CHAPTER 210: One Year

POV: Avalon Pierce

Elena’s first birthday arrived on a Friday in July, exactly one year since the 4 AM drive and the red light he’d run and the sound she’d made in that hospital room that had undone him completely.

They kept it small.

Maya had offered, loudly, to organise something elaborate but because Selene had said quietly one evening that she wanted the day to feel like their life, not like a performance of their life, and Avalon had understood exactly what she meant.

So it was just the apartment, filled with the people who actually mattered. Maya and Kofi with six-month-old Robert, who had recently discovered his own voice and used it constantly. Margaret, composed as always but with something soft around her eyes all day. Amara, James, and Nadia from the foundation, none of them treating it as an obligation. Kevin Walsh and Evelyn, who arrived with a cake she’d made herself and refused to discuss the recipe.

Elena sat in her high chair, surveying the gathering with her usual gravity, one small fist already covered in frosting before anyone had officially started the celebration.

“She’s efficient,” Kevin said, watching her.

“She’s a Castellano Pierce,” Evelyn said. “Efficiency is genetic in that family, apparently.”

Selene stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment, just watching  Avalon crouched beside Elena’s high chair, laughing at something she’d done, his shirt already bearing evidence of the frosting incident. Maya bounced Robert while arguing cheerfully with Kofi about whether he was old enough for cake (he was not, but Maya had strong opinions about letting him smell it). Margaret in a quiet conversation with Amara near the window.

A year ago she’d stood in a different doorway, thirty five weeks pregnant, terrified and hopeful in equal measure.

Now this.

Avalon caught her eye across the room and something passed between them. It was a full recognition of the distance traveled, wordless and complete.

“Come here,” he mouthed.

She crossed the room.

They did the cake properly, everyone singing badly and loudly, Elena regarding the whole enterprise with the solemnity of someone attending an important ceremony rather than her own birthday party. When the small cake was finally placed in front of her, she looked at it for a long moment, then reached out and placed her whole hand directly in the center of it.

The room erupted into laughter.

Elena, delighted by the reaction, did it again.

“That’s it,” Maya said, wiping her eyes. “That’s the most Castellano Pierce thing I’ve ever witnessed. Straight to the point. No hesitation.”

“She commits,” Kofi agreed.

Avalon knelt beside the high chair, unbothered by the mess, and Elena offered him her frosting-covered hand with great ceremony, as if bestowing a gift.

“Thank you,” he said solemnly, accepting it. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

Elena laughed, the one they’d been chasing for months — delighted with herself and the whole occasion.

Later, after everyone had gone and the apartment had returned to its quieter self, Selene sat on the couch with Elena, freshly bathed and sleepy, while Avalon cleaned up the last of the party debris in the kitchen.

He came and sat beside them.

“One year,” he said.

“One year,” Selene agreed.

“I keep thinking about the drive to the hospital,” he said. “How terrified I was. How I couldn’t imagine what this would actually feel like.”

“And now,” she said.

“Now I can’t imagine anything else,” he said.

Elena, drowsy against Selene’s shoulder, made a small contented sound.

“She’s had a full day,” Selene said.

“She’s had a full year,” Avalon said. “We all have.”

Selene looked at him at this man who had learned, slowly then all at once, to stop managing and start showing up completely and felt grateful for surviving something difficult together and finding yourselves, somehow, happier on the other side.

“Nene would have loved today,” she said.

“She would have found something to critique about the cake,” Avalon said.

“Definitely,” Selene agreed. “But she’d have loved it anyway.”

They sat together as the evening settled fully into night, Elena’s breathing slowing into sleep between them, the apartment quiet and warm and completely theirs.

Avalon’s phone buzzed once on the coffee table.

He glanced at it — an email from the foundation, something about next quarter’s planning. He simply set it face down without opening it.

“Later,” he said, when Selene looked at him questioningly.

“Later,” she agreed.

Tonight was just this.