Chapter Thirty
T he day before the case was the worst kind of day for Tanner because there was nothing left to scrub or sort or fix without inventing jobs that didn’t need doing.
The folder was ready. Mrs. Hemsworth’s letter was inside it.
Savannah’s things were packed in case anyone asked for anything extra, though he knew that part made no sense.
Even the kitchen stayed clean, because he’d already wiped it down twice.
Savannah was on the floor in the living room, building a crooked tower from plastic blocks while a cartoon played low on the television.
Miles sat at the table with paperwork spread out in front of him, not because there was more to do, but because he was giving Tanner room without leaving him alone.
That should have helped, but Tanner could feel himself winding tighter with every hour that passed.
He went to the window again and looked out at the street, seeing nothing that could distract him from his own thoughts.
“Sit down,” Miles said from the table.
Tanner turned. “I am sitting down.”
“No, you’re wearing a path in front of the curtain.”
Tanner stared at him, then looked at the floorboards under his own feet and realized he had, in fact, gone back to the same stretch of room over and over.
Savannah added another block to the tower and announced, “Big.”
“Very big,” Miles told her.
Tanner rubbed a hand over his face and sat on the arm of the sofa. That lasted maybe twenty seconds before he got up again.
Miles watched him. “You want to say it or keep pacing?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“That’s not true.”
Tanner stopped near the doorway. “Tomorrow they get to decide.”
Miles put the papers down. “They get to confirm what’s already been happening.”
“That’s not better.”
“It’s more accurate.”
Tanner snorted. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Answer the words I said instead of the ones I meant.”
Miles leaned back in the chair. “Then say the ones you meant.”
Savannah knocked the tower over with a delighted shout and started building again. Tanner watched her for a second, then looked away before the tightness in his chest got any worse.
“I don’t trust it,” he said.
“The meeting?”
“The whole thing.” He folded his arms hard across himself. “Them. Courts. Social workers. All these people in rooms deciding what’s reasonable. What’s stable. What counts.” He swallowed. “And I don’t trust this either.”
Miles’ face didn’t change. “This meaning what?”
Tanner let out a breath. “Any of it going right.”
Miles spoke carefully. “You think if you start believing it might work, that’s when it goes bad.”
Tanner looked at him. “Yeah.”
“That’s honest.”
“It’s not useful.”
“No,” Miles said. “But it’s honest. Tomorrow’s the first legal step. Interim placement keeps her with you now, temporary guardianship gives the court something formal to work with, and after that it moves toward permanent.”
Tanner stared at him. “You could’ve said that before.”
Miles nodded once. “Yeah. I could have. I didn’t because I thought if I started talking about courts and legal steps too soon, you’d hear Savannah being taken and run before anybody could help.”
Tanner hated that he was right. He pushed off the doorway and went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, stared at the inside without seeing anything, then shut it again. Miles didn’t follow. That was a deliberate choice and Tanner knew it.
He stood with both hands on the kitchen counter and tried to get his breathing under control. It annoyed him that he even had to think about breathing now, that this whole process had dragged him back into the version of himself that expected the floor to give way if he put too much weight on it.
Miles came to the doorway after a minute. “You want some coffee?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“No.”
“Water?”
Tanner turned to look at him. “Are you trying to fix me with drinks?”
“I’m trying to get you to stop standing there going over everything.”
He ran a hand over his face and leaned back against the counter. “Miles.”
“I’m serious,” he said.
“I know.”
“If this goes wrong—”
Miles cut in before he could finish it. “Then we deal with what actually happens, not the worst thing your head can come up with.”
Tanner’s jaw tightened. “That sounds easy when you say it.”
“It’s not easy, Tanner, but it’s what we should do.”
Tanner looked past him toward the living room where Savannah was singing to herself over the blocks. “I’m tired.”
Miles nodded once. “I know.”
“No.” Tanner met his eyes again. “I’m tired of waiting for the next thing to hit. Tired of people saying it’ll be alright when they don’t know that. Tired of starting to…” He stopped.
Miles didn’t move. “Starting to what?”
Tanner laughed under his breath, but there was no humor in it. “See? That’s the part I shouldn’t do.”
“What part?”
Tanner looked at him properly then, because there was no point trying to dodge it anymore.
Not with tomorrow right there. “Starting to trust any of this,” he said quietly.
“You. Them. The house staying calm for more than five minutes. Good things. Any of it.” He dragged in a breath.
“Because they don’t last. That’s the whole point. They don’t.”
Tanner had wanted Miles from the start. The problem now was that it wasn’t only want anymore. It had become deeper than that.
Miles watched him. “You think saying it out loud makes it safer when it goes bad.”
“Maybe.”
“Does it?”
Tanner gave the smallest shake of his head. “No.”
Savannah appeared in the doorway holding two blocks and her rabbit by one ear. “Hungry.”
Tanner blinked, then smiled at her. “You’re always hungry.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
Miles took the blocks from her before she dropped them. “Apple or crackers?”
“Both.”
“Greedy.”
Savannah grinned.
Tanner watched Miles take her to the counter, watched him slice the apple, watched Savannah stand on tiptoe and steal a cracker before he’d finished. Something inside him made him speak before he could stop himself.
“I love you.”
Miles stopped with the knife in his hand. Savannah kept eating, one cracker already half gone. Tanner stood by the counter and felt every part of himself lock at once because there it was now, out in the open, and he couldn’t take it back or soften it or pretend it had meant something else.
He looked down at the counter between them. “I wasn’t going to say it like that.”
Miles put the knife down carefully. “I know,” he said.
Tanner nodded, his face burning. “Right.”
Savannah reached for another cracker. Miles moved the plate closer to her, then looked back at Tanner. He came over then and stopped next to Tanner. “I heard you,” Miles said.
That made Tanner’s throat tighten. He looked up at him at last. “You don’t have to say anything back.”
Miles held his eyes. “I know.” Miles kissed him softly and smiled.
Tanner let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The humiliation he’d braced for never came.
Savannah crunched another cracker loudly and said, “Apple.”
Miles stepped back to hand her a slice. “There.”
Tanner laughed then, a real one this time, and watched Savannah eat it.
The rest of the evening carried on. Tanner made Savannah’s dinner while Miles packed the folder again for the morning. Tanner gave Savannah her bath and dressed her in her pajamas. Once she was settled in her bed, he stayed with her until she drifted off.
When Tanner came back downstairs, Miles was waiting in the living room. “You should sleep,” Miles said.
“Probably.”
Tanner stayed standing for a second, then crossed the room and sat beside him on the sofa. Not touching at first until Miles put a hand on the back of his neck and Tanner let himself lean in.
Neither of them said anything more about what had come out in the kitchen. There wasn’t any need. It was there now.
Tomorrow they would walk into another room and let the system do what it did.
Tanner still didn’t trust that. He probably wouldn’t when the morning came either.
But Savannah was asleep upstairs. The folder was ready by the door.
Miles’ hand stayed warm and steady against the back of his neck and that was enough to get him through the night.
Chapter Thirty-One
The courthouse annex was smaller than the main county building.
Savannah sat between them on the bench with her rabbit in her lap and a packet of raisins in one hand.
Tanner had dressed her in clean leggings, a yellow sweater, and the shoes she fought least about wearing.
He’d also packed a bag that could have covered a weekend away instead of a morning in a government building.
Miles hadn’t said a word about that. Let the man bring half the house if it helped.
TJ came through security a minute later with a folder under one arm and nodded at them as he crossed the room.
He was in plain clothes again, but there was no hiding the fact that he belonged in places like this.
Mrs. Hemsworth arrived not long after in her navy coat with the same envelope-sized handbag she always carried and the same expression that suggested the building itself might be beneath her standards.
Cody and Orsen came together and sat with them. Tanner looked from one face to the next and didn’t say much.
“You alright?” Cody asked him, low enough not to carry.
“No,” Tanner said.
Cody nodded. “I get that.”
A clerk came out just after ten-thirty and called Tanner’s name, and they were taken into a conference room rather than a courtroom.
Rebecca Palmer was already there with a man in a suit Tanner had met only once on a call earlier in the week. Family law. County-appointed for the filing stage, at least until the longer-term order was sorted. There was also another woman from the court admin side.
Miles took the seat beside Tanner with TJ sitting across from them. Mrs. Hemsworth took the chair at the far end while Cody and Orsen stayed near the side until asked to sit.