Chapter 33
HARTLEY
I don’t answer him right away.
Move in with me.
The words stay suspended in the air between us, steady and impossible to ignore.
Stellan doesn’t rush me. He just stands there with his hands loose at his sides, watching my face like he’s trying not to push too hard and failing to hide how much this matters to him.
I turn to head back into the house and he follows; we pause, staring at one another in the kitchen. I look past him, because looking at him directly feels like too much right now.
The backyard stretches wide behind him through the window. Grass, fence line, and the first hints of shade from the trees beyond it.
The sink is bigger than mine, the counters are wider, and there’s space for dishes.
My chest tightens.
Not because I don’t want it.
Because I do.
Alaska comes running back into the kitchen, breathless and bright, a burst of movement and grabs my hand with both of hers. She points down the hallway, then toward the stairs, then back outside, her face lit up in a way I haven't seen a whole lot.
She likes it. Of course she does.
There’s room here to be loud, to run…room to just breathe.
I swallow hard.
Stellan crouches to her level. “You finding good stuff?” he asks.
She nods so hard her hair bounces, then points toward the back window again and then presses herself against my side.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “I saw the yard too.”
Home isn’t just walls. It’s where she feels safe enough to run ahead of me.
“I need a minute,” I say.
Stellan nods immediately. “Okay.”
He doesn’t follow when I step out onto the back porch. He doesn’t ask what I’m thinking. He just stays inside with Alaska, giving me the space.
The porch boards creak under my weight when I lean against the railing.
The yard stretches out in front of me; broad, quiet, and almost too open after a year of sidewalks, alleyways and traffic outside my windows at all hours.
A bird cuts across the sky above the trees. Somewhere far off a dog barks.
I close my eyes.
Lance comes back the way he always does when I’m standing at the edge of something that matters.
Not as a body in a hospital room this time, or as the call that changed everything.
Just Lance alive and laughing, one boot half untied, standing in the kitchen with Alaska on his hip while he steals food from whatever pot I had on the stove.
You worry too much, Hart, he’d say in that easy, teasing voice he always used when he thought I was taking life too seriously.
Maybe I do.
Maybe I have since the day he didn’t make it home. The fear has been with me so long it feels practical now. Like a thing I can point at…a cage.
I stare out at the yard and think about Chicago. The way Alaska’s toys spill into every room because there’s nowhere else for them to go. The way I keep making it work, because making it work is what I do.
Then I think about Stellan.
He never asked me to stop being afraid. He never told me to get over Lance, never rolled his eyes when I flinched at sirens, never acted like my fear made me weak or dramatic or difficult.
He just kept showing up, over and over, patient and steady and every time I braced for him to pull away, he came closer instead.
He let me be scared and loved me anyway. He said so, to his mother, when he didn't know I could hear.
That realization hits so hard I have to grip the railing tighter.
Because that’s what this is, even if we haven’t said it yet.
Love. Not the bright, reckless kind I used to imagine when I was younger and had no idea what any of this would actually cost. This is quieter.
Something you choose every day in the middle of dishes, cartoons, panic and soot still clinging to someone’s hair after a bad call.
Love.
I exhale slowly and open my eyes.
Alaska slips outside with fox tucked under one arm and starts running across the yard immediately, little legs pumping hard. Stellan steps onto the porch behind her a minute later and lets the door close softly. He comes to stand beside me without speaking. We watch her together.
“She likes it,” he says after a minute.
“Yeah.”
His hand finds mine where it rests on the railing. He threads our fingers together carefully, like he’s still giving me room to pull away if I need it.
I don’t.
“I know this is a lot,” he says quietly. “And if the answer is no, I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I turn to look at him then.
“You make it hard to say no,” I tell him.
A small smile touches his mouth. “That’s kind of the goal.”
I laugh, soft and shaky.
“Okay,” I say.
He stills, and I can see the exact second he realizes I mean it.
“Okay?” he repeats.
“Yeah,” I say. “We’ll move in.”
He stares at me for a second and then his whole face changes. Relief. Joy.
He pulls me into him fast, one arm around my waist, the other bracing at the back of my neck, and kisses me hard enough that I forget how to stand for a second.
When we break apart, I’m breathing hard.
Alaska is at the bottom of the porch steps staring at us like she’s waiting to see if this is good news or just weird grown up behavior.
“We’re gonna live here with Stellan,” I tell her, my voice cracking around the words.
She grins and claps once.
That decides it.
The next two weeks pass in a blur of boxes and too many trips up and down stairs.
The apartment looks smaller once we start packing it.
Alaska’s room empties slowly; first the books, extra clothes, then the toys she forgets she has until I pull them out from under the bed, the couch, or the bottom of the closet.
She sits cross-legged in the middle of the floor and sorts everything into careful piles while Stellan kneels beside her taping boxes shut.
The first time he writes ALASKA’S ROOM on one with a thick black marker, my throat tightens.
“What?” he asks.
I shake my head once and keep folding clothes.
Nothing…Everything.
I've still got clients on the schedule before I shut the studio down for good, so a few hours later I'm standing in the treatment room pretending my life isn't currently packed into half a dozen cardboard boxes.
Brielle squints at me from the massage table and says, "You have that weird glowy thing happening."
“I hate when you say words like glowy.”
She smirks. “You’re in love with him.”
I laugh, but don't answer her, and she lets me get away with it.
The Saturday before we leave, half the firehouse turns up to haul the big stuff, and my living room turns into controlled chaos.
Phoenix carries the couch like it weighs nothing, AJ keeps offering opinions no one asked for, Jake steals my good pens from the kitchen drawer and denies it to my face, and Dark just stands in the middle of the room looking solid and mildly unimpressed while somehow doing the most actual work.
By the time the last box goes into the truck, the apartment echoes.
I stand in the doorway with Alaska by my side and stare at the place that held us together through the worst year of my life.
“You okay?” Stellan asks quietly from behind me.
I lean back into him for one second and let myself feel it.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”
The new house changes fast once our things start filling it.
Alaska’s room comes first. Her blanket spread over the bed, books lined up on the low shelf, and fox on the pillow like a tiny guard on duty. She runs in circles around the room the first night and finally collapses in the middle of the rug, laughing so hard she hiccups.
The kitchen changes next. My favorite mugs on the second shelf, and Alaska’s cups lined up near the sink. The refrigerator is covered with school papers and a drawing Alaska made of the three of us standing in front of a square house with a huge yellow sun above it.
Stellan frames that one and hangs it in the hall before I can stop him.
The living room becomes ours in smaller ways. My blankets on the couch, his boots by the door, and Alaska’s dolls under the coffee table.
We build routines without meaning to.
I wake first most mornings and start coffee.
Stellan comes down ten minutes later, hair a mess, shirt half on, and steals my first sip every single time.
Alaska follows after that, dragging fox and rubbing sleep from her eyes, and the three of us end up in the kitchen before the day even properly starts.
After a day of looking for a place to open my studio, I come home to a house that feels lived in. Sometimes Stellan gets there first and dinner is already started. Sometimes I beat him home and Alaska helps me wash vegetables.
At night, after she’s asleep, the house goes quiet in a way that feels safe.
I enroll her in Kindergarten later that week. I've got the folder from Ms. Rodriguez in my bag, the one with the charts I never wanted to read, and I keep waiting for the moment I'll need to hand it over and explain.
The woman behind the desk asks if Alaska has any needs they should know about.
I look over at her. She's standing at the window with both hands flat on the glass, watching the buses line up, entirely unbothered.
"She's shy at first," I say. "That's about it. She doesn’t speak. She knows how but hasn’t since her dad passed."
They take us back for her screening and let me come with in case she needs someone to translate.
The lady lays out out picture cards on a table.
"Can you tell me what this one is?" She holds up a card. A dog.
Alaska doesn't say anything.
My stomach drops so fast I have to put both hands flat on my knees.
Then she reaches over, picks the D out of the pile of letters, and sets it down next to the card. The way she's done it a hundred times at our kitchen table.
Her eyebrows go up. "Okay," she says. "Let's do a few more."
They do a few more. Ball. Sun. Tree.
"She's ready," The lady says, stacking the cards. "You know that, right?"
"People keep telling me she isn't."
She writes something on her form. "I'll see her on the first day of school."
The first weekend we don’t have to drive anywhere or unpack anything, we all end up in the backyard. Alaska digs a hole near the fence and acts like she’s burying treasure, soaking up the last few months before kindergarten starts and she’s done with daycare during the week.
Stellan grills burgers, a Belvidere Fire Department t-shirt stretched across his back, the pace here slower than anything we left behind. I sit on the porch steps with a glass of iced tea and watch them both move through the sunlight. I still can’t believe this is my life.
Stellan glances over at me from the grill.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re smiling.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not.”
He laughs. “You are.”
Maybe I am.
The fear is still there. I don’t think that part of me will ever disappear completely. I still watch the clock when he’s on shift. I still hold my breath a little when the news cuts to a fire somewhere in town.
But now when the fear shows up, it has to make room for something else.
Safety.
Not the kind that promises nothing bad will ever happen.
The kind that comes from knowing I’m not carrying everything alone anymore.
That night, after Alaska is asleep and the dishes are done, I stand in the kitchen with the lights low and my hands braced against the counter while Stellan comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist.
“You disappeared,” he murmurs against my neck.
“I was thinking.”
“You do that a lot.”
I lean back into him.
“Yeah.”
He kisses the side of my neck.
“I love you,” he says quietly.
“I love you too,” I say, and it comes out easy.