Chapter 30
Beckett dropped us off at Lori’s after midnight.
Emmy met us at the door with a worried look, but I shook my head when she started to ask questions.
Shannon answered for both of us in low tones while I carried Leena upstairs, every step careful, like the wrong movement might undo whatever fragile peace we’d found on the ride home.
I stood at the top of the steps, unable to look at Beckett’s old room without picturing Leena lying on the floor.
Shannon seemed to understand my predicament, leading me away into the master suite that used to be hers.
The room was dark, only a bedside lamp turned on next to the bed.
I lowered Leena into the center of it with hands that still didn’t feel steady, settling her casted arm on a pillow the way the nurse had shown us.
Luckily, she didn’t stir, staying curled on her side, cheeks flushed from sleep, looking impossibly small on the king-size mattress.
I stood there while the entire night replayed in fractured pieces—the thud of her body hitting the floor, the silent scream frozen on her face.
I’d shut down so completely in the hospital that the last few hours felt like they’d happened to someone else.
Now the numbness was cracking, leaving nothing but guilt and relief and a love so fierce it bordered on pain.
I reached down and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead with the back of my fingers, barely touching, terrified even now that I might hurt her somehow.
She was safe.
Breathing.
Whole.
But the image of her in pain still lived behind my eyes, and I didn’t know how long it would take to go away.
Shannon stood beside me, the only sounds the soft tick of the old radiator and the occasional quiet snore from the bed.
“I’ll be right back,” Shannon said quietly.
She slipped out the French doors onto the balcony before I even looked up. The door clicked mostly shut behind her, left cracked to let the night air drift in.
I stayed where I was, watching that narrow strip of darkness the same way I’d watched Lori’s closed door earlier.
Part of me still felt suspended in that hospital room, unable to move, unable to speak, watching everything happen around me while I stayed frozen.
But the moment I heard a soft, broken sniff, I moved.
Shannon stood at the railing, arms wrapped around herself, looking down at the frozen pond while her shoulders shook on a silent cry.
I crossed the balcony in three steps and pulled her against my chest, wrapping both arms around her like I could hold every broken piece of the night together.
She stiffened for half a second, then collapsed into me with a sound so raw, it tore something open in my chest.
“Hey.” I pressed my mouth to her temple. “It’s over. She’s alright.”
That seemed to make her cry harder, and I held on, letting her cry it out.
We stood there long enough for the cold to start seeping through our clothes, both of us angled so we could still see Leena through the open doors.
“I’m sorry,” Shannon whispered eventually, voice wrecked. “About the house. About freezing up on you. I know I made everything worse today.”
I tightened my arms until there was no space left between us. “You don’t have to apologize for needing space. I promised I wouldn’t make any more decisions about your future without you, and then I broke that promise.”
She let out a shaky, almost angry breath.
“I saw everything you were trying to show me—the yard, the kitchen, Leena growing up there—and my brain refused to let me think this could be mine. That I’d somehow tricked myself into believing this was real when it was only ever temporary, but you’ve never treated me that way.
And then I couldn’t figure out how to climb back out of that spiral without ruining the only good thing I’ve ever had. ”
I rested my chin on top of her head, watching Leena’s chest rise and fall under the covers, and felt the words I’d been carrying for weeks finally push their way free. “This isn’t temporary. Not for me.”
Shannon went still in my arms, so I put a finger under her chin, tilting her face up to mine. Her eyes were red-rimmed and shining, cheeks wet, and still, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
I cupped her face with both hands, thumbs brushing away tears that kept coming.
“I love you,” I said. “I think maybe I have since the first time you glared at me. Every version of the future I see has you in it—the house, the mornings, the nights, the hard days and the easy ones. I don’t want temporary, Shannon. I want you, forever.”
My throat tightened, the TV analysts from earlier still echoing in the back of my mind.
“But my life isn’t simple, and it isn’t set in stone. They announced an expansion draft tonight, and I could be sent to the new team in Austin.”
“What?” Her brows creased, eyes looking between mine. “When did that happen?”
“Right after we got here, while you were in Lori’s room.
” My thumb swept across her jaw, but I was too tired to hold the rest of my thoughts back.
“Would you come with us, even if it means leaving Linwood behind? Your job, friends, Lori… Everything you’ve built here?
Because I can’t ask you to uproot your whole life unless you want this as much as I do.
And I’m so fucking terrified that you’ll decide this is still just an arrangement, because I don’t know how to let you go. ”
Her breath hitched. For a second I thought she might pull away, might put the walls back up the way she always had. Instead, her hands came up, framing my face the same way mine held hers.
“I’m so scared,” she whispered, the words cracking open between us. “I don’t get to keep the good things, and I don’t know how to do this without waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I love you, and I love her. And the thought of walking away feels like it would break me.”
She pulled back enough to meet my eyes, tears still slipping down her cheeks.
“If they send you to Austin, I’ll go. Linwood and everyone here will always be part of me, but you and Leena are my home now, wherever you are.”
I kissed the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, tasting salt and relief and every unsaid thing we’d been carrying.
“Then we figure it out together,” I said against her skin. “Whether it’s Denver or Austin, I’m not going anywhere, and neither is Leena. You’re stuck with us now, ‘til death do us part.”
Shannon’s fingers curled into the front of my shirt, pulling me down to kiss her once more. Her lips were cold from the night air and soft against mine, and I felt the last of the night’s terror ease as she leaned into me.
We stayed out there a little longer, watching Leena sleep inside. When snow started to fall once more, I guided her back inside and closed the French doors against the night.
Shannon flicked off the lamp, then peeled back the covers on one side of the bed while I took the other, the same as we had so many nights before.
We climbed in carefully, trying not to wake Leena still sleeping soundly in the middle.
Once we settled, Shannon reached across the bed and found my hand in the dark.
I laced our fingers together over the top of the blanket and held on like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
Outside, the last of the snow drifted past the windows. Somewhere downstairs a clock chimed once for Christmas morning.
It wasn’t the first Christmas I’d imagined spending with them, but lying there—my daughter safe between us, the woman I loved finally mine to keep—it was the only one I wanted.