Audrey’s laugh was like wind chimes, unexpected and musical. “Oh, honey. I didn’t give up anything to be with your father. In fact, he was the only person in my life who didn’t demand I change. I lost my parents young, and my brother never understood me.”
That was true enough. To this day, Uncle Bryson still looked at his baby sister with a mix of awe and trepidation.
“People call you adventurous, but people called me flighty. Unfocused. Reckless. Gabe saw me in all my chaos and loved me anyway. He gave me focus.”
“And she brought some much needed color into my life.” He smiled and held out a hand to his wife. Audrey went into his arms easily, looping her arms around his neck and grinning at him.
“Not enough color, unfortunately.” She poked at his shirt. “You still own entirely too much camo green, Sailor.”
Rue stared at her parents. All these years, she’d believed love required sacrifice—that choosing someone meant choosing less of yourself. But watching her parents now, seeing the way they looked at each other with such obvious affection after decades together, she realized she’d gotten it completely wrong.
“You both became more yourselves,” she said slowly. “Not less.”
“Exactly.” Her mother leaned over to squeeze her hand. “Love doesn’t diminish you, sweetheart. It amplifies you. The right person doesn’t ask you to be smaller—they help you become bigger.”
Her father’s weathered hand covered both of theirs. “Elliot’s not trying to cage you, kiddo. He’s trying to figure out how to keep up, and any guy willing to do that for you is one worth keeping around. So… maybe throw him a rope, Baby Girl.”
She tried for a smile that felt wobbly on her lips. “Even though he’s a Wilde?”
Gabe scowled and ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Jesus. The universe has a sick sense of humor.”
“Gabriel,” Audrey chided, but her eyes sparkled with amusement.
“What? I’m allowed to grumble.” He shifted in his seat, the plastic faux leather of the hospital chair creaking under his weight. “Jude Wilde drives me crazy, and now two of his sons are with my daughters.”
“He’ll be family when Davey and Rowan marry next year.”
“Don’t remind me.” He sighed. “I guess it could be worse. Rue could’ve fallen for a Cavalier.”
Rue huffed a laugh. “That was never a concern, Dad. Sabin is not my type.” No, her type was protective, organized, and slightly obsessive.
Her type was Elliot.
She thought back to his confession at Takahe Station—how he’d given up his dream of being a doctor to serve his family’s needs. He understood sacrifice better than anyone, which meant when he said he wanted to follow her wherever she went, he meant it literally.
Leaning back against her pillows, she groaned. “I’ve been such an idiot.”
“No, you’ve just been scared.” Audrey studied her face for several long seconds, then smiled. “But you’re not now, are you?”
thirty-six
The thingno one tells you about surviving the end of the world, at least on a personal scale, is that life on the other side is aggressively normal. The first week back in Manhattan, Elliot felt like he was sleepwalking through a simulation. The lights were too bright, the sidewalks too loud, every interaction tinged with the unreality of having watched friends and colleagues die for someone else’s secret. Each time he scanned his building’s lobby for Praetorian assassins or black-veined corpses, he felt slightly more like a lunatic and slightly less like a man in control.
And it felt like he was the only one struggling.
Koos had stayed on the ice, managing to snag an over-winter mechanic’s job at McMurdo.
Camille and Noah had vanished as soon as they reached civilization, probably fearing legal repercussions.
Tyler, despite the hospital team’s best efforts in New Zealand, had succumbed to what they now knew was an aggressive, parasitic algae. Mia and Irina were writing a research paper on it together and planned to name the algae after him, which seemed morbid to Elliot.
Since arriving home, Dom and Sabin had posted seventy-three memes on their group chat, using dark humor to process the hell they’d all been through. Elliot had responded to exactly none of them, which only made them send more.
Yesterday’s offering from Dom had been a picture of a penguin floating on an iceburg with the caption “When you survive Antarctica but your brother won’t answer your texts,” followed by seventeen crying-laughing emojis.
Even Griff, who had once called empathy a “biological inefficiency,” managed to check in every other day.
And Rue seemed to be bouncing back faster than any of them. She’d started physical therapy within days of being released from the hospital and was already talking about her next expedition.
