Page 107 of The Final Cut

This is what we have instead of a reunion. One of us bleeding through bandages. One of us making inedible muffins. Both of us pretending the table between us is normal furniture and not a bridge we don’t know how to cross.

Footsteps come down the hall.

I recognize them as Ever’s before he appears, heavier than Deacon’s, quieter than Nash’s when he wants to be. He steps into the kitchen in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, damp hair pushed back, eyes moving first to the windows, then Delia, then me. His gaze drops to the bowl in my hands.

He crosses the room without a word, bends to kiss me, and takes the bowl.

The kiss is warm and brief and steadier than my pulse. The theft is smooth enough that I do not process it until the bowl is already in the sink.

“Hey.”

He turns on the water. “Yeah, no.”

“You don’t know what I was making.”

“Regret.”

Delia’s eyebrow lifts.

Ever catches it and gives her a solemn wink before opening the refrigerator. He pulls out a package of bacon, a carton of eggs, and a container of strawberries that look much safer than anything I have touched this morning.

My face heats because Delia saw him kiss me. Because she saw me soften under it. Because there is no version of explaining my life that does not sound crowded and impossible, especially to a woman who has spent fifteen years under Isabel’s rules.

Ever does not seem bothered. He sets a pan on the stove, calm as anything, as if making breakfast for my rescued twin sister is an everyday part of his morning routine.

As if it could be.

Maybe that is why I love him. Runaway, rescue, or apocalypse, he can make it look effortless.

I slide into the chair across from Delia because Ever has removed my last excuse to hover. The table feels too wide and too narrow at the same time. I pick up my own mug, take a sip, and nearly choke.

Gah-damn. I set it down without a word, stand, pick up the whole pot, and pour it down the sink.

Delia watches me with grave attention. Then she makes the sign of the cross and pushes her mug one inch farther away.

The laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it.

It is small, rusty, and too loud in the quiet kitchen, but it is real. Delia looks down into her mug as if she had nothing to do with it. Ever’s mouth curves while he lays bacon in the pan.

“Wise,” he says.

“It tasted like punishment,” Delia says.

“It was brewed by a woman in crisis.”

“I could tell.”

“I am sitting right here.”

“Yes,” she says. “That was part of the crisis.”

The bacon begins to sizzle, and for a few seconds the sound fills the places where conversation might have been. I start another pot of coffee with exaggerated care, measuring like the future of the family depends on grounds and water. Maybe it does. Stranger things have happened this week.

“Shiloh is still at the hospital,” I say, because logistics are safer than feelings. “Cal was stable at the last update. No change. Nash is going to rotate with him after breakfast, I think, unless Shiloh refuses to leave, which he might, because he has been refusing to leave Cal without one of you there up to this point.”

Ever flips a strip of bacon. “Nash is checking the exterior sensors first, and then he’s on his way. Deacon is asleep.”

“He sleeps?”