Page 145 of Beautiful When He Breaks

The evidence became bigger than me, the kind of thing that rewrites how a school sees its own pretty houses and party traditions when enough lawyers force them to stop looking away.

Celeste’s parents apologized after Mara arranged a carefully controlled conversation. Stiff and devastated people sat across from me and admitted they didn’t know how to be in Mila’s life without bringing Celeste’s shadow with them, so they chose not to pursue a relationship. They offered restitution—real restitution, not hush money. I accepted it for Mila’s future and nothing else.

I still don’t know how I feel about them.

Blakely’s name is another locked room. That wound belongs more to Julian than to me, but it lives in our house anyway. The investigation opened wider after one of his victims died by suicide, and there are days Julian gets quiet in a way I know better than to crowd too fast.

Prosecutors use words like pattern and coercion and abuse of authority. Reporters use worse ones. Blackthorne says things about institutional accountability in carefully drafted statements that make Killian smile like he’s mentally burning their PR team alive.

Blakely is gone from campus. Not gone enough from the people he hurt but gone from the places where he could keep hurting them.

Justice is slower than rage. Mara told me that once, and I hated it.

I still hate it, but I understand it better now. Rage wants everything destroyed immediately. Justice builds the thing that keeps the destruction from being dismissed as noise. I have learned to be patient in ways I never wanted to learn. I have also learned that patience and forgiveness have absolutely fucking nothing to do with each other.

Today, though, I’m trying not to think about courtrooms or missing women or prosecutions.

Today is for the pool, the heat, my daughter in her enormous playpen fortress, and Julian’s hand warm at my back while the family I chose argues about cooler access.

Mila moves faster every day.

That’s what I try to hold onto when the darker thoughts circle too close. She crawled before I was ready. She pulls herself up on furniture with the terrifying confidence of someone who has no concept of skull fragility.

She babbles at ducks, screams at socks, and laughs hardest when Killian pretends to be stern with her. She has more uncles than any baby should reasonably have, all of them insane.

When we made Killian Mila’s godfather, he left the house for three hours and came back with a contract for us to sign, legally promising he would always look after Mila.

He called it a contract, but it looked suspiciously like a will.

We’re all standing around shooting the shit when Ryan abruptly stops mid-sentence and squeals.

It is not a dignified sound. It is not even a sound I would expect from a human of his size. It’s high, shocked, and loud enough that everyone in the backyard jerks toward him.

“Holy fuck—wait—wait, wait, wait,” he yells, pointing to the playpen so aggressively his drink nearly spills. “Look! Look at her!”

I turn so fast my neck twinges.

Mila is standing.

For a second, my brain refuses to understand the picture. She is in the middle of the playpen area, one hand hovering in the air, the other not holding anything at all.

She’s standing on her own two ridiculous, chubby legs in her duck romper, bare feet planted on the soft mat, eyes wide with the startled wonder of someone who has accidentally become vertical and is considering whether to make it a lifestyle.

“She’s standing!” Ryan whispers loudly. “She’s standing, she’s standing, nobody breathe, holy shit, look at her!”

“Language, and don’t rush her,” Liam calls immediately, which is hilarious because he is already on his feet with Nate next to him.

“Everyone shut up,” Sage says, taking one step forward and then stopping himself as if he’s physically fighting the urge to assist.

Roman turns in the pool so fast that water sloshes over the ledge. Damon is already holding up his phone with a soft smile on his face.

“Do not scare her,” Adrian warns, somehow calm and intense at once.

Thorn lifts his arm from over his face, sees Mila upright, and sits up so fast his lounge chair almost tips. “Oh, fuck.”

Mila wobbles and every adult in the yard inhales at once.

Julian and I move at the same time. Not running, because that might scare her, and because Liam would probably tackle us into the grass. Julian reaches the gate half a second before me, unlatches it with hands that are not nearly as steady as he pretends, and we both crouch just inside, several feet away from her.