로그인(Nate’s POV)She pushed me back like I was nothing.One hand, flat against my chest, and I was twelve inches further from her with the air between us feeling like a wall she had built with her palm. She said don’t and she meant it, and I stood there with my hand still hanging in the space where her arm had been.I could not remember the last time she had touched me. That hand against my chest was the first time her skin had been on mine since before the fire, and she had used it to push me away.The door opened behind me.A nurse came in with a clipboard and a blood pressure cuff, and I stepped sideways so fast I knocked the chair with my knee.Sabrina was already moving—around the bed, to the other side, putting Grandma between us like a barricade.The nurse looked at me. Then at Sabrina. Then at the distance between us.She was young—late twenties, maybe—and she had the kind of face that was trying very hard to stay professional while the rest of it was doing math.“I’m here to chec
(Sabrina’s POV)The third floor of the hospital was quiet at this hour.I followed the room numbers down the corridor. A nurse at the station glanced up as I passed, and I gave her a small nod without stopping.The room he had texted me was at the end of the hall. The door was ajar. I pushed it open with my fingertips and stepped inside.Grandma Cooper was in the bed.She looked smaller than I remembered—smaller than she had looked even when I’d said goodbye to her. The hospital gown swallowed her.Her eyes were closed.I crossed the room and pulled the chair to the bedside and sat down. I took her hand—carefully, around the IV tape—and held it in both of mine.“Hi, Grandma,” I whispered.She did not stir.“I’m here,” I said softly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here before. I’m here now.”I sat there holding her hand and listening to the monitor and I did not cry. I had cried enough.I just held on and let her hand be warm in mine and told myself she could hear me somewhere underneath.“Well,”
(Sabrina’s POV)Luca held the car door open and I stepped out still laughing.He had spent the last twenty minutes of the drive doing impressions of all my brothers and I had laughed so hard my ribs ached, and my face hurt from smiling.I could not remember the last time my face hurt from smiling.He walked me to the front steps. He did not touch my arm or my back or try anything that would have made the evening something other than what it was, which was easy and warm and uncomplicated in a way I had forgotten things could be.“Thank you,” I said at the door. “I had a really good time.”“So did I,” he said simply.He waited until I was inside before he walked back to the car. I stood in the foyer and listened to the engine pull away down the drive, and I was still smiling when I pulled my phone out of my bag.The screen had three notifications.Two from Felix—a photo of Luna asleep on his chest, and then a follow-up that just said she loves me more than you and that’s final—and one f
(Nate’s POV)Alexis appeared in the doorway.She had her phone in one hand and her eyes looked soft and round. Her head was tilted gently.“Nate, Mara told me she heard—oh.” She looked at the bed. “Oh, Grandma Cooper, you’re awake! Oh my God, we’ve been so worried about you, you have no idea—”My grandmother looked at Alexis, and her face crumpled.She looked at her the way you look at proof of something you hoped wasn’t true.And then she started to cry.Her mouth pressed shut. Her chin buckled. Her shoulders drew up toward her ears and started shaking, and then the tears came, slow at first, then faster, rolling down her face and into the pillow. She did not make a sound.She did not wipe them. She did not turn away. She just lay there and cried, looking at Alexis, with her hands open on the blanket.Alexis froze in the doorway.She looked at me. She was waiting for me to fix it—to stand up, to cross the room, to explain to my grandmother that everything was fine and Alexis was wond
(Nate’s POV)My jaw locked.Of everything she could have said. Of every question in the world—where am I, what month is it, am I dying—the first word out of her mouth after weeks of silence was that name.“Grandma—”“Where is she, Nate? She was here. I remember. Right before I—she was in my room, she was shaking my shoulder, she was saying something about a fire—”“She is not here,” I said tightly.“Well, where is she? Call her. Tell her I’m awake. She’ll want to—”“She’s gone, Grandma.”The old woman went still.I sat up straighter. I had rehearsed this, in the car and in the shower and in the dark of my bedroom at three in the morning when I couldn’t sleep—I had built the sentences and I had lined them up and I had told myself that when the moment came, I would deliver them cleanly, and she would understand.“Sabrina set the fire,” I said.My grandmother’s eyes narrowed.“She lit a curtain in the bedroom. She was angry about the divorce, about Alexis, about the house.” I kept my voi
(Nate’s POV)Mara needed the wine cellar unlocked.She was standing at the bottom of the stairs with her phone against her hip and a list in her other hand, and she looked at me the way you look at a concierge who is taking too long.“Alexis wants the Sancerre for tonight,” she said brightly. “And the rosé from the second shelf. And anything sparkling, actually—Jenna’s coming, and Jenna only drinks sparkling.”“Who the hell is Jenna?” I asked flatly.“From Pilates.” She said it like I should know. Like this woman had been a fixture in my life and not a stranger who had appeared in my kitchen three days ago eating my yogurt. “So can you unlock it, or…?”I unlocked it.I stood there with the key in my hand while Mara walked past me into the cellar and started pulling bottles off the rack, checking labels against her list, humming something under her breath. She did not say thank you. She did not look at me again.I went upstairs.The second floor was quieter than it used to be. Alexis’s
(Sabrina’s POV)Alexis moved first.She shoved past me and ran for the stairs, her heels hammering the wood. I followed her down because Nate was still shouting somewhere on the ground floor and I needed to reach the front door before this turned into something I couldn’t control.We came through t
(Sabrina’s POV)I picked up my coffee. It had gone cold but I drank it anyway.I couldn’t tell my brothers. Not this. It was too embarrassing—not the text itself but the fact that it worked, that after everything, Nate could still reach me through the one person I genuinely loved in that house.I w
(Sabrina’s POV)Breakfast had started to feel like something I could count on.Charlie was at the stove with three pans going. Felix was on the floor cross-legged, feeding Luna tiny scraps of bacon. Tyler was at the table already dressed, reading something on his tablet with a pen behind his ear. A
(Nate’s POV)Alexis was in my study. She shouldn’t have been—I locked it when I left, or thought I did—but there she was, behind my desk with Reed’s folder open in both hands.She was holding the photographs.“Where did you get these?” I asked flatly.“They were on your desk, baby.” She didn’t look







