Epilogue Blake

June

I only stayed in Atlanta for one day longer than the team, but it's funny how twenty-four hours can feel like a lifetime. By the time the cab drops me in front of our condo in Boston on Monday evening, I'm practically sleepwalking. I take the elevator, watching the numbers tick up up up until I'm delivered to our penthouse, a condo with its own elevator entrance.

I wheel my suitcase into the living room. My head fills with all the things I should do: unpack, throw in a load of laundry, eat something. Off days always make me feel out of sorts and disconnected from my routine—I ran this morning, but somehow the streets around the house where I grew up felt like a foreign country. And what I really want to do is see Felix and Shira.

I call out that I'm here—no one answers. Shira must be out, but this time of night, there's only one place Felix could be.

So I drop my suitcase in the main bedroom and head up our dedicated flight of stairs leading to private roof access.

It's mid-evening, the sky lightened by the setting sun and the cityscape. Felix is here, stargazing notebook open on his lap as if he's anticipating the coming night. He says it's hard for him to sleep sometimes with all the light and noise, that the city never feels quite like home, except when he's looking up at the sky.

He smiles when he sees me, though his expression goes pinched. I must really look bad. My feet are heavy against the artificial wood of the roof deck floor. "Where's Shira?" I ask. Even my voice is thick.

"Downstairs in the pool." He taps something into his phone. "I let her know you're home."

Home . A strange word. Where I technically was in Georgia.

"How was your trip?" Felix asks.

"My family is…" Difficult. Complicated. Toxic. A bunch of other words I can't really think of, just a low pitted feeling in my gut like I swallowed a black hole.

But I don't have to finish that sentence. Not with Felix. So I shrug.

He comes over and wraps me in his arms, the breadth of his shoulders blocking the persistent high-rise wind. "C'mere." He tucks me even closer to him. He smells the way he always does—grass, summer. I breathe him in.

His hand curls around my wrist, and he pulls me toward one of the long, low couches upholstered with orange cushions. We lie like that together, with my face against Felix's neck, our bodies pressed together from shoulders to feet. His chest rises and falls. Soon, my breathing matches his as he runs his palms over my arms and my back, places I didn't know I wanted him to touch me until he did that first time and all the times since.

"Trip that bad, huh?" he asks, after a while.

Words come easier with his arms around me. "Brayden got married."

That's enough to make Felix sit up slightly. His chest and stomach shift—a hard layer of muscle, a coating over that. Thick, solid, reliable as a constellation. "I take it that's unexpected."

"That's an understatement." I didn't realize how much yelling there was over the past day until I'm met with quiet now—the wind and the faint whisper of Felix's lips at my forehead and on my cheek.

For the first time all weekend, I don't feel like I have a tight band wrapping around my ribs. I nod up toward the sky. "What have you seen recently?"

And I tuck myself against him as he rumbles through various stars and planes and satellites. I didn't realize how tense I was until my muscles start to loosen. Felix must feel it too because he kisses my forehead. "Better?"

"Yeah." My voice is hoarse. I should go downstairs, shower the plane smell off me, sort through all my issues like I might laundry. "I need to get up."

"Counteroffer: you don't leave." Felix kisses my neck. It's accompanied by a scratch of the stubble around his mouth. Even after all these months, something in me lights up, bright as neon. This is a man. You're being kissed by a man .

"I shouldn't just lie here." Not with the weekend replaying on a loop in my brain.

How could you do this? What will people think? Two questions my parents yelled over and over. How quick they were to let us know what embarrassments we were: Brayden got married on impulse. I ran off to Boston to live with that man and that woman . Because what mattered was how that made them look.

They screamed until I finally screamed back, You just don't like that I'm actually happy for once . How I feel right now: Like I'm one of Shira's plants we recovered after spring training—how their drooping leaves revived slowly, then all at once, reaching toward the light.

A few minutes later, there's the tap of footsteps on the stairs. Shira emerges with her hair in a damp tangle on her head, her face clear of makeup. She's wearing leggings that are sprouting holes along one seam and one of my old shirts that she trimmed into a crop top. Every time I'm away from her I think I'm somehow misremembering how beautiful she is. Every time I see her, I'm reminded that I'm not.

Especially when she breaks into a smile. "You're home!" And she doesn't make me get up, just comes over, situates herself on the couch, sitting by Felix's and my knees.

I want her closer—want both of them surrounding me in a way I can't quite articulate. "Hey, c'mere."

She does, sliding so she's half-lying on me with her hair tickling my nose. "Georgia was bad?" she asks.

"Georgia was bad," I confirm.

"Next time, we're coming with you."

"You gonna fight Brayden again?" I ask.

Shira snorts. "I'll fight the whole state."

My laugh releases the last scraps of tension from my spine. This is where I should be—here, with them, looking up at the impossibility of the universe. I point up to the one constellation I'm confident about recognizing, the three bright stars that make up the summer triangle. "When I was in Georgia, I had to get out of the house. So I took off—out to my old practice field. It was just dark enough to see the stars."

"Is Felix rubbing off on you?" Shira asks.

I laugh, then tighten my arms around her. "I spent a long time looking at those three stars. All I could think is that's who we are."

Shira looks at me in question, lips parted. I kiss her then Felix, then turn my attention back to the sky. "See." I point to each star in turn. "You're Lyra the harp. Felix is Aquila the eagle."

Felix chuckles. "Does that make you Cygnus the swan?"

It makes me the luckiest man in the world. "I just kept looking up that sky and thinking, that's us . When I needed someone, you were there for me. That no matter where I go, I can look up and find us."

Shira's hair brushes my cheek as she leans up to kiss me.

Underneath me, Felix makes a noise of contentment. "It's good you were only there for a day. Shira was about ready to send an extraction team to get you."

"What about you?" I laugh.

"I prefer the more old-fashioned approach." He cracks his knuckles meaningfully. "But you're home now, so we don't have to go to extremes."

Home . What I am, settled between them. Not a place—not this condo or even this city—but a certainty that no matter what, I'm carrying them with me. "Yes," I say, "I'm home."