Page 125 of Beyond Oblivion

I crossed my arms, smirking. “Yeah, well, some of us weren’t dumb enough to fall off a cliff.”

“I heard you ugly cried,” he teased.

“Fuck you, asshat. I thought you’d died,” I said, putting my hand on his.

His grin widened. “Soft, Trent. You’re going soft.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t get fisted by a cactus when you landed.”

“Oh my God,” Liis said, covering her mouth, trying not to laugh.

“You good?” I asked her.

She nodded, crossing her arms over her middle. “He should be discharged in the morning. No internal bleeding, thank God. Just a few bumps and bruises. It’s a miracle he didn’t break any bones.”

“Adamantium?” I asked Thomas, hugging Camille to my side. “That’s Wolverine, I guess. He’s more X-Men than Avengers, huh?”

“My superpower is dumb luck,” Thomas muttered, slowly stretching away from whatever pain was bothering him. “Looks like you two aren’t going to need the full two weeks to get back to baseline.”

“Just two days and a near death experience,” I said, kissing her temple.

Thomas settled into his crunchy hospital bed, proud of himself for the part he played. “Good. That’s good.”

“I’m glad you’re going to be okay,” Camille added, then looked to Liis. “They checked the baby?”

Liis looked down, touching her middle. “Stella is perfect.”

“Stella,” Camille whispered, touching her fingers to her chest.

Thomas’s grin stretched across his face, smug and unshakable. “Perfect like her daddy.”

Liis smile faded. “I would’ve chosen Trent, too.”

Thomas feigned offense, and we all simultaneously winced from various points of pain that flared when we broke into laughter.

Camille was smiling like she meant it, something I didn’t think I’d see for a long time, if ever. I looked around at them—my wife, my brother, Liis—and it felt like I was breathing fresh air for the first time in months.

Through hell and back, through fear and doubt, we’d made it. Every step had been brutal, every choice impossible, but there we were, alive, together, and still standing—well, most of us. The bruises would fade, the cuts would heal, and the marks left behind would serve as permanent reminders of what we had survived, of the battles we’d chosen to fight and win. Every scar, every ache, every moment that nearly broke us was proof that we refused to quit—fought for each other, for the love that somehow endured even when everything else felt like it was crumbling around us.

No gorge could swallow us whole, no enemies could take us down for good, and no pain could erase what we had built together. Nothing could change the fact that we came out on the other side stronger than we started—all because we made the choice not to quit.

Not because we were perfect, but because we weren’t. The fractures in our family somehow fit together to make us whole. Bruised, battered, and with amends still to be made, it wasn’t the perfect ending—but that was because it wasn’t an ending at all.

Epilogue

Trenton

Some people wish for quiet. Some people find silence peaceful. Some people sit in their driveways just to have some time to themselves before they walk inside after a long day at work. Some people are fucking idiots.

The quiet was a black hole, sucking everything into its nothingness, and right then, Dad’s house felt like the graveyard I’d just left—still, heavy, and filled with the ghosts of everything that used to make it home.

I glanced at my watch. Around this time, Olive would have been bouncing in like a bottle rocket. Even though she was a teenager and too cool for just about everything, she always let her guard down at Papa Jim’s. Here, she could be her energetic, silly self, and we’d all adored her for it. She’d update us on dormitory gossip and what test she’d just aced. She’d play her terrible music from her laptop while finishing a paper, waiting for dinner or for Camille and me to take her to Chicken Joe’s.

Dad would’ve been in his recliner, carefully sipping hot coffee from his favorite mug. My eyes drifted to the seat cushion permanently shaped from years of him molding it to perfectly fit his old, crotchety ass, sharing his captivating stories or passing down invaluable wisdom. The floor used to creak under his shoes, and the faint smell of his aftershave would linger in the air.

Now, creaking floors were just creaking floors, and his aftershave had been tossed like the food, his deodorant, toothpaste, and everything else that would’ve been weird to keep, even though I wanted to.

I stared at the same brown calico carpet that I’d crawled on as a baby. Not because it was fascinating—it wasn’t—but because if I let myself feel anything, I’d feel everything. And I didn’t have the energy to open the floodgates for yet another emotional apocalypse. Camille sat on the sofa, a stack of papers in her hands.Thepapers. The ones that started withFinal Will and Testament of James Maddox, but might as well have said,Congratulations, you’re an orphan.

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