Page 208 of The Final Cut

He flicks my forehead with one finger. “Emotionally. You look like hell.”

A wet, stupid laugh comes out of me.

Shiloh exhales behind me. “Welcome back, Cal.”

Cal points the cane at him. “You. I remember you being annoying while I was unconscious.”

“Memory issues are common after trauma.”

“I remember enough.”

Shiloh smiles, delighted and devastated at once. “Welcome back, old man.”

“I’m fifty-fucking-three, and when I can put this cane down⁠—”

“Ancient.”

“Pretty boy, I will still put you on the floor.”

Ever steps closer. “After physical therapy clears aggressive flirting, not before.”

Cal looks at him for a long moment. Then at Nash. Then Deacon. His gaze returns to me with tired resignation.

“All four of them, still?”

My cheeks heat.

Delia says, “I asked the same thing.”

“Shut up,” I tell her.

Cal’s eyes move to Delia. The terrace stills in a quieter way.

He has seen her since waking. Briefly, carefully, with too many machines between them and too much history for a hospital room. But this is different. This is sunlight. This is the house that kept her. The house he couldn’t save her from. The house she now has to remake one brutal decision at a time.

Delia stands. For once, she looks unsure.

Cal studies her face, and whatever he sees there makes his own soften. “You look like your mother.”

He shifts, then winces and presses a hand to his side. Every person on the terrace moves.

He glares at all of us. “I swear to God.”

“Chair,” Mari says.

His whole body goes still. Slowly, he turns toward her. The atmosphere on the terrace shifts again.

I’ve spent weeks watching dangerous men look at me like I’m the only fixed point in a room. I’ve seen possessiveness, obsession, fear, love wearing too many weapons.

This is quieter. Older. Harder won.

Cal looks at Mari like she’s a place he almost reached and kept walking toward anyway. Like fifteen years did damage and distance and strange, impossible tenderness. Like he’s furious to have survived and grateful in the same breath because surviving brought him here, to her, to us.

Mari sets down her coffee cup.

“Sit down, Cal.”

His jaw works, and I wait for the argument. None comes. He sits.