Chapter 45
forty-five
The door clicked shut behind Maggie, and silence settled over the hospital room like dust. Anson stared at his father’s weathered face, at the new lines carved around his eyes, the extra silver threading through his dark hair.
Eight years had aged them both. The painkillers were wearing thin, and each throb in his bandaged hands felt like a heartbeat, counting out the seconds of awkward silence between them.
Wendell shifted in the vinyl chair, the material squeaking beneath his weight. His fingers traced the brim of his hat, turning it slowly like he was working a piece of leather.
“Bad burns?” he asked finally, nodding toward Anson’s bandaged hands.
“Second degree. Some third.” Anson flexed his fingers slightly, wincing at the pull of raw skin. “Doctor says I might lose some mobility.”
His father’s face darkened. “In your line of work, that’s—”
“Yeah.”
More silence. The wall clock ticked loudly enough that Anson could hear it over the beeping of his IV machine.
He’d imagined this conversation a thousand different ways during his sentence.
Sometimes with shouting, sometimes with tears.
Occasionally with reconciliation. But mostly, he’d imagined his father walking away—again.
“I should’ve visited.” Wendell stared down at his hat. “In prison. I should’ve been there.”
The admission hung in the air between them, unexpected and raw.
“Yeah,” Anson said again, because what else was there to say? Eight years of silence couldn’t be erased with a single apology.
“I was angry.” Wendell’s voice roughened. “And scared. My son, facing manslaughter charges. I didn’t know how to...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I was a coward.”
Something sharp twisted in Anson’s chest—not forgiveness, not yet, but maybe the possibility of it. “We were never good at talking.”
“No.” His father’s mouth quirked in a sad approximation of a smile. “Your mother was the talker. After she died—” He cut himself off, throat working. “I focused on the ranch. Thought if I could just keep that going, keep her dream alive, everything else would...”
“Fall into place?”
“Something like that.” Wendell met his eyes directly for the first time. “I was wrong. Let you drift away while I was trying to hold onto her.”
Anson swallowed against the tightness in his throat. His mother had been gone fifteen years now, but some days the loss felt as fresh as yesterday. For both of them, apparently.
“I made my own choices, Dad.” The words tasted like ash, like smoke still clogging his lungs. “I walked into that warehouse. I set that fire.”
“Because that contractor’s equipment killed your men.” Wendell’s voice hardened. “I read the court transcripts. All of them.”
Surprise flashed through Anson. His father had never mentioned the transcripts. Had never acknowledged understanding why Anson had done what he did.
“Doesn’t change what happened.” Four bodies. Four lives extinguished. “I killed them.”
“And you’ve paid for it.” Wendell set his hat on the bedside table, decision made. “Your mother always said you felt things too deeply. Carried everyone’s pain like it was your own.”
The mention of his mother—of how well she’d known him—landed like a blow, knocking all the air from his lungs. He turned his face toward the window, where darkness pressed against the glass, and blinked hard against the burning in his eyes.
“I’m proud of you. What you did today. Running into that fire to save people.” Wendell cleared his throat. “Your mother would’ve been proud, too.”
A strangled sound escaped him before he could stop it, and he closed his eyes against the sting of tears.
“I need to head back to Pennsylvania early tomorrow,” Wendell said after a moment. “Got animals to tend to. But I wanted to see you. It was overdue.”
He blinked hard, trying to keep the tears back. “I’m really glad you came, Dad.”
Wendell stood and collected his hat. He hesitated for a moment, then went to the door, but stopped and turned back. “That girl of yours—Maggie. She’s something special.”
“Yeah,” Anson managed. “She is.”
“Don’t let her go.”
He met his father’s eyes. “I won’t.”
Wendell nodded, satisfied, and moved toward the door again. But again, he paused with his hand on the knob. “I’d like to meet that dog of yours sometime. If that’s alright.”
“He’d like that.” Anson swallowed. “I would too.”
Another nod, and then his father was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
Anson stared at the space where he’d been. The conversation hadn’t been perfect. No tearful embraces, no grand promises about weekly phone calls or rebuilding their relationship overnight. But it had been honest. Real. A door left open instead of slammed shut.
That was more than he’d had yesterday.
He settled back against the pillows, exhaustion dragging at him like weights.
His hands throbbed in time with his heart, each pulse a reminder that he was alive, that he’d survived again.
Four people saved from the flames. He’d have to tell his father about that sometime. About balance. About redemption.
But not today. Today, they’d taken the first step. The rest would come in its own time.
Anson dozed, floating in the hazy space between sleep and waking, where pain existed but didn’t matter.
The medication had finally kicked in, dulling the sharp edges of burnt flesh and making the room tilt pleasantly whenever he opened his eyes.
He heard the door open but didn’t look, assuming it was another nurse coming to check his vitals.
Then Maggie’s scent reached him—sawdust and citrus—and he forced his heavy eyelids open.
She stood in the doorway, her face drawn with worry that had nothing to do with him. Something had happened.
“What’s wrong?” His voice came out rough, scratchy from smoke and sleep.
Maggie crossed to his bed and sank into the chair his father had vacated. “Hollis is gone. She checked herself out AMA.”
“AMA?”
“Against medical advice.” She rubbed her forehead, smudging soot she’d missed earlier. “Knox is a wreck. I found him standing in her empty room, just... staring. Like someone had hollowed him out.”
Anson swallowed, picturing it all too clearly. “She ran.”
“She nearly died. How could she just leave? After what he did to save her?” Genuine confusion tightened her face. “He pulled her from a fire, Anson. He breathed life back into her. And she left without even saying goodbye.”
“Fear makes people run.” He thought of Knox, who always seemed so confident, so solid—reduced to standing in an empty room, holding the space where someone should be. “Sometimes it’s easier to leave than face what you’re feeling.”
Understanding dawned in her eyes. “Is that what you’d have done? If I hadn’t been so stubborn?”
“Probably.” He managed a small smile. “But you didn’t give me much choice.”
“Damn right I didn’t.”
She looked exhausted, dark circles beneath her eyes, her skin pale beneath the remaining soot. But she was alive. Here. With him, instead of running from him.
“Come here,” he said, shifting slightly to make room beside him on the narrow bed.
She hesitated. “Your hands...”
“We’ll make it work.”
Carefully, she climbed onto the bed, angling herself to avoid his IV line and bandaged hands. Her head settled against his shoulder, her hand coming to rest over his heart, and something tight in his chest eased at the simple contact.
“How’d it go with your dad?” she asked after a moment.
“Better than expected.” He searched for the words to explain it. “Not fixed. Might never be completely fixed. But it’s a start.”
“He’s trying.” Her breath was warm against his neck. “That matters.”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, his father’s words echoing in his mind. Don’t let her go. “He said Mom would’ve been proud of me.”
“She would be.” Maggie’s hand squeezed gently where it lay against his chest. “You know what I realized today? You put out a fire. Not just ran into one to save me—you actually fought it. Extinguished it. Saved four people from burning.”
The words penetrated the medication haze, landing with unexpected weight. Four people. He’d saved four people.
The same number who’d died in Virginia.
“Four,” he repeated, the word barely audible.
She lifted her head to look at him, catching the significance in his tone. “The warehouse fire. There were four deaths.”
“Three workers. One security guard who tried to stop me.” He’d memorized their names, their ages, their surviving family members. Carried the weight of those lives for eight years. “Four lives destroyed. Including mine, in a way.”
“And today, you saved four. Landry, Laura, Hollis... and me.” Her voice softened. “Full circle.”
The realization settled over him like a weight and a release all at once. It didn’t erase what he’d done—nothing ever would. But maybe it balanced the scales just enough that he could finally breathe.
“Not that it makes it even,” she added quickly. “I know it doesn’t work like that. But—”
“No,” he interrupted, surprising himself. “You’re right. It matters.”
He’d carried those deaths like stones in his chest for years, unable to set them down. The weight of them had bent him, shaped him, until he barely recognized himself. But today, he’d chosen differently. Ran toward the fire instead of away from it. Fought it. Defeated it.
Maybe he could carry that too.
“I don’t feel ashamed of them anymore,” he said, the realization forming as he spoke it. “My scars. Not the old ones, not the new ones.”
“Why would you? They’re proof you survived. Proof you saved people.”
“Proof I chose to be better.” His throat tightened. “The kintsugi. It was never just for you.”
She propped herself up on one elbow to look at him properly, her eyes fierce with conviction. “Your scars are beautiful. They’re you. And I love every inch of you, Anson Sutter.”
He cupped her face with his bandaged hand, clumsy and careful. “Come here.”
She leaned down and he kissed her, tasting coffee and chapstick and hope. When they broke apart, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“You’re stuck with me,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “Because I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’ll never have to find out.” She settled back against him, her head tucked beneath his chin, her body warm and solid against his side. “I promise.”
They lay together in comfortable silence while machines beeped and nurses passed by in the hallway.
His hands throbbed, his lungs still felt raw from smoke inhalation.
Tomorrow would bring the start of physical therapy, the uncertainty of how much function he might lose, the long road of recovery ahead.
But right now, with Maggie pressed against him, with the knowledge that his father was trying, that he’d balanced at least some of his karmic debt, that he’d chosen to run toward fire instead of away from it—Anson felt something he hadn’t felt since before the warehouse fire destroyed his life.
He felt whole.
Not perfect. Not unmarked. Not without pain. But whole, in the way broken things mended with gold became more than they were before the breaking. Every scar, every crack filled with the precious metal of experience, of survival, of love.
Maggie’s breathing deepened as she drifted toward sleep, her weight trusting and complete against him. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, careful not to wake her, and let himself accept, finally, that some broken things weren’t meant to be fixed.
They were meant to be transformed.