جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 100

Mia POVThe first full day of being engaged felt quieter than I expected, and better for it.I woke to the solid weight of Ryder’s arm across my waist and the soft morning light already moving across the ceiling. For a long moment I simply lay still, feeling the unfamiliar but welcome weight of the ring on my finger and the deeper, steadier quiet that had settled over the house since the final verification. No countdown. No island. No leftover threat humming under the floorboards. Just the three of us and the life we had fought to reach.Ryder stirred when I flexed my fingers. He caught my hand, brought it to his mouth, and kissed the ring without opening his eyes.“Still there,” he murmured.“Still there,” I answered.We stayed in bed longer than the old schedule would have allowed. There was no urgency to check phones or perimeter reports. The reduced security presence was already becoming background rather than necessity. When we finally went downstairs, my mother was at the stove

Mia POVThe days after the engagement settled into a rhythm that felt almost surprising in its calm.I woke each morning to the solid weight of Ryder’s arm across me and the quiet certainty that the war was finished. The ring on my finger had already begun to feel familiar. The house no longer carried the low hum of vigilance. The single security presence had become background, more habit than necessity, and even that was scheduled to lighten further by the end of the week. We were allowed to live.On the third morning I came downstairs to find my mother at the table with a notebook and a pen, coffee already poured. She looked up when she heard me and tapped the page.“Don’t panic,” she said. “I’m not planning the whole thing. I’m just writing down what we already know so we don’t lose it. Garden ceremony. Small. People who matter. Coast afterward. Tell me if I’m wrong.”“You’re not wrong,” I said, and felt Ryder’s hand settle at the small of my back as he joined us.He glanced at the

Mia POVThe notebook stayed closed for another two days before any of us felt the need to open it again.On the morning of the third day I came downstairs and found Ryder already at the table with it open in front of him, pen resting beside the page. My mother stood at the counter pouring coffee. She glanced over her shoulder and gave me a small smile that said she had noticed the same thing.“He’s been staring at it for ten minutes,” she said. “I told him not to add anything without you.”Ryder looked up, a little caught. “I wasn’t adding. I was just… looking at the shape of it. Making sure it still feels right.”I sat beside him and read the short list again. *Garden. Small. People who matter. Coast after.* The words were still enough. They hadn’t grown heavier or more complicated overnight.“They still feel right,” I said.He nodded and closed the notebook. “Then we leave it there until something needs to be decided.”Breakfast was unhurried. The conversation stayed light—weather,

Mia POVThe guest list started on the back of an old grocery receipt, because none of us wanted to touch the real notebook this early in the week.We sat at the kitchen table after breakfast, my mother between us. Ryder had a pen in one hand and his coffee in the other. He wrote his own name first, as a joke, then crossed it out and wrote it again under a heading he labeled family."That's not funny," I said."It's a little funny." He slid the receipt toward me so I could add mine.I wrote my mother's name first. After that the list got harder, not because there weren't people who mattered, but because most of the people who had mattered most this past year weren't the kind you'd find in an old address book."What about the team," I said.Ryder looked up. "Which part of it.""The part that's still here." I nodded toward the window, where the morning rotation was making its slow loop past the roses. "The two who stayed the longest. They ate dinner with us more nights this year than mos

Mia POVRyder actually bought the notebook.He set it on the table before breakfast, brand new, spine still stiff, next to the folded grocery receipt like a promotion ceremony. My mother clapped once, delighted, and immediately claimed the first page for herself."Six weeks," she said, writing the date across the top in careful letters. "Now it's official. No more bananas.""The receipt served us well," Ryder said. "We should frame it.""We are not framing a grocery receipt.""We're framing the grocery receipt."I let them argue about it while I poured coffee, and by the time I sat down they'd compromised on tucking it inside the back cover of the notebook instead, which satisfied nobody completely and therefore counted as a fair deal.The morning moved quickly after that. A dress shop two towns over had a Tuesday opening, and my mother had already called ahead. Ryder drove us, dropped us at the door, and told us to take however long we needed, that he had errands of his own, which I