Page 137 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

Gabe’s jaw clenches. “What if we don’t know how to be together without him there to show us the way? What if we try and it’s all wrong?”

“Then we learn.” The words come out stronger than I feel. “We stumble and fail and figure it out as we go. But we do it together.”

“I fell in love with both of you,” I continue, the admission feeling like stepping off a cliff. “That doesn’t change because he’s not here. He made me feel stronger, and you made me feel seen.The two of you didn’t split my heart—you expanded it. I can’t breathe without you.”

Tears blur my vision, salt and grief and truth mixing together until I can’t tell where one ends and another begins.

“I’m scared too,” I admit, voice breaking. “Scared of walking into that house without him. Of climbing into a bed that still smells like all three of us. Of reaching for you and feeling how different it all is.”

Gabe closes his eyes, jaw clenched tight against words he doesn’t know how to say.

“But I’d rather hurt with you than try to heal without you.”

Silence stretches between us, thick with everything we’ve lost and everything we still might save.

“You are not a consolation prize,” I say fiercely, needing him to understand. “You are not the piece that’s left over after we lost the good part. You’re the reason I want to keep breathing even though it feels impossible right now.”

“But we’re different without him. The dynamic changes. What if?—”

“What if we become something different but equally beautiful?” I reach out and cup his face, thumbs tracing the familiar geography of cheekbones and stubble. “What if we honor Hank by refusing to let his death destroy what he helped create?”

Tears spill over, hot against the cold morning air. Gabe leans into my touch like a man dying of thirst.

“I love you,” he says simply, and the words feel fragile as spun glass. “Not because you were Hank’s too. Because you’re you. Because even in the middle of the worst thing that’s ever happened to us, you’re still trying to take care of me.”

His voice breaks on the last word, vulnerability cracking him open in ways violence never could.

“But I’m terrified we don’t know how to love each other without him there to anchor us.”

“Then we learn,” I repeat, leaning forward until our foreheads touch. “We stumble and fail and figure it out as we go. But we do it together. The way Hank wanted. The way we promised.”

Through the rain-streaked windshield, the house waits. Empty rooms full of memory and possibility. A life that needs to be rebuilt from whatever pieces we can salvage.

“Together,” Gabe confirms, the word a vow, a prayer, and a promise all at once.

We sit in the car for another long moment, gathering courage for the simple act of going home. The rain continues its steady percussion against the roof, a rhythm that feels like time passing.

Finally, Gabe opens his door, and rain rushes in to remind us that the world keeps moving whether we want it to, or not.

The front door swings open on rooms that smell like him—coffee and soap and the faint trace of gun oil he never quite managed to wash off his hands completely.

I step across the threshold and freeze.

FORTY-FIVE

Living with Ghosts

ALLY

The house swallowsus whole the moment we cross the threshold. Hank’s presence saturates every surface.

His coffee mug still sits in the sink, half-full and growing a skin of mold because neither of us has the heart to clean it. His jacket hangs on the hook by the door, one sleeve twisted as if he just shrugged it off. The book he was reading still rests on the coffee table, bookmark exactly where he left it on page 247.

“Jesus.” Gabe’s voice cracks behind me.

Gabe stops in the entryway like he’s hit an invisible wall. I watch his eyes track over familiar objects that have become artifacts of a life that no longer exists. The house feels like a museum exhibit. Everything exactly as he left it, frozen in time while the world exploded around us.

“I’ll make coffee,” I say, because silence feels dangerous right now.