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There’s something almost meditative about the weight of her against my shoulder, a kind of quiet I don’t get anywhere else these days, uncomplicated in a way very little else in my life currently is.

“She’s gotten so big already,” I say, mostly to myself, running my thumb along her impossibly small fingers. “Last time I saw her, she couldn’t even really smile back yet.”

“She smiles at everything now. Give her a minute, she’ll show you.” Caleb watches us with an expression I can’t quite name, something warmer than I usually catch from him. “She likes you. Always has, actually.”

Poppy proves him right almost immediately, breaking into a wide grin the second I make a ridiculous face at her, and I laugh despite everything this week has cost me emotionally, genuine and unguarded in a way I haven’t managed in longer than I’d honestly like to admit out loud.

“Hi,” I tell her, quiet, just for the two of us. “I missed you, you know. Even during the complicated parts, the ones that had nothing to do with you at all.”

She babbles something back that isn’t quite words yet, reaching up to grab a fistful of my hair with surprising determination, and I let her, laughing again when she tugs harder than a four-month-old has any business tugging, her tiny fist surprisingly strong for something so small.

“She’s got your stubbornness, no doubt about it,” Caleb says, watching us. “Yours will probably have Artem’s too, probably, if the baby ends up anything like him.”

“God help us all.” But I say it fondly, imagining a small, determined mix of the two of them running around this house someday, and something warm settles in my chest at the thought, easier to sit with than most of the thoughts I’ve had about the future lately.

We spend the rest of the afternoon together, easier than it’s been in longer than I can remember.

Poppy passed between us, Caleb telling stories about her that make me laugh instead of just performing normalcy the way our visits used to feel. It isn’t a fixed relationship.

I don’t think it ever fully will be, not in the way either of us probably wished for growing up.

But it’s honest now, in a way it wasn’t before last week’s call, and honest is worth considerably more to me than the polished front we used to perform for each other, year after year, without either of us ever admitting how much it was costing us to keep it up.

By the time they leave that evening, Poppy already drooping with exhaustion in her car seat, I feel something settle in me that’s steadier than anything I felt after the phone call last week.

That conversation was about grief, about finally naming something that had been sitting unspoken between us for months. This one is about choice, deliberate and clear, and there’s a peace in choosing something on purpose that grief alone never quite managed to give me.

I watch their car pull away slowly and don’t feel the same hollow confirmation I felt after their first visit weeks ago.

This time it’s simpler. I chose what I wanted to keep, drew the line exactly where I needed it, and walked away from the conversation with more clarity than I’ve had about my own family in longer than I can remember, the shape of it finally solid instead of just something I’ve been circling for years without ever fully naming.

Poppy stays with me, always. Caleb stays too, in whatever complicated shape he’s capable of managing. And for the first time in longer than I can honestly pinpoint, I’m not waiting on either of them to decide what that shape looks like.

I already have, and the decision feels like mine in a way very few things about this year have.

45

ARTEM

Six weeks after the warehouse, the doctor clears Harper fully—no restrictions left on her activity, no more careful monitoring of what her body can and can’t manage yet.

I’ve watched her heal in stages over those six weeks, the bruising fading first, then the exhaustion, then finally the tension that used to live permanently in her shoulders, and today’s the first day I’ve seen her move through this house without a single trace of it left behind.

I mark the occasion the way I mark most things that matter to me, quietly, deliberately, choosing the moment rather than letting it arrive on its own.

She’s in the library tonight, curled into the same chair she favors most evenings, and I find myself standing in the doorway longer than necessary, watching her before she notices I’m there, the ring in my pocket heavier than its actual weight should ever account for.

“You’re staring again,” she says without looking up, the same line she used on me months ago in a room that felt considerably more dangerous than this quiet one does now.

“I know.” I cross the room and sit down across from her the way I have most nights since that first evening in this same library, months ago now. “I have something I want to say to you.”

She sets her book down slowly, giving me her full attention, something careful in her expression that tells me she’s already sensed this conversation carries more weight than our usual evenings do together.

“I need to tell you something I’ve genuinely never said outright before.” I hold her gaze, steady, wanting no ambiguity in how I mean this. “I decided you were mine the night you fought back in that penthouse. Not after the terrace. Not after the hospital. That first night, when you went for my wrist instead of freezing.”

“You had a gun pointed right at me.”

“I know. And you fought back anyway, without hesitating for even a second.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees, close enough now that I can see every small shift in her expression. “I’ve spent months telling myself the reasons I kept you were about danger, about protecting you from what you might know. That was never the whole truth. I kept you because some part of me had already decided, in the first sixty seconds of knowing you existed, that I wasn’t letting you walk out of my life again.”