Page 79 of This Reckless Home

I shake my head, swallowing past the lump in my throat and I go back to the potatoes. “You don't know that.”

“Yeah, baby. I do.” He gently takes the peeler from my hand, drops it on the counter then turns me to face him. His tattooed hands are careful on my body, black ink against pale skin, and somehow that contrast makes me feel more real, more present, than I have in days. His fingers come up to grasp my chin, gently forcing me to look up at him. “Because I've seen the way he looks at you. The way he talks about you when you're not around. The way he watches you with the kids.”

“That was before⁠—”

“Before he found out you're willing to break every law to save children? Before he learned you weaponized your privilege for good? Before he saw you stare down an abusive father and threaten him in his own home?” Anatole's voice is fierce, his eyes full of blue fire. “You think that made him want you less?”

“I funded Nazis⁠—”

“To save a kid from becoming one. And yeah, it bothers him. It’s allowed to bother him. But bothered doesn't mean gone, Bloom. Bothered doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you anymore.”

I want to believe him. I do.

“Just talk to him, Bloom.” There’s a plea in his tone so I nod.

But my father's voice in my head is louder.

Not good enough. Never good enough.

“YOUTH” BY DAUGHTER

ANATOLE

She believed about thirty percent of what I just said.

I watched it happen — the small nod, the eyes that went distant, the way she turned back to the potatoes like if she kept her hands busy enough the rest of her couldn't fall apart. She's been doing that all week. Filling every quiet moment with something practical so there's no space left for the thing that's eating her alive.

I know that move. I invented that move.

The difference is I learned it to survive a system that didn't give a shit about me. She learned it from a father who should have and didn't. Same result. Different crime.

And it hurts a shit ton more watching her perform it.

Just talk to him, Bloom, I said. Like it's simple. Like she isn't fucking terrified down to her bones that if she reaches for him he won't reach back.

I get it. I do. I just don't have the luxury of falling apart about it because someone in this house has to stay upright. Steele's using everything he has just to stay present, and Nox is holding it together by a thread he won't admit is fraying.

So it's me. It's usually me, the one who finds words when no one else can, the one who keeps moving when everything else stalls. I don't mind it. It's just who I am.

But Christ I'm fucking tired.

I'm tired of watching her punish herself for something she did out of love, even if it was something unforgivable, even if it had a cost none of us can fully reckon with yet. I'm tired of watching Steele stand at windows and leave rooms and carry that quiet damage alone because he doesn't know how to put it down without putting her down with it.

And underneath all of it, underneath every practical thing I've done this week — the meals, the school runs, the conversations, the steady blue-eyed certainty I've been performing for anyone who needed it —

Jus.

Everything we built, everything we've been working toward for eight fucking years, is in this house. Is her. Is this family that somehow became real without any of us quite deciding it would.

And I am not losing it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“PAINFUL” BY SWIM, JA¥EN X DISTRICT

STEELE

Ican't fucking sleep. Again.