Chapter 316: [4.134] I Believe in You

"And your mom?" Sabrina’s voice drifted from the window seat, quiet and curious.

"Diana Angelo. She tried, for a while. Worked double shifts at a diner, dated a string of men who were all somehow worse than the last. When Iris was born, she stuck around long enough to make sure someone was there to take care of her." I felt my jaw tighten. "Then she met a guy in California and decided she’d rather be there than here. Sent me a text two months ago telling me she’d gone. Took three hundred bucks from the emergency fund on her way out."

The room went quiet again. Not the uncomfortable kind of quiet, but the kind that comes when people are processing something heavy and don’t want to fill the space with meaningless words.

Harlow’s grip on my hand tightened. Vivienne reached over and rested her palm on my knee, a gesture so unexpectedly gentle that I almost flinched. Cassidy made a sound low in her throat, something that might have been anger or sympathy or both.

And Sabrina. Sabrina unfolded herself from the window seat and crossed the room, her bare feet silent on the hardwood floor. She settled into the blanket nest on my other side, displacing Vivienne with a look that clearly communicated she was not open to negotiation on this matter. Her body pressed against mine, her head finding the spot between my shoulder and my jaw, her breath warm on my neck.

"Iris is lucky," she said.

"Why?"

"Because she has you."

I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing, just let the warmth of four bodies surround me while the fire burned low and the night stretched on toward morning.

At some point, Harlow fell asleep. Her breathing slowed and deepened, her body going heavy against my side in that boneless way that only sleeping people manage. Vivienne wasn’t far behind, her tablet slipping from her fingers as her eyes drifted closed. Even Cassidy, who’d sworn she was going to stay awake until dawn out of pure spite, had gone quiet, her breath evening out into the steady rhythm of unconsciousness.

But Sabrina stayed awake.

I could feel it in the tension of her body, the way her fingers traced absent patterns on my chest through my shirt. Her eyes were open in the darkness, staring at nothing and everything.

"You should sleep," I said, keeping my voice low to avoid waking the others.

"Can’t."

"Tomorrow’s going to be a long day."

"I know." She shifted, tilting her head up so she could look at me. The firelight caught her purple eyes and turned them into something luminous, almost supernatural. "I keep thinking about what my father wrote. About Mother becoming someone different after he was gone."

"People change."

"Do they?" Her voice was barely a whisper now. "Or do they just stop pretending to be something they’re not?"

I considered the question. Thought about my own father, who’d pretended to be a family man until he couldn’t anymore. Thought about my mother, who’d pretended to care until caring became too hard. Thought about myself, the masks I wore every day just to survive.

"Maybe both," I said. "Maybe people are always changing and always revealing who they really are, at the same time. And we just have to decide which version we want to believe in."

Sabrina was quiet for a long moment. Then she pressed a kiss to the underside of my jaw, her lips soft and slightly cool.

"I believe in you," she said.

Before I could respond, she closed her eyes and let sleep claim her.

I lay there in the darkness, surrounded by warmth, listening to four heartbeats that somehow felt like they’d become my responsibility. In the morning we’d go to a bank and retrieve a dead man’s final gift to his daughters. Then we’d walk into a boardroom and face down a woman who’d spent years teaching her children that love was conditional and loyalty was a weakness.

I should have been terrified.

Instead, I felt something else. Something that had been building in my chest for weeks, growing stronger every time one of these impossible girls let me see past their armor.

I felt ready.

The fire died down to embers. The shadows grew longer. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice that sounded a lot like my father whispered that I was getting in too deep, that I should run while I still could, that people like me didn’t get happy endings.

I told that voice to go to hell.

Then I closed my eyes and let sleep take me.

I woke to the smell of coffee and the sensation of someone’s hair in my mouth.

The someone turned out to be Cassidy, who had migrated during the night from her spot on the floor to being essentially sprawled across my chest. Her face was pressed into my neck, her arms wrapped around my torso like I was a body pillow she’d purchased specifically for this purpose. One of her legs had hooked over mine at some point, and her shorts had ridden up high enough that I could feel bare skin against my thigh.

This was fine. This was completely fine. I was an adult who could handle waking up with a beautiful girl draped across him like a particularly aggressive blanket.

Except Cassidy wasn’t the only one.

Harlow had curled into my left side, her head on my shoulder and her hand splayed across my stomach beneath my shirt. At some point she’d pressed so close that I could feel every curve of her body through the thin fabric of her pajamas, and her leg had tangled with mine in a way that suggested she had zero concept of personal space.

Vivienne had apparently decided that propriety was for daylight hours only, because she was pressed against my right side with her face tucked against my arm and her fingers clutching my sleeve like she was afraid I’d disappear if she let go.