No matter how much it aches to stand back and see her, without being able to touch her and tell her she has biological parents who never meant to let her go.
And who never stopped loving her, even when we thought she was gone for good.
I can feel that love in Fuchsia as much as I feel her heartbreak.
Because it echoes my own.
It’s in her trembling.
In my harsh, ragged breaths.
In her near-silent, racking sobs.
In the way my chest hurts every time I try to fucking speak.
My heart smashes itself against my ribs like it’s trying to squeeze through the spaces in between.
It hurts like nothing I’ve ever known.
But at least we don’t have to face it alone.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
“Oliver, you—”
“She’s not a slave. They wouldn’t let that happen to her,” I whisper against Fuchsia’s ear while she jerks her shoulders halfheartedly, fighting me just for the sake of fighting something.
I know her. It’s how she keeps herself from feeling helpless.
And now she freezes, locks those pale grey-blue eyes on mine, and whimpers out a question. “What?”
“They got out, Fuchsia. Right after things blew up in Heart’s Edge. When you started pulling the rafters down around Galentron’s ears, they got out early and sang like birds in exchange for FBI protection for themselves...and for Mandolin. So now they’re just ordinary people, living clean, and raising our daughter to be a normal girl.”
“But that should be us!” she protests weakly, scrubbing at her face furiously and somehow not even managing to ruin her makeup despite how awkwardly she moves her hands with my grip still on her wrists. Waterproof mascara is some serious shit. “We’re her rightful parents. She should be ours.”
“We are,” I agree softly, “but so are they. They’ve been there for her through every moment of her life, Fuchsia...and believe it or not, they’ve loved her. Right now, we can’t even offer her a safe life. We can’t even give ourselves a safe life. And it wouldn’t be fair to take her away from the future they can give her. Protected. Loved. And never coming into contact with anyone from Galentron ever again.”
I hate what I really mean when I say anyone from Galentron.
Because I also mean us.
Both of our fucked up circumstances that are far from resolved.
Fuchsia sags against me with a low moan—then twists in my arms, as if she can’t stand to look at Mandolin’s obliviously sleeping face anymore, thoroughly drained. She wrenches her wrists from my grasp so she can slide her arms around my neck.
I hold her while she cries a lifetime of pent-up tears.
In a way, she’s crying for me, too.
My eyes may be dry, but I don’t feel it any less.
Sometimes it’s the smallest things, not the hardest blows, that can break even the coldest person to pieces.
After what feels like forever, the sun starts to spill its light across the horizon. I feel the seconds ticking down until we have to disappear.
Fuchsia goes quiet against me, save for her shallow, ragged breaths. She’s loose and pliant in my arms, but she seems different.
Lighter, somehow.
“Never?” she whispers. “Not even on her own terms?”
“One day,” I say. “One day we’ll tell her how to reach us. But for now...” I press my lips to the top of her head. “We’re out of time, wildcat. I hate it, but if we don’t go now, we may get picked up by the Feds any minute.”
She smiles weakly, curling her fingers in the front of my shirt. “Where do we even go from here?”
“Alaska sounds good,” I point out. “More moose than people.”
She barks a tired, humorless laugh. “It’s a good thing layers are in fashion this year. Is that where you’ve been all this time? Alaska?”
“Canada,” I say. “Where there are also more moose than people, but somehow even more angry geese than moose.”
Her face goes blank and she blinks.
“Promise me one thing: you’ll never try for a career in stand-up.” She pushes away from me enough to look over her shoulder, watching Mandolin with her lashes beaded wet, eyes pensive and half-lidded. “Can’t I leave her something? Some kind of message? Something to let her know we even exist?”
Sirens start blasting in my head.
Fuck.
I know it’s a terrible idea.
I know I should tell her no.
But I can’t.
Because deep down, she’s asking for the same thing I’ve asked myself a thousand times.
It’s what I’m aching for, too.
That promise of one day.
The phantom idea that maybe, just maybe one day it’ll be different, even if I don’t have a clue how it happens.
Maybe we could have our daughter back, one way or another.
“Be careful,” I say and pat the pockets of my jeans before I come up with a pen and a small notepad.
It’s habit carried over from years of working in senior-level operations—always be ready to write something down.
What I write down now is the number to a burner phone. I keep a few in my cabin up in Canada, and we’ll be swinging up there to lay low for a bit before we start making our path to Alaska, I think.
I’m already plotting it out, planning ahead as I scribble the number down, then pass her the pad and the pen.
“Five minutes,” I warn. “Not a second longer. Then we need to disappear. People are starting to wake up.”
I see the flash of rebellion in her eyes for just a moment.
The defiance that says she wants to stretch it to six minutes, seven minutes, more. Until Mandolin wakes up and has no choice but to see us.
I see behind her polished exterior just like I did so many years ago.
Fuchsia is still that girl who captured my attention in a breath.
That relentless, strange, bright-eyed girl who had the nerve to lay a senior military official out on the floor and come to my penthouse to plot a coup without caring about the consequences.
But I can see, too, the moment when she realizes I’m right.
She does care.
Because it’s not about the consequences to her.
It’s about the consequences to Mandolin.
Goddamn, it kills me.
I think, given half a chance...Fuchsia would’ve been a badass amazing mother.
Her eyes darken, and she lifts her head, looking back through the window for several aching seconds.
I think I’ll remember her like this for the rest of my life, fresh with longing, the first pink hints of sunrise falling over her. She’s wearing this expression of mixed joy and wrenching loss on her face, beatific and tortured and serene and painful. The full emotional spectrum of every human being who ever drew breath lit in her and shining all at once.
Then she sighs, quickly scratches something down on the notepad, and rips the sheet off.
Fishing in her pocket and pulling out a plastic-wrapped ball of pink hard candy, she folds the note around it.
Then she looks around, spies the soccer ball against the fence—and slips over to kneel down, tucking the paper-wrapped candy under it.
Smart.
Mandolin will probably see it as soon as she heads out this morning, stopping like any girl would to kick the ball a little before heading off to school, only to pause when she notices something that shouldn’t be there, resting in the same space where the ball had been.