"Later. Right now, I want to be happy to be home."
I let him hold me. Outside, Thunder Bay settled into its usual rhythms—car doors slamming, and the distant sound of a train horn.
We were home.
Everything else could wait.
I pulled back from the hug first.
"Something to drink?" I moved toward the refrigerator.
"Milk. Goes with the cookies."
Jake leaned against the counter and watched me pull down two glasses, fill them with milk, and arrange everything on a small tray like we were having a formal tea service instead of cookies and milk early in the afternoon on a weekday.
He followed me to the living room, where I set the tray on the coffee table. "You know, when Juno called and told me about the fight, my first thought wasn't concern for your safety or anger about you throwing away your opportunity."
Jake settled onto the couch beside me. "What was it?"
"Irritation that I had to hear it from someone else."
He winced. "Yeah. That's fair."
"I drove myself nuts wondering what the hell had happened, and what someone could have said that would make you lose your shit badly enough to get benched." I picked up a cookie, broke it in half, and ate one piece slowly. "Then, I realized I was more upset about being left out than I was about the actual fight."
"Evan—"
"I'm not finished. You're going to tell me everything. Every word said and every punch thrown. You're going to explain why you thought violence was the appropriate response to whatever happened in that locker room."
Jake nodded.
I exhaled. "Just not tonight."
"Not tonight," he agreed.
"Tonight you're going to eat my cookies and drink milk and tell me about the parts of Rockford that didn't involve bloodshed. And tomorrow, when you've slept in your own bed, and I'vehad time to process the fact that you're home, we will have the conversation that scares me right now."
Jake smiled the best he could around the injury. "That's very organized of you."
"I like having a plan."
"I know. It's one of my favorite things about you."
Jake finished his second cookie and leaned back against the couch cushions, some of the tension finally leaving his frame. The bruising made him appear fragile, but his presence was solid.
He spoke softly. "Thanks for not making me explain myself tonight. The cookies, too, and coming to get me at the airport. Mostly, for still being here when I got back."
I wanted to tell him that there was nowhere else I would have been, and he'd become essential to the rhythm of my life.
Instead, I reached for his hand—the uninjured one—and laced our fingers together.
"You're home."
"Yeah," he whispered, squeezing my hand. "I am."
Chapter twenty-one
Jake
