Chapter 113 — Soft Landings Hurt
Chapter 113 — Soft Landings Hurt
Phoebe
By the time the car rolls to a stop, my legs are pins and needles and my brain feels like it’s been shoved through a blender.
Liam’s house rises out of the night like something from a magazine—stone, tall windows, warm light instead of cold steel. A place meant for living, not surviving. It feels wrong to walk toward something beautiful when my insides are still stuck back in the smoke.
I should feel safe.
I don’t.
Lee’s hand hovers near my knee, careful. “Hey. You with me?”
“Unfortunately,” I mutter, gripping the seatbelt. “Would rather be unconscious.”
He huffs a tired laugh. Dried blood streaks his jaw, a bruise climbing his neck. He looks wrecked and still somehow stable enough to hold up a collapsing building. That’s the problem with him—he’s steady in a way my shaking body wants to lean into.
He reaches for the door, pauses. “Are you—"
“If you ask if I’m okay again, I will bite you,” I warn. “And not in the way you keep hoping for.”
His ears flush pink. Good. Still got it.
He gets out. “Come on, trouble. They’re waiting.”
Cold air hits me when I step out. The front door opens before Lee can knock.
Thomas fills the doorway. Bigger than the frame. Shirt torn. Knuckles split. He looks like he fought his way through hell—but his eyes soften when they land on me.
“About time,” he grumbles. “You hurt?”
“No.” My voice cracks. “Just… used.”
He nods like that’s an answer he understands too well. “Clinic’s downstairs. Liam’s stable. Amara hasn’t left him.”
Stable.
The word punches a hole straight through my chest.
Inside, the mansion doesn’t feel like Killian’s. No steel. No echoes. No cold. Just warm lights, coffee, family photos lining the walls—Liam with his brothers, younger and smiling like they’d never held a gun.
The sound of a closing door makes me flinch.
Lee notices. His hand brushes my back, barely there. I don’t pull away. I just pretend I didn’t feel it.
We head downstairs.
The basement is a clinic—white walls, machines humming, clean and controlled and terrifying in its own way.
Three men look up as we enter.
Ricky stands first, shoulders squared, eyes assessing but not unkind.
“You’re Phoebe, right?” he says.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “And you’re… Ricky.”
He nods, surprised I know his name. “Thomas said you’d make it.”
Clause sits beside him—calm, unreadable, heavy presence without saying a word.
“You made it out,” he says simply. Not warm, not cold. Just truth.
“I did,” I answer softly. “Thanks to them.” I nod toward Thomas and Lee.
Clause acknowledges with a small nod. “Amara’s inside. Go.”
Then I see her.
Amara sits beside the medical bed, shoulders folded inward. Her dress is stiff with dried blood. Her hands are stained. She grips Liam’s hand like she’s holding him here by force of will alone.
He’s pale. Still. Wrong.
“Pheebs?” she whispers.
My body moves before my brain does. I drop beside her and she folds into me, shaking. I cling back harder.
“You’re okay,” I breathe. “You’re actually okay.”
“I’m okay,” she replies, but her voice is splintered. “You got out.”
She pulls back enough to look me over, eyes sharp despite their redness. “Lee didn’t get you shot, right?”
“Only emotionally,” I mutter. “He drives like a psychopath.”
Lee makes an offended huff. Thomas mutters, “Told you.”
A ripple of laughter, thin but real, moves through the room.
Then silence.
Liam’s chest rises and falls in shallow breaths. The machines beep in steady betrayal of how fragile he looks.
“What did they say?” I ask.
“The doc put him in a coma,” Amara says. “His body needs time to catch up. Next forty-eight hours decide everything.”
She brushes his knuckles. Blood is dried in the lines of her skin.
My throat burns. “If he dies, I’ll kill him.”
Amara chokes out a laugh—half sob, half relief.
“Deal,” she whispers.
We sit like that for a long moment, all of us inhaling and exhaling the same brittle hope.
Then Thomas says quietly, “We need to start discussing next moves.”
“Next moves?” I echo.
Ricky meets my eyes head-on. “Killian isn’t dead.”
I look at Amara. Her jaw locks. “I chained him.”
Of course she did.
“He won’t stop,” I whisper.
“No,” Thomas agrees. “But neither will we.”
Lee steps closer, shoulder brushing mine again.
“You don’t have to stay in this,” he murmurs. “We can get you out. New name. New life. No shadows.”
The escape hatch.
It looms open—quiet, tempting, free.
I look at Amara.
At Liam.
At the brothers.
At Lee.
Then I exhale.
“I’m tired of running,” I say. “I’m staying. I want a say in how this ends.”
Silence.
Then Thomas nods. “Then you have one.”
Ricky: “Welcome to the family.”
Clause: “Could do worse.”
Warmth blooms low in my chest.
Lee releases a breath like he’s been holding it since the car.
“Told you you were trouble,” he murmurs.
“And yet,” I counter, “you keep standing close.”
He leans in the tiniest bit. “Think I’m done pretending I don’t like the burn.”
My cheeks heat. I hate that he can do that to me.
His fingers brush mine on the railing.
I should pull away.
I don’t.
I hook my pinky with his instead. A stupid, tiny, dangerous anchor.
Killian is out there.
War is waiting.
Nothing is certain.
But for once, the future doesn’t look like a void.
It looks like fire.
Like rebuilding.
Like choices—my choices.
Lee’s pinky tightens around mine—
A spark. A shift.
A beginning neither of us is brave enough to name yet.
But it’s there.
Burning quietly between our hands.