Page 86 of Burned in Stone
The house is perfect—small but not too small, about ten minutes from the clubhouse. Close enough when needed, far enough for our own space.
Our own space. Still getting used to that idea.
“You really want to do this?” I ask. “Buy a house? Put down roots?”
“With you?” She closes the laptop, turns to face me. “Yeah. I really want to.”
I kiss her because I can. Because she’s mine and I’m hers and Gabriel’s rotting in a cell waiting for his trial. Because for the first time in my life, the future looks like something I want instead of something to survive.
Before I met Mercy, I could barely think past the next day. The future was this shapeless threat—something that would swallow me whole, leave me alone and used up like always.
Now I’m looking at mortgage rates and wondering if we should get a dog.
The shift’s almost frightening. Not violence frightening, but solid-ground frightening when you’ve spent your whole life waiting for it to crack. Mercy’s talking about paint colors, and I’m realizing this is real. Not a fantasy I’ll wake up from. Not something that’ll be ripped away the moment I believe in it. That street kid nobody wanted finally has a future.
Poppy appears from the kitchen, baby Rose strapped to her chest. She looks tired but happy, hair in a messy bun, wearing sweatpants and one of Axel’s shirts.
“I can’t believe I missed out,” she says, dropping onto the couch beside us. “The big showdown. Gabriel getting arrested. The whole thing.”
“You have a baby,” Mercy reminds her. “You get a pass.”
“Still. I wanted to see his face when Morrison cuffed him.” Poppy adjusts Rose. “But I’m not missing Christmas. Or New Year’s. Axel promised—we’re doing every party, every gathering. I’ve been stuck at home for weeks. I need adult interaction that isn’t about feeding schedules.”
“Rose is like three months old,” I point out.
“Three months and two weeks. Not that I’m counting.” She grins. “But seriously, I’m coming to everything. Cookie decorating, caroling?—”
“We’re caroling?” I look at Mercy, horrified.
“Oh yeah.” She’s trying not to laugh. “It’s a new club tradition. We’re going around the neighborhood spreading Christmas cheer.”
“I don’t do Christmas cheer.”
“You do now. You’re wearing an ugly sweater and everything.”
“The fuck I am.”
“Language,” Andi calls out, though her kids are too busy burying Steel—or as they call him, Fairy Floss—in last year’s wrapping paper to hear me.
Steel emerges from the paper avalanche, looking resigned. “Little help?”
“Nope,” Bones says from his spot by the window. He’s been on his phone for the last hour, checking it every few minutes. “You got yourself into that mess.”
“They’re two and a half. They ambushed me.”
“Should’ve been faster.”
Abby appears at Steel’s side, holding tinsel. “Again?”
“No. No tinsel. I look like a?—”
She dumps it on his head, anyway. Adam toddles over to help, giggling. “Fairy Floss, pretty!”
“I give up.” Steel sits down, resigned to his fate as a human Christmas tree. “This is my life now.”
Mercy’s laughing so hard she’s crying. “Take a picture. This is perfect.”
I do because she’s right. Steel covered in tinsel, looking martyred while the kids celebrate their victory, is exactly the kind of shit we need documented.
