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Junie points toward the porch. “Is no one going to address the fact that we’ve all accepted the house is sentient?”

“No,” Scarlet says.

“Good to know I live in a magical, cursed town.”

Hours later, Pepper is back from imaging with six stitches near her hairline, a confirmed concussion, and a badly sprained ankle wrapped in enough fabric to qualify as architecture.

The house is full. Honey has covered the table in food. Junie has taken over one armchair and is arguing with the house about whether a cabinet opened on purpose.

Scarlet sits on the floor beside Pepper. Roman and Wes speak quietly near the front door while Wes checks updates from the hospital. Theo occupies the couch with Pepper stretched across him.

I sit beside them. Fully solid and strangely unbound. The silence where Theo used to live inside me feels like a sinkhole. I reach for it once more. Nothing.

Theo looks over. “I’m still here.”

“I know.” The words come easier this time.

Pepper takes my hand. Theo covers both of ours with his.

“I thought this would make me who I was before,” I say.

Pepper’s expression softens. “Before the bond?”

“Before Hammer. Before disappearing. Before all of it.”

Theo waits, his eyes on me.

“I’m not that person anymore,” I say.

“No,” Theo says. “And you don’t have to be.”

Something inside my chest loosens. “I changed.”

Pepper rubs her thumb across my knuckles. “That tends to happen when you survive things.”

“I think I spent so long trying not to need anything that I started disappearing before the curse ever touched me.”

Theo’s hand tightens over mine. “I needed you.”

“I know.”

“That wasn’t the same as asking you to vanish.”

“No.” But I made it the same. Being needed felt safer than being known. I thought loving Theo meant fitting myself into every empty space until there was nothing left outside him.

Then Pepper arrived and asked me what I wanted. No one had prepared me for how frightening that would be.

“I don’t have to disappear inside myself to choose you,” I say.

Theo’s eyes shine. “No.”

“I don’t have to become who I was to stay.”

“No.” Pepper squeezes my hand. “You can take up room and find out who you are now.”

For most of this year, now has felt like something I was borrowing. I look at Pepper, then Theo. She’s bandaged and bruised, curled across Theo as though she belongs there. It’s more than I ever dared to want. But I finally feel as though now is big enough to hold tomorrows.

“What if I become insufferable?” I ask.