63. Sage #2
The threat against every woman and vulnerable person out there is never-ending.
“What happens when it’s over?”
Silence. Milo’s chin lifts off my shoulder.
“When what’s over, kitten?”
“This. The threat. Stephen.” I set the mug down.
“When there’s nobody left hunting me. Do we all just .
. . go home? Back to our lives? Eli goes back to finger painting and glue sticks, Holden goes back to being a detective, and I go back to pouring coffee at the diner, and we all—what? Pretend this was a weird few months?”
Nobody answers right away. The kitchen feels suddenly too bright.
“I mean—you all have lives, right?” I continue, suddenly aware that every man at this table has frozen.
“Houses. Apartments. Milo has his mom’s place.
Micah has his apartment in the city. Eli has his place near the school.
You’ve all been on rotation for months, watching me around the clock, and I thought—when things finally settle—you’d want your own space back. Your own beds.”
Nobody speaks.
“And surely Holden wants his house back,” I add, looking at him. “You moved five people into your home overnight and never complained once, but this was supposed to be temporary. Right?”
Holden looks at his coffee mug like it might have offended him.
“Guys?” I try, when no one speaks up.
“Are you trying to break up with us, kitten?” Milo asks from behind me. His voice is light, but his arms have tightened.
“No! God, no. That’s not—” I twist to look at him. “I love you. All of you. I want us to be together for as long as this keeps working.”
“So forever then,” Milo says.
I smile. “I guess I thought the living situation was temporary. That’s all. I don’t want to assume and overstay—”
“You’re not overstaying anything,” Knox says. We’ve now had multiple complete sentences from Knox this early in the day. That’s how serious today is.
“Thanks, Knox. But it’s Holden who has to make that call. We’re all in his space.”
“But . . . this is home now,” Milo says. “My bed is upstairs. I moved most of my stuff here. And I know it’s just two mattresses on a floor right now. But it’s the best bed I’ve ever had because we share it.”
Micah sets his fork down. “I haven’t been back to my apartment in six weeks. My plants are likely dead. My mail is piling up. I don’t care.”
Eli is quiet. He’s looking at Holden. We’re all looking at Holden, because this is his house and however this conversation ends, it starts with him.
Holden clears his throat. Shifts in his chair. Picks up his coffee. Puts it down. Picks it up again.
“I don’t mind,” he says.
“You don’t mind what?” I ask.
“Having everyone here.” He’s talking to his mug.
His ears are slightly red, which is something I’ve never seen on Holden Cross and which I’m filing away forever.
“The house was—before all of you, it was just a house. Four walls and a mortgage. I told you I bought it because I thought I’d have a big family.
It’s in a good neighborhood. Close to the station.
Plenty of bedrooms.” He pauses. Clears his throat again.
“I didn’t buy it thinking it would become—this.
But it did. And I don’t want it to go back to what it was before. ”
The silence that follows isn’t awkward. It’s full. Like the room is holding its breath, waiting for him to find the rest of the words.
“If people want to stay,” Holden says, still addressing his coffee, “they should stay. Permanently. Not as a temporary arrangement. Not as a rotation or a security measure. Just—like Milo said—because this is home.” He looks up.
Finally. His eyes find mine first, then move around the table.
“If you want it to be. We could, ah . . . be each other’s . . . ” He clears his throat. “Family.”
Tears immediately prick the backs of my eyes.
“Did Holden just ask us to move in?” Milo whispers.
“I believe he did,” Micah says.
“Permanently?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Like, with a lease? Are there going to be chore charts? Please say there are chore charts. I want Knox on garbage duty because the mental image brings me joy.”
“Milo,” Holden says.
“I’m accepting. I’m just accepting loudly. It’s how I process big emotions.” He squeezes me tighter. “Kitten? Thoughts?”
I look at Holden. At the red ears and the coffee mug and the man who shows love by hanging doors and scrubbing blood and making eggs at dawn.
And always, always being there. The man who asked five people to make his house their home—to be his family—and couldn’t look any of them in the eye while he did it.
“I’d like that,” I say. “A lot.”
“Same,” Micah says.
“Obviously I’m in,” Milo says.
Knox nods.
Eli picks up his toast. Takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. “Can we work on the room assignments and clear out the guestroom?” he asks. “It’s ridiculous you sleep in the den of your own house.”
Holden blinks rapidly and clears his throat twice while nodding. “Yeah. Of course. We’ll, ah . . . have a family meeting.”
We’re a family.
An actual, permanent, mortgage-paying, chore-chart-having, five-boyfriends-and-one-woman-under-one-roof family.
Milo raises his fork. “To home,” he says.
We clink utensils and coffee cups.
“To home,” I say, locking eyes with Holden and mouthing, “I love you so much.”
He smiles and mouths, Show me later.
Oh. I will.
My cell rings, and I glance down, frowning when I see Amy’s number.
“Amy? You okay?”
I hear a wet, hiccupping nothingness—the sound left after crying has used up everything it needs to function.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers.
The line goes dead.