Aria’s POV
By the third morning my shoulder had settled from sharp agony to a deep, insistent ache that was manageable with dication and bad with movent. The doctor was satisfied. Barnes ca by briefly to go over what had happened in the restaurant, the shot, the angle, the fragnt, and to tell that Marcus had died on impact from the sniper’s shot, and that his network, thin and rcenary without him, was already unraveling.
"It’s over," Barnes said, for what I suspected was the third or fourth ti, as though repetition would help it.
Then he was quiet for a mont. "Ms. Monroe." He didn’t quite et my eyes, which from Barnes, a man I had never once seen uncomfortable ant sothing. "The ricochet, that shouldn’t have happened. I had people in position, I had the angle accounted for, and you still ended up" He stopped then cleared his throat. "I’m sorry, you trusted us with your safety and we weren’t careful enough."
I looked at him for a mont, this man who had built the entire operational architecture around keeping alive through a few minutes in a restaurant, who had put a sniper across the street and a wire at my collar and agents at every exit.
"Barnes," I said. "He drew a weapon in a crowded room. Your team neutralized the threat in seconds." I paused. "A ricochet is not carelessness. It’s a restaurant floor with has a bad geotry."
He nodded once, slowly.
"I understand," I said, and ant it simply. "It’s okay."
He left as the room went still. Damien had stepped out to take a call sothing legal, sothing about Marcus’s estate and the loose pieces that death didn’t automatically resolve — and I lay there in the thin hospital light, arm aching and head clear for the first ti in days.
It was over, months of being in Marcus’s shadow, the kidnapping, the photographs, the hidden caras including the ones I would never stop feeling violated by. The lockdown, the call in the kitchen at 11:47 PM with the kettle screaming behind . The restaurant floor, the shot, the hours of Damien in a chair beside , not leaving, not sleeping properly, not going ho. It was over.
I waited to feel sothing definitive and found instead a complicated, layered quiet. Relief, yes. Exhaustion underneath that. And sothing else — smaller and more persistent — that I recognized after a mont as grief. Not for Marcus himself, not exactly, but for the fact that it had to end this way at all. For Damien, who had spent years being made of the sa damage as his brother and had chosen, sohow, to beco sothing different.
For the family that might have been, if different choices had been made decades ago in a cold house with an abusive father. I was thinking about all of this when Damien ca back.
He read my face the mont he walked through the door — he’d gotten frightening good at that, the way you do when soone’s emotional state becos your primary concern — and he didn’t say anything, just crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed with the careful weight of soone not wanting to jostle the bad side, and looked at .
"Talk to ," he said.
"I was thinking about Marcus," I said.
Sothing moved across his face. "Yeah."
"Not with grief exactly." I paused, searching for words. "More with the waste of it. Everything that led to that restaurant, your father and what he did to both of you, and Marcus taking all of that damage and turning it outward, and you taking it and turning it inward, and neither of you knowing how to do anything else for so long."
He was quiet.
"You could have been him," I said.
"I know," he said.
"You weren’t."
"I ca close." His hands were linked between his knees, his gaze on the middle distance. "In the years after you left — after I found out what I’d done, what I’d thrown away — I could feel it. The place where you choose to burn everything down rather than sit with the guilt of having caused it. I understood why he chose that path, I understood it from the inside."
"What stopped you?" I asked.
He looked at . "I found out about Noah."
"Damien." My voice ca out softer than I ant it to.
"That’s what stopped ," he said simply. "Not any virtue of my own. Him. You, through him." He exhaled slowly. "I sat in that chair for days while you were in surgery and recovery, and I kept thinking — I almost lost you. Not through my own stupidity this ti. Through circumstance. And sohow that was almost worse, because there was nothing to fix. No apology that would have changed the physics of a bullet fragnt."
"Hey." I found his hand with mine. "I’m here."
"You’re here," he repeated, turning his hand over to hold mine properly. "But Aria — I need you to know. I cannot survive losing you. I know that’s not how I talk, I know I’m not dramatic." His voice ca out rougher than usual"But it’s the truth. These past few days were the worst of my life, and the worst part was knowing there was nothing I could do except sit there and need you to survive."
I looked at him — this man who had spent most of his life believing love was weakness, built by a father who weaponized that belief, who had dismantled that lie piece by piece over the last year until now here he was, in a hospital room with no walls left at all, telling the plainest and most terrifying truth he knew.
"That’s what love is," I said quietly. "You’re not defective for feeling it. You’re just finally letting yourself feel it all the way."
"It’s awful," he said, with complete sincerity.
I laughed — it pulled my shoulder and I winced, and he was imdiately worried, and I laughed again. "You’re terrible at this."
"I’m trying."
"I know." I looked at him steadily. "Damien, I don’t want to wait for the wedding. Whatever we planned — next month, the venue, all of it — I want to move it, I want to do it sooner." I held his gaze. "I don’t want Marcus to have taken even that from us. I want to get married while the ring is still new and Noah still rembers practicing with Mrs. Dora’s sister, son, and before sothing else cos along and makes us wait again."
He studied . "How soon?"
"Six weeks," I said.
He blinked. "That’s"
"Fast, know but I don’t care." I squeezed his hand. "Six weeks, we just need the people who actually matter, can we do that?"
He looked at for a long mont, and then the corner of his mouth lifted, and sothing in his face settled into the warm, decided expression I loved most on him.
"Six weeks," he said. "Yes. Absolutely yes."
"Good." I leaned back against the pillow, suddenly aware of how tired I was."Now stop looking at like I might disappear and go get us both coffee."
He stood, pressed his lips to my forehead and went. I looked at the ring on my finger — and I felt the last of the fear simply erased.
*********
Noah arrived at eleven with Olivia and a paper bag from the bakery on Clent Street — the almond cream pastries, of course — and a small stegosaurus wearing a handmade paper bandage on its tail.
"That’s Aria," he said, holding it up with great solemnity as Olivia settled him onto the bed beside . "She got hurt too, but she’s brave, so she’s okay."
"She sounds just like her nasake," I said.
He bead. "I nad her for you. Because you’re the strongest one."
I looked at Olivia over his head. She was pressing her lips together against sothing emotional, her curls falling forward.
"He made the bandage himself," she said. "This morning. Cut it out of paper very carefully and taped it on."
"I wanted her to match you," Noah explained, already arranging himself carefully against my good side. "So she wouldn’t feel left out."
Damien looked at across the bed. His expression was the quiet, wondering one — the one he still got sotis, like fatherhood kept ambushing him pleasantly.
"We’re moving the wedding up," I told Olivia. "Six weeks."
She went very still. "Sorry?"
"Six weeks," Damien confird, from the chair.
"That’s" She stopped, then looked between us. "Is this a dicated decision?"
"The decision is extrely sober," I said. "The person making it is slightly dicated, but the decision itself is sound."
Olivia pressed both hands over her mouth and made a sound that was completely unintelligible, which was fine because Noah provided all the verbal response the mont needed. He sat up very straight, looked between both of us with enormous eyes, and said, "Does this an I’m definitely ring bearer? For real this ti?"
"For real this ti," Damien said.
"Good." He settled back against with the satisfaction of soone whose plans were coming together on schedule. "I’ve been practicing, and I am very good at carrying things slowly."
Olivia made another unintelligible sound.
I looked at the ceiling, at this wonderful, improbable, real life all around — my son with his paper-bandaged dinosaur, my fiancé’s hand warm around mine, my best friend crying happy tears across the bed — and felt the last accumulated weight of Marcus’s shadow simply let go.
We were past it.
We were actually, finally past it.
"Hey, baby," I said, looking down at Noah.
He tilted his face up. "Yeah?"
"I love you," I said. "So much it doesn’t fit."
He considered this with great seriousness. "That’s a lot of love."
"It is."
"That’s okay." He snuggled closer, tucking his head under my chin with the easy certainty of a child who has never doubted he is wanted. "I have a lot of room."
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