Page 48 of The Fall

Hayes ruffles her hair and kisses the top of her head. “Yeah, tiger, you do.”

The nurse clears her throat. “I can put it on for you now, hmm?”

Lily thrusts out her injured arm, and her eyes never leave the Nerf gun in my awkward, cast-encased grip.

Hayes catches my eye over his daughter’s head.

I think he might cry. He mouths a silent “thank you” as Erin sinks into a chair beside the bed, shoulders dropping as the tension bleeds out of the room.

“Getting the cast is like leveling up,” I tell her. “You will be a Nerf master after your training.”

“Will it hurt?” Lily asks, her wary eyes on the nurse.

“Nah,” I say. “It’s cool, like you’re growing a super-armor shell.”

She turns to me with stars in her eyes. “Like a dinosaur?”

“ Exactly like a dinosaur.”

“You’re going down!” Lily’s shout means serious business.

I’m crouched behind the kitchen island, my casted arm propped against the open cupboard door. My free hand fumbles for the next Nerf dart. She’s three feet tall and fast, and this is life or death for me. A foam dart whips past my shoulder and bounces off the fridge.

Hayes doesn’t even glance up from the pan he’s stirring at the stove. “She won’t hesitate to finish the job.”

“I think she’s serious this time.” Lily’s reloading, her head barely clearing the back of the couch. She’s a four-year-old sniper dead-eyed with glee.

“Yup.” He shakes his head, but he’s smiling. He hasn’t stopped smiling since we left the hospital.

I’m toast.

Lily—loaded for bear and giggling—patters around the island and fires a blast of Nerf darts into me.

I clutch my chest, stagger backward, and put way too much drama into my fall.

“She got me!” I cry. I wave my pink-casted arm and collapse on the kitchen tile with a groan.

“I’m defeated.” I crack open one eye. “But… what if I had backup?”

Her eyes widen. “No.”

I lift my head. “Maybe…”

Hayes picks up what I’ve thrown down. He spins from the stove and grabs Lily around the waist, heaving her upside down and pretending to take huge bites out of her belly. “It’s T-rex Daddy!”

“ Daddy !”

I take the opportunity to crawl away, escaping across the kitchen to where Erin is sitting at the table. I collapse on the floor beside her, back to the wall, while Hayes pretends to devour his daughter belly-button first.

When we got back to their house from the ER, Hayes had parked Erin in a chair and taken over everything.

He got Lily settled, sorted out her baby painkillers, switched out a load of laundry, and started dinner.

He also dug out a couple of Nerf guns from the garage, clearly his own. I took his and gave Lily the new one.

“She’s something else.” I’m only partially pretending to catch my breath.

Erin laughs. “She is a mini-me of Hayes. His mom thinks she is the most hilarious thing that’s ever happened to him.”

“I’m sure he’s getting exactly what he gave.”

She props her chin in her hand. “He talks a lot about you, you know.”

My expression freezes. “Don’t believe any of it.”

“I believe all of it because it’s all great.”

I flush. It definitely can’t all be great, but I don’t know what to say.

“You’re a Godsend, Torey.”

I’m exhausted is what I am. My head falls back against the wall and I smile up at her. “It’s the least I could do.”

I’m comfortable here, and part of me says this is how it’s supposed to be: Hayes in the kitchen, Erin resting contentedly, and Lily treating me like her personal jungle gym and Nerf target. The kitchen smells like garlic and butter and home. But why?

From the kitchen, Hayes sounds the warning: “Incoming!”

Lily dashes around the counter, reloaded and ready to finish the job. I hold up both hands. “I fully surrender.”

She skitters to a stop and studies me, then pumps her arm in a victory punch, the same arm that’s wrapped up in a cast. It’s not slowing her down even one little bit.

“Five minutes till dinner,” Hayes calls.

Lily flops down beside me and leans against my side, still clutching her Nerf gun. I hold out my cast and we bump forearms. It’s our new handshake. “We match,” she whispers, like it’s our secret.

“We sure do, kiddo.”

Between the hospital and being Lily’s moving target, the day has taken its toll, and my muscles protest as I rise from the floor.

“I’ll help set the table.” The kitchen is familiar, even though it shouldn’t be.

Drawer pulls slide out like I’ve known the place for years.

“Plates?” I ask, already knowing where they are. Bottom cabinet, left side.

“Yep,” Hayes says over his shoulder, focusing on the pasta.

“Glasses?” I reach for the top shelf.

“Right on.” He doesn’t even turn around, but there’s a smirk in his voice. “You’ve got it handled.”

It feels like we’ve done this dance a hundred times before.

My stomach growls embarrassingly loud, and Hayes laughs. “Sounds like someone’s ready to eat.”

Dinner is exactly what I imagined between Hayes and Lily.

Neither of them have a slow mode. Lily refuses to leave my side, keeping her plate close to mine.

We eat, and laugh, and milk nearly comes shooting out of Lily’s nose.

It’s apparently one of her chief goals in life, and Hayes is helping her practice.

Erin gives me a long-suffering sigh and smiles at her family.

When the table’s finally a mess of empty plates and dirty napkins, I stand, stack the dishes in my arms, and head for the sink before anyone can stop me. Hayes catches up and dumps the last of the silverware into the basin. “You don’t have to.”

“I gotta show off how this cast doesn’t slow me down. You’ll thank me in a few days.”

“The pink was an excellent choice,” he says. “Really shows off the fortitude and grit.”

I laugh. It’s so easy to be here. Behind me, Lily is busy at the kitchen table, hunched over a drawing and adding stickers with her mom. Erin runs her hand down Lily’s hair, watching over her.

When I finish with the dishes, I drop back into the chair beside Lily. She holds out a pink dinosaur sticker and smooths it onto my cast. “Now you look cool.”

I nod. “This cast is going to rock with my jersey.” I hand her a sticker of a smiling stegosaurus. “Think they like the taste of sunflowers?”

“Definitely.” The stegosaur goes next to a line of sunflowers circling her wrist. She passes me a one-eyed monkey sticker. “You need more monkeys.”

I take the sticker, the glossy surface catching the kitchen light. The monkey grins up at me with its single eye. Lily’s eyes follow my hand as I place it carefully on my cast, right below the pink dinosaur.

“And this one goes here.” She slaps a purple octopus onto my cast on the palm.

“What are you drawing now?” I lean closer to see her paper better.

“That’s you.” She points to a stick figure with what appears to be a pink club for an arm.

“And that’s me.” Another stick figure, also with a pink club-arm.

We’re holding hands in the drawing, or at least our good hands are connected by a wobbly line.

Above us, she’s drawn what might be rain or might be confetti.

Hayes moves behind us, setting down two cups of coffee on the table. One slides in front of Erin, the other near my elbow.

“She’s drawing superheroes,” I tell him.

“Obviously.” He peers over Lily’s shoulder. “Are those our capes or are we on fire?”

“Capes, Daddy!” Lily doesn’t look up from her coloring. “Fire would be red and orange.”

“My mistake.” He drops a kiss on top of her head before moving back to clean the last of the dinner mess.

Lily adds a sun in the corner, then dinosaurs in the sky. Her tongue pokes out the corner of her mouth as she concentrates. She’s not big on detail, but the heart is all there. Tornado swirls erupt from Nerf guns and stick figures grin.

“It’s us,” she says, pointing to her masterpiece. She’s drawn a big flower on top of my head.

A knot forms in my chest; it’s hard to speak. “I love it. I’m going to put it up in my locker.”

She beams.

At bedtime, Lily drags me to her bedroom. She insists she has to show me something important.

Her bedroom is a museum of her little life.

It’s soft and lit with twinkling strands of lights, awash in princess aesthetic meets dinosaur wonderland.

Stuffed animals line the bed like a sentry of plush.

Sports trophies are everywhere. The pink teddy bear I gave her after she got her cast sits front and center.

She’s proud of it all. She walks me around her bedroom, pointing out her triumphs: soccer goals, swimming ribbons, a basketball trophy. A tiny gymnastics figurine with its arms raised mid-cartwheel.

“Wanna see my stuffed animals?” she asks, tugging me toward her bed.

After I’ve been introduced to an army of plush—bears, giraffes, unicorns, monkeys—the animals go, one by one, into the closet. All but the pink bear stays, and she tucks that one under her arm as she climbs into bed. I step back, giving space for Erin to tuck her in.

Lily’s eyes track me as I move toward the door, her small hand clutching the pink bear tighter. The fairy lights cast soft shadows across her face, making her look even smaller in the big bed.

“Wait,” she says, and I stop. Her voice is quiet, sleepy already. “You didn’t see my best trophy.”

Erin smooths the blanket over Lily’s legs. “Sweetheart, Torey needs to?—”

“It’s okay,” I say, coming back to the bedside. “Where is it?”

Lily points to her nightstand, where a paper plate is pinned to the wall above a nightlight shaped like a T-rex. The handwriting on it reads “Best Helper” in Hayes’s lettering.

“Daddy gave it to me,” she whispers.

My chest goes tight. This kid. This whole family.

“Torey?” Her small fingertip traces the one-eyed monkey sticker on my cast. “Will you come back and play with me?”

I wish, God, I wish I could bottle this moment and live within it. “Of course I will.”

“It’s time for you to sleep, Lily-bean,” Erin says. Hayes is at the doorway, arms crossed and leaning against the frame.

I ruffle Lily’s hair, then the top of the pink bear’s head, too. “Night, warrior.”

A smile spreads across her face. “I told you I could beat you.”

“You did.” We bump casts one more time.

Her eyes are already drooping, lids fluttering as she fights to keep them open. The pink bear shifts under her arm, and she burrows deeper into her pillow. I tuck her blanket higher. She’s already drifting, her breathing evening out, that little-kid surrender to sleep taking over.

Erin’s hand rests on Lily’s forehead, brushing back wisps of hair that have escaped her ponytail.

I back away slow, careful not to disturb the spell. Erin closes the door behind us with the faintest click, and that’s the night. The three of us stand in the hallway, suspended in the quiet that follows tucking a child into bed.

“She’ll be out like a light,” Hayes whispers, his voice barely disturbing the air between us. “Once she crashes, she’s down for the count.”

Erin nods. “Especially after today.” She glances at me. “You are so good with her, Torey.”

I lift a shoulder, suddenly self-conscious. “She’s a great kid.”

We drift toward the stairs, our footsteps hushed against the carpet. I trail behind them. Hayes’s hand settles on the small of Erin’s back, guiding her. He gives Erin a kiss at the bottom of the stairs and tells her to get some rest, and Erin heads to their bedroom.

Then, only the two of us are left, and he drags me into a back-breaking bear hug. “You are Lily’s new best friend, man.” He says it like a badge of honor. “And you’re stuck with us forever.”