10. Chris
CHRIS
She's curled into Adam's shoulder. Harry's hand has replaced Adam's around hers, and she's stopped shaking.
That's the first thing I notice — the absence of the tremor that's been running through her since Donald opened that door.
Her fingers are still. Her breathing has evened out.
She's not asleep, but she's close to it, and the fact that she can get close to sleep surrounded by three men after what just happened tells me something she doesn't have the words for yet.
The cabin hums around us. Soft lighting. The steady thrum of engines carrying us away from Colorado and toward whatever comes next.
Through the oval windows, the mountains are black shapes against a star-heavy sky. We're above it all now — the estate, the confrontation, our parents.
I watch her face in profile against Adam's shirt. The tension in her jaw has loosened.
The rigid set of her shoulders has melted into something that looks like actual rest. She's twenty-two years old and she's been carrying weight alone for most of those years, and she's just now discovering she doesn't have to.
Adam's fingers move through her hair, slow and careful. They're not talking — none of us are — but the quiet feels intentional. Protective.
We're giving her space to come down from the worst night of her life.
My phone buzzes against my thigh. Text message. Probably my assistant wondering why I'm not answering emails. I let it go unanswered.
Whatever crisis my Chicago office thinks it has can wait until tomorrow. Tonight, there's only one thing that requires my attention, and she's sitting three feet away with her eyes closed and her breathing finally steady.
The woman who stood in front of her father's fury two hours ago and didn't apologize.
Who looked him in the eye and said nothing, because nothing was the only answer that preserved her dignity.
Who let us defend her without trying to smooth it over or make peace or take responsibility for his choices.
Her eyes open. Not startled — just surfacing from wherever she went to process.
She looks around the cabin, taking inventory.
Adam's arm around her. Harry's fingers laced through hers.
Me, watching her from the seat beside Harry with my hands folded and my expression probably giving away more than I intend.
"How long until we land?" Her voice is rough but steady.
"Hour and a half." Harry's thumb traces across her knuckles. "Maybe two, depending on wind."
She nods. Sits up straighter, though she doesn't pull away from either of them. "I should probably figure out where I'm going when we get there."
The opening I've been waiting for.
"Lincoln Park." I keep my voice level, matter-of-fact. Not a suggestion. A statement of what's already been decided. "My place. You'll stay with me."
She blinks. Processes. I can see her working through the logistics, the implications, the reasons why it makes sense and the reasons why it doesn't.
"Chris, I can't just?—"
"Yes, you can." I lean forward slightly, close enough that she has to look directly at me. "You need somewhere to live. Donald's going to cut you off — apartment, tuition, everything. You know he is."
Her mouth tightens. She knows.
"I'm fifteen minutes from Northwestern. My bed is big, but I also have a space for you to study. The math is simple."
"It's not charity," Adam adds, his voice low and certain. "It's practical."
Harry squeezes her hand. "And it's what we want."
She looks between the three of us, and I can see her trying to find the catch. The angle that makes this too good to be true. She's spent years learning that help comes with strings attached, that generosity has hidden costs. Her father taught her that lesson well.
"What about my classes? My job at the campus bookstore? I can't just disappear from my life."
"You don't disappear from anything." I settle back in my seat. "You go to class. I pick you up afterward. We have lunch. You go to your job, I pick you up from that too. We have dinner. Adam and Harry come over on weekends, or we go to them. We build something normal."
"Normal." She tests the word like it's foreign.
"Normal," I confirm. "Dinner at seven. Movies on Sunday. Groceries on Saturday morning. The kind of ordinary that makes everything else feel possible."
Adam shifts beside her. "Donald tries to make trouble, I handle him."
"How?"
"However I need to." His voice carries the edge it gets when he's made a decision that isn't negotiable. "He doesn't get to retaliate against you for our choices."
"Our choices," Harry repeats quietly. "Not yours. Ours."
She's quiet for a long moment, staring at our joined hands — hers and Harry's, mine folded in my lap, Adam's fingers still tangled in her hair. "You're all sure about this."
"We're sure," I say.
"We've been sure," Adam corrects.
"We just hadn't said it yet," Harry finishes.
The silence that follows feels different from the earlier quiet. Charged. Expectant. Like we're all standing at the edge of something that requires a jump we can't take back.
She takes a breath. Lets it out slowly.
"I love you."
The words land in the space between us like stones dropped in still water. Simple. Direct. No decoration, no apology, no hedge against the possibility that we might not say it back.
"All of you," she continues, her voice steady and sure. "I love all of you, and I don't know how that works or what it makes me, but I know it's true."
The weight in my chest — the weight I've been carrying for three years without naming — shifts into something lighter. Something that feels like relief.
"I love you too." The words come out measured, precise, carrying the full weight of my certainty. Not a question. Not tentative. Final. "I've already decided."
Adam's voice comes next, rough and immediate. "Same. Love you. Been holding that in my teeth for days."
Harry's confession comes last, quiet and simple. "Love you too, Chloe."
Three different voices. Three different ways of saying the same true thing. Each one landing separately, individually, before the next one comes.
She closes her eyes. Not from exhaustion this time — from something that looks like gratitude. Like she's cataloging the sound of each voice, storing them somewhere safe.
When she opens her eyes again, they're bright. Not tears — something cleaner than that. Something that looks like the beginning of trust.
"So," she says, and there's the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. The first real smile I've seen from her since before dinner. "Lincoln Park."
"Lincoln Park," I confirm.
"Lunch between classes."
"Every day you want it."
"Movies on Sunday."
"Bad ones," Harry adds. "The kind where we can make fun of the dialogue."
She laughs. Actually laughs. The sound fills the cabin and bounces off the windows, and I think this is what the absence of weight sounds like. This is what it looks like when someone stops carrying the world alone.
Outside, Chicago's lights begin to appear in the distance. A carpet of gold spreading toward the lake, toward home, toward whatever ordinary extraordinary thing we're building together.
Adam presses a kiss to the top of her head. Harry lifts her hand to his mouth. She looks at me across the narrow space between seats, and her smile is soft and certain and entirely without fear.
The plane carries us toward the city, toward morning, toward a spare bedroom in Lincoln Park and a life none of us planned but all of us want.
Her hand reaches across the space between us. I take it without hesitation, her fingers warm and steady in mine.