Today felt like summer camp.

Okay, not summer camp, but close enough — the kind of chaotic get-together that only Kavanagh House could hold without collapsing under the weight of too many oversized lads, too much noise, and too much emotion.

The sun was out, the back garden was full, and the whole place hummed with the kind of safety I thought I’d forgotten how to feel.

Everyone was home.

Baby AJ was home. Tiny, sleepy, perfect AJ with Aoife hovering like a military-grade mother hen while Joey followed behind her in full helicopter-da mode. Rehab had steadied him, softened him, sharpened him—he’d walked into the house and immediately took over bottle duty like he’d been training for it his whole life.

Watching them—watching the lads, watching the girls— God, it warmed something deep in my chest.

This is what I’d been missing. The laughter. The messing. The stupid arguments. The feeling that the world wasn’t ending.

I sat on the grass, knees tucked to my chest, heart ridiculously full.

Until Casey Lordan jabbed me in the ribs for the tenth time.

“Go on,” she whispered, eyes glittering. “He’s over there.”

I didn’t even have to look to know who she meant. {{user}}. My beautifully ridiculous, heartbreakingly gentle best friend.

The boy currently crouched in the sandpit Johnny had built for AJ, building the most impressive sand fort I’d ever seen.

Everyone knew he was crazy about me. And I knew I was crazy about him.

But we were both cowards in our own ways.

He’d said he didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I’d said I could live with that. It hurt, but whatever. Crushes pass.

Only— This was not a crush. And pretending it was one hurt worse than admitting the truth.

Hughie and Lizzie were here too, and their presence explained why Patrick and Katie weren’t. They’d been switching weekends since the explosion last Christmas, and today was Lizzie’s turn.

Lizzie hated {{user}}. Always had. Always blamed him for… everything. For mistakes he didn’t make. For Caiomhe’s death. For things nobody could have stopped.

And he just took it. Every glare. Every snide comment. Every cold shoulder.

He took it like he believed he deserved it.

I didn’t understand it— Not fully— Until the night everything changed.

The night he and I had slipped past the line we both swore we wouldn’t cross. The “not so friendly” night that ended with me waking up tangled in his sheets, his arms around me, the world suddenly too bright and too fragile.

He’d gone to take a shower. I’d gone looking for my hoodie. And that’s when I found it.

A letter. Old. Folded into soft, worn corners. His name written in handwriting that looked tired.

A few lines were enough to break me.

Everything he’d taken as a child. Everything he’d endured. Everything he still blamed himself for.

And suddenly, Lizzie’s wrath made a horrible kind of sense.

Not because he deserved it— but because he believed he did.

Now, sitting here at the Kavanaghs’, watching him finally relaxed for once— laughing with Hughie, not flinching, not shrinking— my heart cracked open in a way I couldn’t stop.

Later that night, after everyone had gone to bed, he fell asleep beside me on the couch. Warm. Soft breathing. Peaceful in a way he rarely ever was.

No nightmares. No tossing. Just him.

He looked so… unburdened.

And something inside me settled with a quiet, absolute certainty.

“I’ll stay,” I whispered without meaning to. “Always. However you’ll have me.”

I didn’t even realise the words had escaped until I felt him stir beside me.