Jane is beaming, glassy-eyed with hands to her lips.
I continue, “And at the end of the day, the people I care about are the ones I would die for. No questions asked. I’m standing at the battle line.” Say more. Say what you feel, and I just go. “You’re a family of warriors—I’m a warrior too. We just have different weapons. You use words. I use a gun. And ever since I was a young kid, I wanted to be that Spartan hero for someone. I belong here. Not anywhere else.”
Not because of Jane. But because when it comes down to it, I’m a fucking lion.
I’m a shark.
For the first time, I really believe I’m the same as them.
Not saying a word, Charlie stretches forward and plucks the card from my hand. He extends his arm across the table. Passing the thing to Eliot, who holds the card over Tom’s lighter.
A flame incinerates the paper.
I thought I’d want their applause or approval at the end of this. But standing here, I realize, I don’t need that recognition or their validation. I feel good about who I am and what I completed.
“That’s it?” I ask Charlie.
He nods. “Congratulations. Some of us still hate you. Some of us like you. Others don’t give a shit. And yet, you’re still here.”
I’m still here.
My mouth curves upward, and I nod once. The game was never designed for me to win them over like I thought.
It was designed for them to push my limits. To tap into unapologetic confidence. To survive a battle.
I’m still here.
I’m back in my seat next to Jane, and she gathers my hand in hers. “You’re amazing, you realize.”
I kiss her knuckles before wrapping an arm around her shoulder, and I lean in to whisper, “I love you, Jane Eleanor Cobalt.”
I hear her sharp breath. She’s about to reply, but Tom points at me with a steak knife. “What’s its name anyway?” He means the kitten.
I watch the tabby stretch a paw mid-sleep. “Jane usually picks the person who’ll name her cats.”
She rests her chin on her knuckles. “Our cats.”
Our cats.
I hang onto that declaration.
Looks like I’m a father of six—now seven—cats. This is bigger than Jane asking me to marry her. These cats are her babies, and she’s sharing them with me.
Happiness isn’t in the same stratosphere to the raw emotion that’s balled up inside my chest. I block out the mental image of my brother ribbing me about being a cat dad.
Jane rubs the top of the kitten’s head with her thumb. “And you found each other. You should pick her name.”
I already have a name for her, and everyone here will give me shit for it. So I just say, “LJ.”
“LJ?” Jane frowns for a second.
“I love it.” Audrey adjusts her bonnet.
“You don’t even know what it stands for, Audrey.” Eliot grins, deviously. “It could be something horrible like Lube—”
Jane cuts him off in French, and I recognize a couple words. The ones that mean little devil.
I make a call and decide to rip this Band-Aid fast.
“LJ is short for Little Jane.”
Silence layers across the table before Tom and Eliot explode into laughter. Ben and Audrey pound the table with their fists, and almost everyone drums the ground with their feet. Charlie clinks his glass with the back of a knife.
Living breathing noise rumbling around us.
“They love it,” Jane explains to me. “As do I.”
I’m constantly in awe of her, and now, I’m in awe of her family. More orderly but disordered sound reverberates and floods the room when Rose and Connor arrive hand-in-hand.
What happens next is history.
My history.
Maybe they never explained these dinners because you can’t. I’m twenty-eight, but here—no person is older or younger. Time is frozen, and a soul-bleeding feeling sings and screams—an experience that philosophers and mathematicians would fail to encapsulate.
I’d try.
But then again, I’d rather carry their secrets to my grave.
44
THATCHER MORETTI
“SKY! SKYLAR!” I yell out and drop my bike. I bolt into pitch-black water. Soaked up to my waist before I swim, and I reach the facedown floating body, turning my brother over—our gold necklaces snag. My strong pulse beats in my ears, and gripping him, I swim and pull. I drag him to the graveled shore.
My strong pulse beats.
Water drips down my eyelashes. I lie him down, chained at the necks, forced to stay close.
It beats.
I pump on his chest.
It beats.
I blow breath into his mouth and compress his chest—Skylar jolts up and grabs my arms in panic. “Thatch!”
My eyes snap open, a cold sweat coating me. Nightmare—just a fucking nightmare. I stay still and blink a few times, my pulse on a decent. Fuck me. I blink and gather spatial awareness. I’m in Jane’s bedroom.
Our room.
She sleeps peacefully beside me, tucked under a purple blanket. Naked, both of us, except for the cornic’ around my neck and my dog tags around hers. Quietly, I grab my phone off the nightstand and check the time, squinting as the screen lights up in the darkened bedroom. It’s zero three hundred hours.
Early. Too early for sunlight.
I lie back, head to pillow, and I smear a hand over my eyes. My nightmares are always related to my time in the military—I can’t remember ever having one about that night in the quarry.
Back when I was twelve and Sky was fifteen, my brother—he never woke up.
I try to think about other things. Like how it’s nearing the end of March, and we’re only three days away from Tony’s transfer to Charlie’s detail. And him becoming the Omega lead.
Yeah, that’s not making me feel any better.
To slow my heart rate, I take a few deep, measured breaths, and I smell something…
I sniff the air.
My pulse shoots back up, and I narrow my gaze on the door.
Filmy lines of smoke billow underneath and spill into the room.
I’m on my feet in a split-second. “Jane.” I tug on my drawstring pants, then I jostle my fiancée. “Jane!”
She flinches awake. “What, Thatcher?” Panic strikes her eyes as I leave the bed to cross the room and swing open the closet.
“Oh my God.” She sees the smoke pooling inside, and while I grab the fire extinguisher behind a shoebox, she hurriedly puts on panties and my black crewneck. And she glances at the wall. “LUNA! WAKE UP!”
Her cats—our cats. They barrel to the front of my mind.
I sprint out. Smoke skates across the second-floor landing and narrow staircase, stinging my eyes. I cough into my bicep and yell up towards the attic, “MAXIMOFF! FARROW!”
The fire isn’t coming from their room.
I slam a fist on a second-floor bedroom. “LUNA!” She’s a heavy sleeper. Could take more than that to wake her—but I run downstairs to stop the fire.
Heat is pouring from the first floor. The cracking sound is as violent as the sweltering temperature, and I enter an absolute fucking horror scene. Fire spreads to the ceiling, eats the floorboards, attacking the wood foundation, and it tries to crawl up the brick walls.