe him.
But some part of me—the soft, stupid part—shouts, “Home. We’re finally home”
I tell her to shut the hell up. She is about as trustworthy as a hooker running a Black Friday sale.
I count to five. Then I pull back, ignoring how it makes my chest ache, and toss the dish towel in his face.
“The rest are yours, Sheriff.”
I spin on my heel before he can see the truth behind my eyes—before I give him a reason to stay. I have a boy to check on. One who just cracked the foundation beneath my feet, and I’ll be damned if I let the man with sad eyes and a hero’s heart finish the job.