Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
MYA
T he twins are finally asleep, which feels like a minor miracle considering one of them screamed bloody murder because I dared to switch out his pacifier mid-suck.
The house is quiet—too quiet, almost—which should feel like peace, but tonight it feels like a trap.
And then my phone lights up.
FaceTime Incoming: Isabel.
I freeze.
Not because I’m surprised she’s calling. Because I’m surprised it’s now.
Our last conversation was almost a year ago and ended with her calling me dramatic and me calling her a spoiled brat, which—fair, but still. We don’t talk. We don’t do tearful catch-ups or birthday calls. We’re not those kind of sisters.
So why now?
I hesitate. Then swipe to answer before I can change my mind.
Her face fills the screen, impossibly composed, like she’s on her way to an influencer brunch in Tribeca. Still the same almond eyes and perfectly brushed brows, but there’s something different this time. Something softer.
“Mya,” she breathes, like my name is both a memory and a mistake.
“Hey.” My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.
A beat passes, too heavy to be casual. She clears her throat. “I, uh… I heard about what happened. From Dad.”
My heart stutters. Of course she did. Of course he told her. But still, hearing her say it makes the silence between us louder.
“He said you were in a coma.” Her voice cracks a little. “Three months?”
I nod slowly. “Yeah. Woke up to find out I gave birth without even knowing it.”
Her eyes fill. Isabel’s eyes. The girl who once didn’t cry when her cat died. “I should’ve called. I should’ve come.”
I shake my head, swallowing hard. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” she says quickly. “Mya, I should’ve been there. I didn’t know how to reach out, and then when I figured it out, it felt too late and I—I just kept putting it off like that would somehow fix it.”
She’s rambling. She’s rambling. Isabel, queen of cutting comments and immaculate exits, is unraveling in real time.
My throat tightens. “You don’t have to explain.”
“I do.” She wipes at her cheek with the back of her hand, eyes glossy. “I was scared. I thought… I thought maybe I’d lost you for good.”
I exhale slowly. “You didn’t.”
“I should’ve been there,” she whispers again, like saying it might undo the damage.
I sit back against the couch, curling my knees up to my chest. “You’re here now.”
She nods, but the guilt is still bleeding through the cracks. “They’re okay? The babies?”
“Yeah. They’re home. Healthy. Loud as hell.”
A watery laugh slips out of her. “They take after you then.”
“Probably.”
There’s a pause. Not awkward. Just… tender. Like we’re both feeling around the edge of something neither of us knows how to hold yet.
“I want to see them,” she says, tentative now. “When you’re ready.”
I nod, throat thick. “Okay.”
We sit in the quiet for a second longer before I end the call.
Not because I’m angry.
Not because I don’t want her to see the boys.
But because right now, I’m still working on remembering how to let my sister back into a life she left behind.
And some things—like healing, or forgiveness—don’t come on command.
Some things take time.
The call ends, and for a second, I just sit there.
Staring at the darkened screen like it might offer answers it doesn’t have.
Like it might tell me what to do with the flood of emotion pushing against my ribs.
My fingers are still trembling.
I let them rest against the blanket draped across my lap, grounding myself with texture. Cotton. Soft. Safe. Real.
Then I rise.
The nursery is quiet when I push open the door, warm and dimly lit by the soft glow of the nightlight tucked behind the dresser. The air smells like baby lotion and laundry detergent and something else—something sacred. Like peace. Like home.
They’re both asleep, swaddled into their little nests like burritos with impossibly tiny hands.
Kody is the louder one, usually. Always fussing, always making his presence known like he’s got somewhere important to be. Kingston is quieter but stubborn—he’ll stare you down in the most serious baby way, like he knows something you don’t.
I pad across the floor in socked feet and lean over Kingston’s crib first.
He’s on his side, one hand curled near his cheek, lips parted in a perfect little o. I watch his chest rise and fall and feel my own heartbeat settle into the same rhythm.
Then I step over to Kody.
He’s sprawled, arms flung wide like he’s conquered something in his sleep. Probably me. Definitely my heart.
I reach down and run my knuckle gently across his cheek.
“You’ve got no idea how lucky you are,” I whisper. “You don’t even know what’s been lost yet.”
His nose scrunches like he heard me anyway.
I let my palm settle on his chest for a second, just to feel it—the steady thump of a miracle. Something I almost didn’t get to come back for.
Something worth every second of pain, every ghost I’ve had to face.
I’m not crying. Not really. Just leaking a little, the way you do when you remember how fragile this all is. When your sister calls for the first time in a year and tells you she should’ve been there, and part of you still wants to believe she could be.
But right now, this is what matters.
Two tiny boys.
Safe. Sleeping. Home.
My whole world in matching cribs.
And me—still here to hold it all.
I’m still standing over Kody’s crib when I hear the soft creak of the nursery door opening behind me.
Then footsteps. Heavy ones. Familiar.
Fletch.
He stops just short of the rug, watching me in the low glow of the nightlight.
I don’t have to turn around to know the look on his face—the quiet concern etched between his brows, the way he runs a hand through his hair when he’s trying to give me space but doesn’t really want to.
“You okay?” he asks gently, voice low like he doesn’t want to wake the boys.
I nod without looking back. “Yeah. Just checking on them.”
He waits a beat. Then, “You’ve been quiet since I came in. Did something happen?”
My chest tightens. Not in a sharp, sudden way. More like a slow squeeze, like grief and memory teaming up to press down on my lungs.
I finally turn to him.
He’s barefoot, hoodie half-zipped, hair still damp from the barn or the studio—wherever he was, I can tell he’s been working. Creating. Breathing music the way I breathe in baby-soft air and second chances.
I lean back against the crib, folding my arms.
“My sister called.”
His brows lift. “Isabel?”
“Yeah.” My throat is dry. “First time in almost a year.”
His eyes flick toward the twins, then back to me. “What’d she say?”
I let out a breath. “That she should’ve called sooner. That she was sorry. That she didn’t know how to be there and then just… didn’t.”
He moves toward me slowly, stopping just a foot away. Close enough to touch. Far enough to let me choose.
“And how do you feel about that?”
I blink up at him. “Like I can’t tell if I’m relieved or raw.”
He nods once, like he understands both.
“I kept thinking about this moment from… before,” I whisper. “In the dream. The coma. Whatever it was.”
Fletch’s hand brushes mine.
“There was this dinner,” I continue, staring at the space between us. “Thanksgiving, I think. I was pregnant, but no one looked at me like I was carrying a miracle. Just a problem.”
His jaw tightens, like he’s already bracing for what comes next.
“Isabel was sitting across from me,” I say, voice flat. “She said, ‘I still can’t believe you’re having babies before getting married… but I guess standards have… shifted.’”
Fletch’s breath audibly leaves his body.
“And Sofia—because of course it was both of them—goes, ‘I mean, I get it. Not everyone needs a ring to feel validated.’”
He’s silent, eyes locked on mine. Waiting.
“My mom didn’t say anything. Just kept passing cranberry sauce like I wasn’t being gutted at the table.”
I swallow the lump climbing its way up my throat.
“It was my dad who said something. Snapped at them. Told them that was enough.” I press a palm over my chest like I can quiet the memory just by touching it. “And Isabel… she laughed. Said, ‘Of course you’d defend her. She’s always been your favorite.’”
I exhale, shaky. “I don’t know if it really happened or if it was my brain trying to process stuff I never said out loud. But I felt it. I feel it.”
Fletch steps closer. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him wrap around me like a second skin. His fingers thread through mine.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice rough. “You didn’t deserve that.”
I nod, fighting tears. “She wants to meet the boys.”
“And do you want her to?”
My eyes drift back to the cribs. To the two little reasons my world spins differently now.
“I don’t know. But I said okay.”
Fletch squeezes my hand. No judgment. No pressure. Just presence.
And maybe that’s the difference between him and them.
He doesn’t need me to be anything but exactly who I am.
And somehow, that makes everything inside me go still. Not fixed. Not forgotten. But… quiet. Like my lungs finally remember how to breathe.
“I’ll make dinner,” Fletch says, pushing off the counter with that easy kind of confidence that makes me want to curl into him and never move again. “Something easy. Pasta?”
I nod, grateful for the distraction and the weight he doesn’t ask me to carry alone.
He moves around the kitchen like he knows what he’s doing—opening cabinets, pulling out a pot, lighting the burner. It smells like garlic and butter within minutes, the kitchen warming with something more than heat.
For a while, there’s only the sound of boiling water and the rhythmic clink of the wooden spoon against the saucepan. But then, quietly, like it’s nothing but everything all at once, he speaks.
“My dad left when I was seven,” he says, eyes fixed on the stove. “Told my mom he was going to the store for bread. Never came back.”
I blink, his words knocking the air out of me. It’s not the kind of thing he’s ever shared before. Not with me. Not when we were tangled up in sheets and silence and all the things we didn’t say.
“My mom was a nurse,” he continues. “Worked double shifts most weeks just to keep us fed. I didn’t see her much, but she tried. She always tried.”
He tosses a handful of pasta into the pot like the memory doesn’t weigh heavy on his chest. Like it doesn’t chip away at the walls I didn’t know I still had up.
“I almost went the wrong way. Some of the guys I hung out with back then—they were into shit I had no business being around. Petty stuff at first. Then not so petty.”
“What changed?” I ask softly, afraid to break whatever fragile thread he’s trusting me with.
He finally glances over, the smallest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Thorin.”
Of course it was.
“And Benji. And Carson. Met them at school. Thorin convinced the JV football coach to give me a shot, even though I had zero experience and a serious chip on my shoulder.” He stirs the pasta. “Coach didn’t want to, but Thorin wouldn’t shut up. Said I was strong, fast, and angry enough to flatten a linebacker.”
A breath of laughter escapes me. “Sounds about right.”
“That team saved me.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. Like that chapter of his life didn’t leave bruises that still haven’t faded. “Being part of something… it made me want to be better. Made me feel like maybe I could be.”
The pot hisses as he drains the water, the sound cutting through the thick emotion knotting my throat.
He doesn’t look at me when he says, “I’ve never told anyone that. Not like this.”
I swallow hard. “Why me?”
His answer is simple. Unshakable.
“Because you don’t ask me to be anything else, either.”
I don’t even realize I’m moving until my body does it for me.
One minute I’m standing across the room, arms wrapped around myself like armor, and the next I’m stepping into his space—into that soft, quiet storm of Fletch where everything real lives beneath the surface.
I wrap my arms around his waist from behind, pressing my cheek to the worn cotton of his t-shirt. He goes still for a breath. Two. Then he leans back into me, just a little. Just enough.
We stay like that while the sauce simmers and the kitchen fills with the scent of garlic and something almost like peace.
“Do you ever talk to her?” I ask quietly. “Your mom.”
His hand tightens around the spoon. “Not much,” he says after a beat. “She moved upstate a few years ago. Still works too much. Still acts like I’m one missed call away from disappearing like he did.”
I squeeze him tighter. “You’re not him.”
“I know,” he murmurs. “But sometimes I wonder if I’ve spent so long trying not to be him, I don’t know who I am without that fear keeping me in check.”
God, I get that. Too much.
“You ever think maybe fear isn’t the worst thing to carry?” I whisper. “At least it keeps you moving.”
“Yeah,” he says, turning to face me. His eyes are soft and stormy all at once, like rain against a window. “But I’d rather be moving toward something this time. Not just away from it.”
The timer on the oven beeps.
He doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
“I think,” I say, voice barely above a breath, “you already are.”
His gaze dips to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and for a second, it feels like we’re right there on the edge of something again. Not the messy, reckless thing we used to be. But this. Whatever this is. Realer. Softer. More terrifying.
But then he blinks, and the moment dissolves, and he clears his throat before turning back to the stove.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” he says gruffly, reaching for the plates. “Hope you’re hungry.”
“Starving,” I say.
For food. For safety.
For the boy who made himself into a man by surviving everything he wasn’t given—and still choosing to show up anyway.