Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME SQUIRT ALL OVER YOUR CLOSET OR WHAT?
LOUISIANA
He didn’t have to say a word—I felt it. That heat behind his eyes, the pressure building. He was ready to blow.
But he wouldn’t get it. Just like nobody else in this damn family could ever really get it.
The worst part? I almost told him. Almost handed over the thing I’ve kept tucked away, guarded like that creepy little goblin with his ring in that movie Merc loves. But then I remind myself that we’re just playing pretend and I don’t have to reveal shit.
I look up just in time to see Dallas—head high, hand out—greeting Maddox like it’s no big thing. But it is.
It’s everything.
The car ride over had nearly pushed me past the edge.
I’d come damn close to calling Rue, demanding the names of every home, every caseworker, every so-called family who’d failed him.
Who teaches a kid to perform like that? Like a polite, well-trained dog in someone else's living room—speak when spoken to, smile when you’re told, say “yes sir” to a man who won’t remember your birthday.
No wonder the kid ran off and holed up at Bunky’s. If that’s what “family” looked like to him, I’d have disappeared too.
“Want to head to the backyard?” Evie offers gently.
Dallas studies her—eyes flicking from one to the other. “Your eyes…”
One blue, one brown. Most folks do a double take. But Evie? She just smiles. “Pretty cool, huh?”
Dallas nods, awe blooming across his face. “Hell yeah they are.”
Evie laughs—bright and unguarded—and shoots Henry a look that makes something twist low in my chest. “Oh, I get it now,” she says, grinning. “You’re gonna have your hands full with these two.”
Henry smirks. “Yeah, yeah. Go sit down before your water breaks or some dramatic shit.” He steers her toward the patio as he and Maddox head inside.
Maddox follows him through the back door, one hand brushing Dallas’s shoulder on the way.
She’s just easing into a chair, sighing like her spine finally let go, when Charlie appears out of nowhere.
“Jesus, Charlie!” I yelp, nearly knocking my plate to the ground. My hand flies to my chest. “Stop sneakin’ around like that! Just like your damn daddy.”
Charlie only grins. “Mama says we’re like two house cats.”
“Yeah, two feral ass house cats.”
I turn just in time to catch it—Dallas and Charlie standing a few feet apart, locked in a silent standoff. Not angry, not hostile. Just…sizing each other up.
One of them was raised knowing who he belonged to, who would move mountains for him. The other? Still holding his breath, hoping he might finally find somewhere, something to belong too.
I drop into the seat next to Evie, both of us going quiet, watching the moment like it matters. Because it does.
Charlie’s eyes shift, just slightly, toward his mama. “That’s my mama,” he says, clear and calm. Not a warning, not a threat. Just a truth—offered, not demanded.
Dallas doesn’t miss a beat. “Figured that,” he replies, voice even. He lifts a hand and gestures to her face. “Y’all got the same eyes.”
Charlie’s mouth twitches, barely a smile, but it’s there. Then he points to me. “That’s Lou-Lou.”
Dallas takes a single step forward. Plants himself at my side like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His shoulder brushes mine.
He looks up, chin tilted, eyes steady. “It’s Louis to me.”
The way he says it—it’s not a correction. It’s a declaration.
Charlie blinks, just once, but something shifts behind his eyes. Like maybe he sees Dallas different now. He studies him for a second longer, then jerks his thumb toward the backyard.
“Want to see the treehouse my dad built?”
Dallas nods, calm and sure, and just like that, they’re off—shoulder to shoulder, two boys finding their own quiet language.
Evie leans back, a hand resting over her belly as she watches them disappear between the trees. Her voice is soft, almost like she’s speaking to herself. “That poor baby.”
I know exactly what she means. Not pity. Not weakness. She just sees it—what most people miss.
The boy who’s never had a soft place to land.
I watch her absently rub her swollen belly, fingers moving in slow, unconscious circles.
Pride rises in my chest, thick and warm—but it’s followed by something colder, sharper.
Jealousy. I swallow it down hard, bitter as it burns its way through me.
Not because I’m not happy for her—hell, no one’s prouder of her than I am.
Maybe that’s what makes it worse. Because loving her like I do means the ache cuts even deeper.
Means I smile through a grief that never quite quiets.
Because she’s able to have the one thing my broken body will never give.
“Nice ring.” The bitch waggles her eyebrows as she looks from me to the ring on my hand.
“It’s fake,” I mutter, too fast. “Once the papers are finalized, I’ll go back home.”
Evie crosses her arms, leans back against the patio table like she’s settling in for a standoff, one brow lifted, expression unreadable but knowing—too knowing.
“Louisiana,” she says, voice low, steady.
“This is a child. Not a damn project. Not some half-wild stray you and Henry can bicker over when you decide to drag your mess thirty-six yards back home.”
I drop my eyes. My fingers twitch, desperate for something to hold, so I start dragging shapes on the denim of my jeans—spirals, figure eights, little frantic nothings—just to keep my hands from shaking. Just to keep myself from coming apart.
She doesn’t ease up.
“You really think he’s not going to get attached?” she asks, sharp now, voice cutting through the humidity like a knife. “You think he’ll just bounce back? Pack up his pain and move the hell on? Be real with me, Lou. For once in your life.”
“I have to leave, Evie.” It comes out rough, louder than I mean, voice splintered down the middle. “You don’t understa—”
“No,” she cuts in, voice quieter but more pointed. “You don’t get to use that anymore. 'You don’t understand.' You say it like it gives you permission to burn everything behind you and call it survival.”
She pushes off the table and steps in close. Not angry—just certain. Like she’s already seen where this road ends.
“Look at me, heifer.”
I do. Slowly. And fuck, I wish I didn’t.
There’s water in her eyes. Not a lot. Just enough to gut me. Because Evie doesn’t cry. Not unless it hurts.
“Maybe it’s not about understanding,” she says, gentler now, the way you speak to a wounded thing too proud to limp. “Maybe people don’t need to get it. They just need you to stay.”
She rubs a slow circle over her belly like she forgot she was doing it. Then shakes her head, muttering, “You and Maddox. God help me. Two sides of the same God damn stubborn-ass coin.”
Then, quieter, razor-sharp and soft all at once, she adds, “You want to run because you think you’re not enough for him.”
I clamp my jaw shut, bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste metal.
She waits.
“Well?” she says, voice thin but unrelenting. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I look out across the yard, where Dallas is grinning so wide it barely fits his face. Him, Charlie, Bash, and that dumbass dog, running in the tall grass like nobody’s ever hurt a single one of them.
Then the truth threatens to break out of me like a dam cracking wide open.
“I can’t give him the one thing that matters,” I whisper, and my voice cracks wide open. “I can’t be what he needs. I can’t even—”
But I stop and find myself for the second time that day locking it back up refusing to share with anyone.
Evie doesn’t blink. Doesn’t hesitate. “Lou, there’s a reason why I chose you to raise Charlie and Bash if something ever happened to me.”
I let out a bitter laugh, sharp and ragged. “Yeah? Fuck you for that.” My voice cracks under the weight of it. “Finding out you had God damn papers drawn up way before you were laid up on death’s doorstep? That was low, Eves. Real fucking low.”
The memory still haunts me—Henry’s quiet voice telling me to check under her bed for a manila envelope. My hands shaking as I pulled it out, terrified of what it meant. The weight of it. The finality. What gutted me most? That she’d trust me with the two souls she loved more than her own breath.
Evie doesn’t flinch. Just waves a hand, all nonchalance, like we’re talking about expired milk. “Besides the point.”
“No,” I snap. “It is the point.”
She lets out a long sigh, then locks eyes with me—those damn eyes of hers, one blue, one brown, always too sharp, too knowing. Like she can see the things I haven’t said out loud. Maybe she can.
“The point is,” she says quietly, “there’s no one better. No one I trust more. Not just to raise my boys if the worst happened…” Her voice wavers just a little, but she steadies it. “But to love them. Fully. Fiercely. Unconditionally.”
I look away, jaw locked tight. Because I feel it. The dam starting to crack. The part where everything I’ve worked to keep buried starts clawing its way to the surface.
“That’s the kind of love you carry, Lou,” she says. “The kind that’d tear you apart if it meant saving someone else. You’d burn the whole damn world down to keep them safe.”
She pauses. Lets that sit between us. Then adds, “It damn near breaks my heart that you don’t see that in yourself.”
I don’t mean to answer. It just slips out, hoarse and wrecked. “I see it.”
Evie gives me this look—tender and tired, the kind people wear when they’ve been through hell and made peace with it. A smile that knows me too well.
“Some part of that boy already belongs to you,” she says. “And you’d be a God damn fool to pretend otherwise.”
We sit there letting the silence enveloping us as we watch the boys run and play until dinner is done. Evie’s words haunt me all evening and on the way back home.
After tucking a bone-tired Dally into bed—his limbs heavy, lashes already brushing his cheeks—I step into the shower and crank the water until it’s just shy of burning.