Chapter 37
Silas
The morning starts with lists.
Not the kind you write on paper—though I’ve got those, too, taped inside the pantry like battle plans—but the quiet ones I run behind my eyes while the house is still half-asleep.
Front camera battery: green.
Side-yard motion: synced.
Garage keypad: changed.
Aubrey duty: me.
Oakley: first day back at a job—part-time, nothing heavy. Text when she gets there. Text when she leaves.
She’s already at the island in a soft sweater and jeans when I come in from checking the trash cans. No boot. No crutches. It’s not nothing that I don’t flinch at the sight.
“You’re up early,” she says, thumb finding the chip on her coffee mug like it’s a worry stone.
“Habit.” I nudge the sugar toward her, because I know she’ll pretend she doesn’t want it and then add a half spoon. “You good?”
Her eyes cut to my face, searching. “Nervous-good. Not scared-good. Difference matters.”
“Yeah.” I lean, hip to the counter. “You sure you don’t want me to drive you?”
“You’re already taking Aubs.”
“I can do both.”
“You can,” she says, mouth tipping, “but you won’t. Because you hate being late for stuff and you’ll make the world’s weirdest NASCAR pit stop of a goodbye in the gym parking lot.” A giggle slips out as I stare at her. “I’ll be fine.”
There’s no wobble in her voice. I hear the promise she’s making to herself, not to me. That’s new. That’s good.
Aubrey thunders in, hair a blonde storm of crazy. “My sock is lost to the void!”
I catch her around the waist mid-sprint. “It’s under the couch with the treaty you made with your toothbrush.”
She squints at me like I’m a wizard. “How do you know things?”
“Dad math,” I say before I can think better of the word. It lands between us and doesn’t explode, just hums there—warm, risky, real.
Aubs yanks her sock free from exactly where I said it was, victory loud, and then she’s off again. Oakley watches me over the rim of her mug, something softer than fear flickering in her eyes.
“Text me when you get there,” I say, lighter than yesterday, trying not to make it sound like a rule.
“Humor you,” she echoes, same as on the porch. It makes my chest loosen in a way I don’t trust yet.
On the way out, I pause at the door. The new deadbolt is heavier, the edge freshly painted because Oakley Kate asked. My hand lifts on instinct. I don’t check it again. I just open the door and let the morning air cut through the kitchen.
“Go,” Kate says behind me. “Before we’re both late.”
“Right.” I look back once more, because I get to do that now and not feel like this is goodbye. “Proud of you.”
Her mouth tips. “Proud of you, too.”
“For what?”
“For not hovering. Mostly.”
I huff out something like a laugh then take the win and herd the whirlwind to the truck.
On the drive to the rink, my phone buzzes—Oakley.
My Girl: Parked. I did not fall on the way inside.
Silas: That's my girl.
My Girl: Tell Thorn I’m rehabbing faster so he stops using my ankle as a metaphor for your patience.
Silas: Already framing that quote for the room.
I’m smiling when I hit the lot. It’s small, but it's progress.
Inside, the ice smells like ammonia and tape.
Relief, too, if relief has a smell. I lace my skates at the stall while the usual noise fills the room—rookies arguing over music, Colton mourning his broken stick like someone ran over his dog.
Rooks shoulders in, drops his bag with a thud, and studies me like he's trying to solve for X.
“You sleeping yet?” he asks.
“Define sleeping.”
He snorts. “I’ll take ‘not pacing the yard with a flashlight’ for now.”
“Progress,” I admit, and it feels like an honest word in my mouth.
Thorn blows the whistle. “Circle up.”
When we gather, he looks at me a beat too long. The old me would’ve bristled. Now I just meet it.
“We’ve had a week,” he says to the group.
“Some of it on the ice. Some of it not.” A few heads flick toward me.
He continues, steady. “Our job is the ice. That’s where we put things.
That’s how we move. Practice plan’s simple: tempo, retrievals, entries.
Play your route. Trust the read. Harrison, you’ve got the kids for faceoffs after. ”
“Copy,” I say.
The first rep, my legs feel like someone else’s—stiff, overthinking. Second rep, the breath drops lower into my ribs. Third, I stop drafting ghosts, like Thorn told me a lifetime ago. The noise dials down. The sheet is just the sheet.
Halfway through, I catch a pass wrong, let it bounce off my heel, and Rooks chirps me like it’s his religion. “Hands made of cinderblocks today, Cap?”
“Tell your sister she still passes better than you,” I fire back, and the boys hoot like hyenas. Normal is a language we all speak fluently.
Between drills, my phone buzzes on the dasher again. I ignore it until water, then check—Oakley again.
O: Survived the men's soccer stampede. No one cried, including me.
Me: Hell yeah, baby
My Girl: Love you. Oh…sheriff’s office called. Papers will be served today or tomorrow.
Me: Good. Want me to meet you in the parking lot when you get off?
My Girl: No. I can do it. Meet you at home.
Silas: Copy. Proud of you, Katibug.
My Girl: Stop or I’ll cry and scare the college kids.
I tuck the phone under the towel and skate my next rep faster than I should. Thorn barks something about control, and I actually hear him this time.
After practice, I take three extra minutes with the kids at the dot, show them the shoulder fake I used to buy myself half a step in juniors, the way to watch a ref’s elbow instead of his mouth.
Little things that add up. When they nail it, I tap their gloves like they just won Game 7.
Rooks watches me with a look that says he sees the way I need to put energy somewhere it doesn’t blow a hole in my life.
In the locker room, Thorn corners me with a paper cup of bad coffee. “How’s home?”
“Quieter.” I wrap the tape around my stick blade like there’s a right number of turns for luck. “She went back to work this morning.”
His brows hit a line. “How’d you do?”
I consider lying. Don’t. “Hands wanted to shake. I let them.”
He nods like that’s the only answer that matters. “Sheriff texted me,” he adds. “Service is imminent.”
“Good,” I say. The word lands heavy and simple.
“You call the lawyer about the PO?”
“Filed. We’ll get a hearing date.”
“Okay.” Thorn sips, grimaces. “Harrison.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re doing the right amount of control,” he says, and the phrase is so Thorn I nearly laugh. “Don’t go backwards when you feel the next wave hit.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Because I need you Saturday. And because your girls need you to be the version of you that knows when to let go.”
“Working on it,” I say.
He taps my shoulder pad twice and moves on. That’s his love language: two taps and a job to do.
The afternoon runs smooth. I pick up Aubrey and endure a ten-minute monologue on why the book fair’s economy should accept stuffed animals as currency.
We detour for milk. She waves at a deputy rolling past without even looking up from her snack, like patrol cars on our street are just part of the scenery now.
I hate that. I love that she feels safe, anyway.
Five o’clock, my phone buzzes.
My Girl: On my way home.
Silas: Drive safe.
Five thirty, a car door shuts. For a second, the old alarm trips in my chest, then I hear her laugh—tired around the edges, but there. The front door opens. She steps inside with wind-kissed cheeks and a manila folder held like a victory flag.
“How’d the students treat you?” I ask, meeting her halfway.
“I only made one kid cry,” she says excitedly. “Oh, and I cried in the supply closet for thirty seconds,” she admits softly. “Then I washed my face and handed out ice packs like a tyrant.”
“Proud of you,” I say for the third time today, and it still doesn’t feel like enough. “Any pain?”
“Some.” She lifts her ankle like a negotiator offering terms. “I sat more than I wanted. Walked more than you wanted.”
“Fair.” I clear my throat. “Warrant?”
“Lieutenant Cason made the arrest himself,” she says.
I let the information settle where it needs to. It doesn’t fix everything. It fixes one thing. That’s how this works now.
Aubrey barrels in, blonde hair flying behind her as she nearly crashes into us. “Kate! You’re home!”
Oakley scoops her carefully, and for a second, all I can do is stand there and watch the two halves of my heart remember they’re better as a whole. Aubs chatters about spelling words. Oakley answers like nothing else in the world exists. Maybe for thirty seconds, nothing does.
“Pizza night?” I ask when the monologue slows.
“Obviously,” Aubs says, aghast that I would even pretend there are options on a Wednesday. “And movie. And couch fort.”
I feign consideration. “Terms?”
“Unlimited pepperoni. One soda. Two blankets each.”
“Counteroffer: two pepperoni, one soda, one blanket each, because last time I almost died under a textile avalanche.”
She leans into Oakley’s side and stage-whispers, “He’s dramatic.”
“Facts,” Oakley whispers back.
We settle on the economy of our little country—twenty-four pepperonis total, one soda cut with water because I’m a monster, and the kind of couch fort that would pass a building inspection.
Later, after movies and bedtime and the soft thud of a unicorn hitting the floor, Oakley and I end up in the kitchen with the lights dim and the house finally, blessedly, steady.
“Can I ask you something?” she says, hip braced against the counter, hair pulled up, the line of her throat a map I could trace in my sleep.
“You can ask me anything.”
“When you said ‘our house’ the other night,” she starts, eyes on her hands, “did you mean it, or were you trying to calm me down?”
I step in close enough that she can feel the heat off me. “I meant it.”
Her chin lifts. “And ‘our girl’?”
“That, too.”
Her breath shivers in a way that makes me want to pick her up and take us both somewhere quiet where the world can’t find us. I don’t. I press my palm to the counter next to hers, anchor instead of pull.
“I’m going to keep being scared sometimes,” she admits, voice barely above the hum of the fridge. “Even if he’s nowhere near us. Even if the paper says he can’t be. I’m going to want to check the locks twice. I’m going to need you to tell me it’s okay to go back outside.”
“I’ll tell you,” I say. “And when you tell me I’m holding too tight, I’m going to try to loosen.”
“Try?”
“I’m not going to get it right every time.” Honesty sits heavy and clean between us. “But I’ll try. The right amount of control.” Thorn’s words, not mine, but they fit here.
She leans in, forehead to my chest. I wrap an arm around her and feel that restless part of me settle like a dog finally lying down after pacing a long night.
“We’re doing it,” she murmurs, like it’s a secret we get to keep. “We’re actually doing it.”
“Yeah,” I say into her hair. “We are.”
For a while, that’s enough. The house breathes. The little red dots on the sensors blink their even language. Somewhere outside, a car passes slow and keeps going.
We stand there, not braced against a storm, not pretending there never was one. Just…standing. Together. It’s a different kind of vow than the ones I’ve made lately—quieter, less cinematic. The kind that lasts because you make it again the next day, and the next.
No one cross our line.
That feels like the right amount of control.