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Theo is standing on the porch.

Chapter 33

Theo

“I’m all in.”

Chapter 34

Margo

I’m all in.

I stand in the doorway for what feels like a very long time and is probably only two seconds, my whole body caught somewhere between the birthday dinner still happening behind me and the boy standing in front of me who just walked back into my life without any warning at all. He’s in the same clothes he probably wore all day — dark jeans, a gray henley, no jacket despite the evening chill, like he left the house too fast to think about layers. There’s something in his face I haven’t seen since before the rupture — not the wall, not the careful nothing, something softer and more certain than either.

“Hi,” he says. Quiet. Steady in a way that doesn’t match the size of what’s happening.

“Hi.” My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.

He looks at me for a long moment, and I look at him, and neither of us says the actual thing yet, because there are five people at my kitchen table who can hear every word if we say it too loud. Behind me, I can hear the specific quiet that means everyone at that table has already stopped pretending not to listen.

“I need a minute,” I tell him. “Can you — just, give me one minute.”

He nods. I close the door most of the way, not all the way, and turn back to the kitchen, where five faces are looking at me with expressions ranging from delighted to concerned to some combination of both. Priya’s got her fork frozen halfway to her mouth. Delaney’s already grinning like she’s figured out exactly what’s happening. June looks like she’s doing rapid calculations about whether to intervene or step back.

“It’s Theo,” I say. Which is, apparently, all the explanation anyone needs.

The reaction is immediate and unanimous.

“Okay,” Delaney says, already standing, already reaching for her purse. “We’re going. The Penalty Box, obviously, drinks are on me, this is officially a celebration for a completely different reason now.”

“We haven’t finished the cake,” June points out, but she’s already collecting plates, moving with the specific efficiency of a person who understands exactly what’s happening and wants to be out of the way of it as fast as possible.

“We’ll finish the cake tomorrow.” Priya’s already got her coat. “Margo. We love you. Text one of us if you need anything, but I have a feeling you’re not going to need anything for a while.”

“You don’t have to leave,” I say, which is a lie, because I very much need them to leave, and everyone in this kitchen knows it.

“We absolutely have to leave,” Kara says, laughing. “Margo, there is a boy on your porch who drove here for a reason that has nothing to do with cake. Let us go be normal twenty-one-year-olds at a bar while you handle whatever this is.”

“Even you?” I look at Wren, who’s the most reliably unbothered person I know, the one who never seems moved by anything as ordinary as romantic drama.

“Even me.” Wren almost smiles. “The Penalty Box has decent fries. I’ll allow it.”

They’re gone in under three minutes — a flurry of hugs, someone grabbing the leftover cake for the road, Delaney already texting the group chat about which booth to grab, and then the Sailmaker is quiet in the specific way it only gets quiet, and I’m alone with the sound of my own heartbeat and a boy still waiting on the porch.

“Come in,” I tell him.

He steps inside, and I close the door behind him, and for a second we just stand there in my kitchen, the birthday candles still half-burned on the counter, the specific charge of two people who have too much to say and don’t know which piece to start with.

“You said you needed time,” I say, finally. “It’s been — I don’t even know how long it’s been. Days. I stopped counting, honestly, because counting was making it worse.”

“Six days.” He says it immediately, which tells me he’s been counting too. “I know exactly how long it’s been.”

“Okay.” I fold my arms, not defensively, just because I don’t know what else to do with them. “So talk to me. Tell me what changed.”

He’s quiet for a moment, gathering himself, and I let him have the silence, because I know now what it costs him to build up to something this size.

“Beau found me that first night,” he says. “Sat with me. Didn’t tell me what to feel, just let me feel it and asked me one question that actually stuck — whether I understood why you did what you did. Not whether it was right. Whether I understood it.” He looks at me steady. “I didn’t, not fully, not that night. I was too angry.”