Page 192 of Iced Up Love: Part Two
Controls.
But he doesn’t stop us. We move as a unit. Down the hallway. Into the lift. Out into open air.
And when her feet touch pavement for the first time since we brought her home, she exhales.
It’s quiet.
Soft.
But it’s real.
Fresh air. Space. Movement. Not a hospital room. Not a bed. Not stillness. Alive.
We don’t go far. We don’t need to.
Just a slow walk along the street, controlled, contained, watched from every angle Elijah can manage.
Jackson stays close to her side, his hand brushing hers, grounding.
I stay just behind and beside, close enough to catch her if she stumbles, far enough to let her walk on her own.
And Elijah, he watches everything.
Everyone.
Every movement.
But he walks with us. And that matters.
Because this, this is the first step. Not just for her.
For all of us.
And as she tilts her face slightly into the air, eyes closing for a brief second like she’s holding onto the feeling of it, I know we made the right call.
Because for the first time since we got her back, she doesn’t look trapped.
She looks like she’s starting to come back to us.
And this time, we don’t take that away from her.
forty-one
Liana
The game fills the apartment in bursts of sound that don’t quite land the way they used to.
The sharp cut of skates across ice, the crack of the puck against the boards, the low swell of the crowd rising and falling like a living thing, it should feel familiar, grounding even, something that pulls me back into a version of my life that still makes sense.
Instead, it feels distant.
Like it belongs to someone else.
I sit curled into the corner of the couch, the blanket pulled loosely over my legs, my body angled toward the television but not really watching it, not fully. My side aches in that slow, persistent way that never quite disappears, a reminder threaded through every small movement, every breath that goes a little too deep.
They’re out there.
Jackson.
