Chapter 22
Saoirse finds me after dinner. She appears in the doorway of the living room where I’m curled against Kaiden on the couch, his arm around me, my calc textbook open on my lap in the pretense of studying while actually watching Iz destroy Danny at the video game on the TV.
“Catherine. Upstairs for a minute?”
I look at Kaiden. He grins. The grin that means he knows something.
“Just go,” he says. Kisses my temple. “Trust me.”
I follow Saoirse up the stairs and down the hall to Kaiden’s room.
Our room—because that’s what it is now, the space where both our clothes live and both our bodies sleep and the nightstand holds my meds and his edibles and the particular debris of two people who have merged their lives without anyone officially authorizing it.
On the bed—laid out with the kind of care usually reserved for museum pieces—is a dress.
Dark green velvet. Sweetheart neckline. Cap sleeves. Tea length. The fabric has the sheen of real velvet—substantial, alive in the light, the kind of material that feels like touching something breathing.
I stare at it.
“This was my homecoming dress,” Saoirse says.
She’s standing beside the bed with her arms crossed and the particular energy of a woman who has been holding a secret and is savoring the reveal.
“1992. Callum left a single rose on my desk every day for a week. Friday’s card said ‘Tomorrow night. Wear green.’ I wore this. ”
“Saoirse…”
“Try it on, sweetheart.”
I take it to the bathroom. Carefully—mindful of the bandages, the rib wrap, the particular choreography of dressing when twenty percent of your body is held together with gauze.
The velvet slides on like water. The sweetheart neckline frames my collarbones.
The cap sleeves sit right at the edge of the bandages—visible, not hidden. The hem lands above my knees.
I look in the mirror. Dark hair. Green eyes that match the fabric. Bandages peeking from the sleeves like a secret the dress isn’t trying to keep.
I step out. Saoirse’s hand goes to her mouth. “Oh, Catherine. You look stunning.”
“Why am I trying on your homecoming dress?”
She sits on the bed. Our bed—Kaiden’s and mine—and pats the space beside her.
“Kaiden planned something. At Xander’s house. Tonight. A replacement homecoming, since you missed the real one. Xander said his dad were fine with it.” She pauses. “Well. Xander said his dad was out of town and didn’t need to be consulted. Nobody is asking follow-up questions.”
I stare at her. “He planned a whole homecoming because I missed one dance.”
“The Monaghan men love hard, Catherine. Once they decide someone is theirs, they move heaven and earth. Callum built me a greenhouse the year I had postpartum depression because I mentioned once—once, in passing—that flowers helped. Three weeks later, greenhouse in the backyard.”
She reaches for a flat black velvet box on the nightstand. Opens it. A gold necklace. Celtic knot pendant—intricate, traditional, a small diamond at the center. Matching diamond earrings. And a dainty gold bracelet with a four-leaf clover clasp.
“The necklace and earrings were my mother’s. Handed down on my wedding day.” Her voice softens. “I’ve been saving them for someone who matters to my son.”
“Saoirse, I can’t—”
“You can. And this—” The bracelet. “I bought this the first week you moved in next door. Saw it in a shop window. Didn’t know you yet. But I knew you were the girl who’d changed my son.”
The tears come. The warm kind. I pull her into a hug—hard, the way you hold someone you’re afraid to let go of.
“Thank you. For all of it. For letting me live in your house and eat your food and sleep next to your son and cry in your kitchen. For being—” I stop.
The word I want to say is too big. “For being here.”
“You are family in this house, Catherine. That’s not conditional.”
A knock. The door opens. Penny walks in—not barging, but moving with the focused purpose of a person who has a job to do and a deadline.
“Reporting for duty. Hair products, curling iron, and exactly ninety minutes. Let me see—” She stops.
Looks at the dress. The jewelry. Me. “Oh, Cat.” Softer than I expected from Penny.
Her eyes going bright. “You look like you walked out of a vintage Vogue editorial.” She circles me.
Assessing. “Kaiden is going to lose his entire mind. Like, full system failure. I’m talking malfunction, shutdown, the blue screen of—”
“Please do not finish that sentence in my presence, Penelope,” Saoirse says. But she’s smiling.
“Right. Respectfully. He’s going to think you look very nice.” Penny catches my eye and mouths “he’s going to rip that off” behind Saoirse’s back.
Penny is already dressed—black tea-length, structured bodice with visible boning, tulle skirt with velvet polka dots. Her teal-streaked hair is curled and loose. On her feet: sparkly Converse. Because she’s Penny.
They work on me. Saoirse handles the jewelry—clasping the necklace with the reverence of a woman passing down history.
Penny handles the hair—soft curls, falling around my shoulders because the bandages make an updo impossible.
The eyeliner goes on—sharp, precise, the wings restored. Armor, formal edition.
Saoirse fastens the bracelet over the bandage on my left wrist. The gold against the white gauze. She doesn’t comment on the juxtaposition. Neither do I.
The mirror. Green velvet. Gold Celtic knot. Sharp eyeliner. Bandages at the cap sleeves. Black heels with tulle bows that Saoirse produced from a box like a magician. I look like a girl who survived a war and is going to a dance anyway. Which is exactly what I am.
Penny stands beside me in the reflection. Her eyes are wet, which she will deny. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Kaiden is at the bottom of the stairs.
All black. Slacks, dress shirt, top two buttons open. Sleeves pushed to his elbows—the tattoos and the dark fabric. A green tie matching the dress, matching me, because of course he coordinated without telling me.
He looks up. His face does the thing—the softening, the orienting. Then his eyes travel down and the softening becomes hunger.
He doesn’t speak for several seconds. Just looks. “Jesus Christ, Cat.”
“Language,” Saoirse says from behind me.
“You look—” He shakes his head. “Devastating. The word is devastating.”
Thomas appears from the kitchen. His expression is pride and grief braided together.
“Remember whose daughter you’re calling devastating,” he says. Then, softer: “You look beautiful, princess.”
Callum beside Thomas: “Xander’s house is down the street. You’ll be home by two. We’ll be right here. With coffee.”
Thomas: “And a clear line of sight to the front door.”
Kaiden takes my hand at the bottom of the stairs. Presses his lips to my knuckles.
“Mom’s necklace looks better on you than it ever did on her,” he murmurs. “Don’t tell her.”
“I heard that,” Saoirse says.
Xander’s house is a movie. Or a concert. Or both.
The place is packed. Not the intimate, curated gathering I was expecting—a full Edgewood party, the kind that fills every room of a house that has too many rooms and still feels crowded.
Music pounding from a sound system that’s been set up in the great room—bass you feel in your chest, the kind that turns your heartbeat into a secondary rhythm.
Lights low. Fairy lights strung through every room, but also the strobes and the colored LEDs that someone—probably Ryan—rigged on the dance floor.
Bodies everywhere. Students from Edgewood in suits and dresses and the particular formal-casual of teenagers who dress up for an hour before loosening ties and kicking off heels.
The furniture’s been pushed to the walls in the great room, creating a dance floor that’s already full—people grinding, swaying, the mass of bodies moving together in the way that only happens when the music is loud enough and the lights are low enough and nobody is watching the clock.
A taco bar. Because Kaiden.
Iz meets us at the door. Navy suit, no tie, shirt open. He takes both my hands. Steps back. Looks at me. “Goddamn. Kaid, you’re in so much trouble.”
“Aware.”
We push into the crowd. The music swallows us—loud enough that conversation becomes shouted fragments and hand signals and the particular communication of people who’ve given up on words and switched to body language.
Kaiden’s hand finds the small of my back.
Guides me through the mass of people. Students part for him—they always do, the particular gravity of the Elite Five creating a wake even at a party—and we move through the house like a current through water.
Danny and Ryan at the kitchen island with drinks. Danny in dark grey, smiling the rare smile. Ryan in a black turtleneck, his laptop notably absent. “Tomorrow I save the world,” he says when I point this out. “Tonight I pretend to be a normal teenager.”
Ally O’Toole by the windows, quiet and observant, in something understated and perfect.
Becca and a group of girls who’ve been kind this week.
Lacrosse teammates—the good ones, the ones who earned the invitation.
Half the senior class, it seems like. Word spread.
Kaiden’s replacement homecoming became the event, and the house absorbed every person who showed up because Xander’s house was built to absorb.
The dance floor pulls us in.
The music shifts—something with a beat that makes hips move.
Kaiden’s hands on my waist. I turn so my back is against his chest. Start to move.
The rhythm takes over—my hips rolling against him, his hands guiding, the crowd pressing us closer together until there’s no space between us and his mouth is on my neck and I’m grinding against him in a room full of people and I do not care.
He pulls my hair to the side. His lips on the spot below my ear. “You have no idea what you’re doing to me right now.”
“I have a very specific idea.”