51. Brody
brODY
The light in the cabin is soft, real sunlight this time, nothing like the harsh haze of the city, nothing like the cellars or the prison-lights we’ve both lived under.
For once, it doesn’t sting my eyes. For once, I let it in.
Lola is in the tiny kitchen, hair loose, sweater hanging off one shoulder as she pours coffee into chipped mugs. She still moves like she’s waiting to be hurt, flinching at sounds, glancing over her shoulder like the past might walk back in.
We both do. But today, there’s no one here but us.
She looks at me. Not through me, not past me. At me. Like I’m a man, not a weapon, not a killer. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I take it. I’d take anything she’d give.
She hands me the cup, her fingers brushing mine. There’s a tremor. I want to hide it, but she holds on, just a little too long. I meet her eyes—so alive it hurts.
We’re both changed, marked, stitched together by the violence and the hunger and the things we did to survive.
But neither of us is running.
“You sleep?” she asks, a tiny smile tugging at her lips.
I shake my head, smirking. “Not really. You hog the blankets.”
She gives a soft laugh and leans into my side. I put my arm around her, and feel her relax, inch by inch, but it’s never all the way.
Maybe it never will be, and maybe that’s okay.
Outside, snow still dusts the trees. No footsteps, no cars, no watchers in the dark. Just our shadows moving across the floor, mingling, harmless.
I press my lips to her forehead. She closes her eyes, tilting her face up for more. My chest squeezes. Pain and love and relief, all tangled and impossible. I want to say a thousand things. I want to make promises I’m not sure I know how to keep.
She looks at me, searching. “What happens now?”
I take a breath, letting the words drift out. “Whatever you want. I’m not leaving unless you tell me to go.”
Her eyes glisten. For a second, she’s the girl I first watched through glass, all wild and breakable, but now she’s something else: forged, fierce, mine.
She leans in and kisses me. It’s not desperate. It’s not hungry. It’s just real. I lose myself in it, let her set the pace, let her take what she needs. We break apart, foreheads resting together. Sunlight pours across our hands, our scars, the bruises fading but not gone.
“I want this,” she whispers. “I want you.”
I close my eyes and hold her tighter. “You have me. All of me. Whatever’s left.”
She laughs, broken and beautiful, and for the first time in years, it doesn’t sound like a goodbye. The past isn’t gone. The darkness hasn’t vanished. But we’re here, together, in the light. As close to free as we’ve ever been.
Maybe that’s enough.
She smiles at me, soft and sure, and I realize; maybe I was never meant to be saved. Maybe I was meant to find her in the dark, and follow her out, blinking, into something like hope.
I watch her move around the cabin, sunlight in her hair, and for once, I don’t need to watch from behind glass.
For once, I’m right where I belong.
With her.
Home.