Page 50 of Angel
The doctor keeps talking.Heart activity. Measurements. Dates. Follow-up scans. But all I can hear is that phrase ringing through my skull. Further than before. Not safe or guaranteed. But further and that’s something.
When we step outside, the sun feels too bright. The world is moving like nothing monumental just happened. We sit on the curb for a minute. Stevie leans into me, her head on my shoulder. My arm wraps around her automatically, like I’m anchoring us both to this moment.
“I don’t want to celebrate yet,” she whispers.
“I know,” I say.
“I don’t want to jinx it.”
“We won’t,” I repeat. “We’ll just… hold it.”
She nods, breathing shaky. “This feels different.”
I close my eyes. “Yeah,” I say quietly. “It does.”
I want to shout it from the rooftops, to call Joker, Tank. Call everyone and tell them to brace for the biggest damn party Pine Ridge has ever seen. I don’t. Because this time, hope doesn’t feel like something to chase. It feels like something fragile in my hands. And I know what happens when you squeeze too tight.
Back home, the house feels different. Stevie kicks off her boots and walks to the kitchen like she’s grounding herself in the ordinary. I watch her move. We don’t talk about nursery paint or names or timelines.
We talk about dinner, order takeout, and sit on the couch with our knees touching, her palm resting lightly over her stomach.
“I’m scared,” she admits.
“So am I.”
She tilts her head slightly, studying me. “You’re not trying to fix it.”
I smile softly. “Learned my lesson.”
She exhales, some tension leaving her shoulders. “If this doesn’t work—”
“We’ll survive,” I say gently. “Together.”
“And if it does?”
I think about the clubhouse. About RJ tearing through the halls, Beau pretending he’s too old to care but still showing up to everything, Polly’s laugh echoing in the bar, the future I stopped building because it hurt too much to imagine.
Then I look at Stevie. Here with me, brave as hell.
“Then we’ll meet that too,” I say. “Slow. Honest. Together.”
She nods, tears slipping free. “Okay.”
Later, when she’s asleep, I sit at the kitchen table alone. The house is dark except for the small light over the stove. I let myself feel it. Not the fear. The gratitude. For how far we’ve come back to each other, the way she asked for space instead of walking away and how I learned to sit in pain without trying to wrestle it into submission.
For the fact that today, in that room, she didn’t look alone. She looked strong. Further than before. I press my palms flat against the table and breathe. I don’t know what happens next. There could still be blood, loss and heartbreak waiting around a corner we can’t see.
But we are different now. Stronger in the quiet places. Whatever happens, we won’t implode or disappear into obsession or silence. We’ll speak instead and now we know how to grieve.
I glance down the hallway toward our bedroom. Toward her. Hope came back quietly.
Chapter Nineteen
Stevie
Hope is quieter this time. It doesn’t crash into me or steal my breath or demand anything at all. It just sits there, small, warm, tentative, like it knows it’ll be shown the door if it gets too loud. It just exists beside me, like a candle flame I’m careful not to shield too tightly or blow out myself.
I wake up every morning expecting fear to be the first thing I feel. Sometimes it is, my heart is already racing before my eyes open, like my body knows something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet. Other mornings, it’s something else entirely. A strange heaviness behind my eyes, dull ache low in my hips, fatigue that isn’t grief-heavy, it’s physical.Dense. Bone-deep.
