Chapter Four
Thomas
I pushed our front door open, the hinges giving a soft creak as daylight spilled across the entryway.
I stepped in, and then to the side, holding the door wide as I watched Livvy pass in silence.
She had barely managed more than a handful of short replies since we’d left campus, her fingers continuously working against each other, rubbing and twisting until the skin flushed hot, then pale beneath the strain.
Once inside, she tracked every sound as if the quiet were a lie, as if the danger had followed us home and was waiting just around the corner. I locked the door behind us, seeing her flinch at the click.
“Take your time,” I said in my best soothing tone. “There’s no rush.”
Livvy nodded, though the motion was tight.
She’d kept still for so long to survive and in many ways, she was still there, in that dark closet, telling her body any betrayal meant death.
Her eyes stayed on the door as if she expected someone else to walk in behind us, but Liis had already hugged her goodbye before leaving to pick up Stella from Brightwood.
I guided her toward the kitchen where the light was softer, familiar. As she sat, her breath was still shallow, her lips pressed together so tight they trembled.
“Thirsty?” I asked, already making my way to the fridge. “Water will help.”
She almost answered, then shook her head.
I paused. I had never seen her so fragile, not even after she first came to us.
She’d always carried a quiet resolve, seemingly made of whatever held the Earth together.
But trauma bends iron, and what she’d been through, both before she came to us and today, had stripped her down to the rawest version of herself.
I noticed Livvy had chosen my usual spot, uncomfortable with her back exposed to the entry. I chose the chair Liis usually sat, so she felt we were both keeping an eye on whoever might come in. I gave her space, though she leaned toward me as if she didn’t want it.
“Talk to me,” I said softly.
Her mind was still trapped in the basement, her eyes looking past anything in the kitchen, almost as if she could see things I couldn’t.
“I keep hearing it,” she whispered. “The… the first shot on the Green. It was loud, but it wasn’t loud enough to know for sure what it was. Almost like someone dropping their laptop. And then the screaming started, and my brain… it just”—she swallowed hard—“it split. Everything split.”
I could feel her slipping inward. I reached out slowly, giving her the chance to pull away, but she didn’t. She folded into me as if with her last breath of air.
“You’re safe,” I said. “And I’m right here. We would never let anything happen to you. Bodhi will be here soon. He wouldn’t let anything happen to you, either. We’re all going to protect you. Always.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked. “I do. But my body doesn’t. It keeps replaying that moment where I didn’t know which second would be my last, where—” She stopped herself as if saying too much might shove her back into the basement closet.
Her fingers tightened around my shirt sleeve, and I let her cling to me, to the present.
“Breathe with me,” I murmured, inhaling through my nose. “It’ll help. Now out…”
She tried, then blinked fast, her lashes wet but holding back tears.
I found myself wishing she’d cry, sob, let it all escape her body and mind.
I’d held grown men who’d survived war, agents who’d crawled through hell, firefighters who were just moments from their own deaths.
There was no weakness in treating wounds, inside or out.
The doorbell rang, causing Livvy to jerk so violently the chair legs scraped. Her breath choked, and I squeezed her to me, pressing my cheek against her hair.
“It’s Bodhi,” I said.
Her jaw quivered, a small surrender. She nodded, giving me permission to answer the door.
I walked across the room and down the short hall to let him in. Bodhi stood on the landing, his usual loose confidence gone.
He scanned my face for something—an answer, a warning, maybe instruction. “Is she okay?” he asked before stepping inside.
“No,” I said. “But she’s home.”
That was all he needed.
He moved past me and crossed the kitchen slowly, not rushing, careful not to startle her. Livvy saw him approach before I could announce him, and she stood, immediately falling into his arms.
He caught her and pulled her tight against his chest. “Hi, baby. Hey. Hey, I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
She burst into tears. Her sobs were jagged, ripped from a place she’d buried long before today. But Bodhi’s expression was of someone who somehow recognized loss intimately. Not only loss of people or things, but of part of the soul.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
I watched, unable to stop the corner of my mouth from curving upward. He loved her, and not the temporary kind. Bodhi held her like a man who’d prayed every mile from class to our driveway.
I backed a step but stayed close, watching the way her shoulders shook, watching Bodhi sway her instinctively the way someone calms a child after a nightmare. His cheek rested against her temple. He didn’t try to hush her or fix her or tell her she was strong. He was just… present.
And damn if it didn't hit me square in the chest, Bodhi carrying the same weight and devotion I'd recognized in every Maddox man when he'd finally met the woman who snapped his world into place.
I'd seen it in Trenton the day he looked at Cami in the hospital; in Taylor the first time he brought Falyn home; in Tyler when he realized hell itself could burn before he'd lose Ellison; in Shepley when America gave him something to fight for; and in Travis's eyes across Dad's table the first time he watched Abby beat us all at poker.
I'd lived it myself the moment Liis walked into my office and dismantled me without even meaning to.
And here it was again in Bodhi. Young, yes. But real and unmistakable.
“Sunny?” Livvy managed.
He eased her back enough to look at her face, brushing an errant strand of hair from her cheek.
“Sunny is safe at home. She’s going to call you later when you’ve both had a minute to process everything.”
She nodded through tears, breath hitching as she tried to gather herself. The panic sat under her skin, still thrumming.
Bodhi squeezed her. “I hate it that you had to go through that alone. I wish I could’ve been there. I swear I’d have—”
“I’m glad you weren’t,” she whispered hoarsely.
He gave a gentle, aching smile. “I figured you’d say that. But all I could think about was that I should’ve been there, to stand between you and anything that moved.”
She broke again, sitting and hiding her face in her hands.
I returned to the table and sat, giving them space but making sure she knew I was still there. Liis would be home soon with Stella, and I needed Livvy grounded before the house filled again.
Bodhi pulled out the chair beside her and scooted it close. He kept one arm around her shoulders, his free hand on her knee.
“Sunny was off campus,” he said quietly, looking between us. “She’d gone to the café down the street to meet her study group. The manager locked the doors as soon as the alerts came through. She’s shaken, but she’s home in DC with my parents.”
Livvy let out a shaky exhale. “Good… that’s good.”
“But…” Bodhi swallowed. “She said a girl you both had in class, Kendal Cross, and another you both knew, Keisha Williams passed away on the Green. Two professors, Dr. Lipton and Mr. Stein. Holden McDaniels was shot but made it to the hospital. He’s in stable condition.”
Livvy’s face twisted—grief, guilt, disbelief all at once. Her hand flew to her mouth. “Dr. Lipton?”
I reached across the table. “You couldn’t have known, Livvy. Don’t torture yourself.”
“I said so many bad things about her,” Livvy whimpered.
“It doesn’t mean you think she deserved to die,” I said.
“No,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
“Exactly. Please don’t do that to yourself,” Bodhi said.
Tears slid down Livvy’s cheeks again, this time in quiet devastation.
Bodhi straightened, turning to me. “I haven’t heard much about the shooter. Only that he acted alone.”
I nodded. “Twenty-one-year-old male student. Poli-Sci major. No criminal record. Campus police say he’d been posting concerning things online in the last few weeks.
Anti-establishment, pro-free-everything, anti-anyone-who-had-what-he-didn’t.
They’re pulling his hard drive now. Looks like he’d been planning it since fall. ”
Livvy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and looked up at me, suddenly hurt. “Did the FBI know? Have they been watching him?”
“I’m not sure yet. I hope not,” I said, and I meant it. We’d let too many of these kids slip through the cracks. “He’d been on academic probation and lost his scholarship. Some manifesto crap about systems and justice. That’s all I know for now.”
Livvy stared at the table, her expression hollow. “He killed people over tuition?”
“Some people just… break,” Bodhi said quietly. “Some get so filled with hate, so lost they try to take others with them. There’s no explanation. It’s just evil, Liv. That’s the only explanation. Evil.”
She turned to me, eyes raw. “I keep thinking… what if I hadn’t gone to the basement to check the activity flyers to pass the time before class? What if I’d been upstairs in the hallway? Or on the Green with Keisha? She invited me out there. What if—”
“Stop,” I said gently but firmly. “Don’t torment yourself with hypotheticals. You survived. You protected yourself and eight other students. That’s all that matters.”
“Eight others?” Bodhi said, light returning to his eyes.
Livvy shook her head. “I only did what Liis told me to do.”
“You could’ve froze,” I said. “You didn’t. You gave them instructions, kept them calm and quiet until help arrived. You saved their lives and yours, Livvy.”
“That’s brave as hell,” Bodhi said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done.”