The California sun felt different than Jamie remembered. In Chicago, light came in flat and gray, like the sky was holding its breath year-round. Here it was golden and heavy and almost violent in how alive it made everything look—the hedges too green, the pavement too white, the moving truck in the driveway catching glare off its side panels like a signal flare.

Jamie stood on the sidewalk with a duffel bag cutting into his shoulder. The reverse beeper had finally stopped, and the silence was worse. He’d been bracing for this since his dad had said we’re going back three weeks ago, but bracing didn’t help. Not really. Not when the house looked exactly the same. Not when the hedge was still too tall. Not when the shared gate still sagged on its latch like it remembered his hand. Four years since he’d last stood on this sidewalk. Four years since Lena’s face had gone from confused to hurt, and he’d let it happen—no. He’d made it happen. Chose silence like it was kindness and held it until it calcified.

Across the lawn, the adults did their careful choreography: his parents talking to Aunt Penny and Uncle Alex with smiles that didn’t reach their eyes. Everyone acting normal while the air stayed thick with everything nobody had ever properly fixed.

Jamie kept his shoulders tight. Kept his face blank. Kept his eyes off the house next door, because looking directly at it felt like putting his finger in an old wound and pretending it wasn’t going to hurt.

Then the screen door slammed open.

“JAMIE!”

Lena launched off the porch like gravity had personally insulted her. She cleared the little wooden gate between their yards in one fluid vault—didn’t even break stride—barefoot, hair in a messy ponytail, wearing a green-and-white school tee that hung loose on her frame.

She’d changed.

Not just older—she carried herself like she belonged in her own skin. Fourteen-year-old Jamie had hated that so much it made him sick. Now it just made his chest ache.

He barely had time to breathe before she hit him.

It wasn’t a hug. It was a tackle, full-body, knocking the air out of him and making his duffel bag swing wide like a weapon. Lena’s arms locked around his waist; she slammed into him chest-to-chest, forehead knocking lightly against his collarbone for half a second before she tucked her face into the crook of his neck like she was trying to hide there. Jamie froze, stunned by the smell of her—vanilla and laundry detergent and something faintly floral—and by the way his body remembered her as safety before his brain could argue.

Lena pulled back just enough to look at him. Her eyes were huge, bright, furious and wrecked all at once, like she’d been starving and didn’t know whether to bite or cry.

“Hi,” she said, too quiet.

Jamie’s throat tightened.

“Hi.”

Behind them, Uncle Alex cleared his throat in a way that tried very hard to be casual.

“So. Nobody’s concussed yet. Promising start.”

Auntie Penny made a sound that might’ve been a laugh and might’ve been a sob.

Jamie’s parents didn’t say anything.

His mom had her hand over her mouth. His dad stared at the lawn like it was giving him instructions on how not to fall apart.

Lena didn’t let go. She turned, still holding Jamie, and started hauling him across the grass like he weighed nothing.

“Lena, I—”

“Nope.”

Her tone was cheer-captain decisive.

“You’re not getting unpacked. You’re not getting stolen by adults. You’re coming with me.”

Jamie stumbled.

“Lena.”

“Jamie.”

It wasn’t a warning.

It was a decision. The shared gate creaked as she kicked it open, and for one weird second Jamie was eight again, barreling through with scraped knees and a Sailor Moon backpack, Lena in front of him like a banner.

His chest tightened. Lena dragged him up the steps, shoved the screen door open with her hip, and called over her shoulder, “Mom! Dad! He’s mine for a bit! Non-negotiable!”

Uncle Alex didn’t miss a beat.

“We can draft a custody agreement.”

“You can draft these nuts!”

Lena yelled back, then added, because she was Lena, “Respectfully!”

Auntie Penny’s laugh finally broke free.

“Lena Vance!”

Inside, Lena didn’t take him to the living room.

She didn’t do polite. She led him straight to the stairs and dragged him up without slowing, like if she stopped moving she might break.

Her bedroom door shut behind them with a click.

Her room smelled like clean laundry and vanilla. The walls were familiar in the way a place can be familiar even after years: cheer photos, trophies, a couple posters, and—only in his peripheral vision, because Lena was right there and he couldn’t look too closely yet—a tall shelf of manga, and a scatter of figurines on a bookcase that he didn’t have the nerve to really take in. On her desk sat a nice laptop, plugged into a dock, two monitors angled like a little command center.

Lena turned to face him.

The silence was louder than the moving truck. Jamie stared at the carpet and kept his hands on the duffel strap like it could keep him anchored to the present and not let him slide back into the worst day of being fourteen.

“Okay,”

Lena said, voice tight.

“Tell me what I did.”

Jamie looked up.

Lena’s arms folded hard across her chest.

Her eyes flashed.

“No. Seriously. Tell me. Because I have replayed it for four years, and I still don’t understand. One day we were… us. And the next day you looked at me like you hated me. Like I’d—”

She swallowed.

“Like I’d done something to you.”

Jamie’s mouth went dry.

He knew what was wrong with him. He had known, in the same quiet, miserable way you know a tooth is infected: the pain is obvious, the cause is obvious, and you still keep your mouth shut because you’re too scared to admit you need help.

Lena took a step closer.

“Jamie.”

He forced his voice to work.

It came out lower than he wanted, rougher.

He hated it immediately.

“I didn’t hate you,” he said.

Lena’s laugh was sharp, disbelieving.

“That is not an answer.”

Jamie’s fingers tightened on the strap.

His nails pressed into his palm.

“It is.”

“No.”

Lena’s voice shook.

She looked angry, but it wasn’t clean anger.

It was grief with teeth.

“Because you didn’t just get quiet. You didn’t just pull away. You went out of your way to make me feel… disgusting. Like I was doing something wrong by being alive.”

Jamie’s stomach dropped. A memory hit him, sharp as glass: fourteen, on Lena’s porch steps, his voice cracking mid-sentence, the humiliation like bile in his throat. Lena laughing, bright and effortless, not even at him, just at the world, and he’d snapped like a dog in pain.

Must be nice, he’d spit, voice half-broken and full of venom. And when her smile faltered, when her eyes went wide like she’d been slapped, he’d doubled down because backing off would’ve meant admitting it hurt: You don’t even have to try. You just get everything. You’re like… He’d searched for a word that would make the jealousy sound like a moral failing in her.

You’re like a show-off. He could still see the exact moment her face changed.

Not anger.

Not defensiveness. Just hurt settling in, heavy and quiet, like something inside her had just… broken, quietly.

Lena’s eyes glistened now, like she was right back there too.

“I thought you were disgusted by me. I thought you hated me.”

Jamie’s throat closed.

He tried to speak and got nothing.

Because the distance between your life and mine was widening every day, and I didn’t know how to say please without choking on it. Because I knew what I wanted and I was too dumb and too cowardly to admit it to anyone, including myself out loud. Because you were turning into a woman, and I— Lena moved before he could lose his nerve. Two steps, and she was right in front of him, grabbing the front of his hoodie like she was anchoring him.

Jamie tensed instinctively.

Then Lena yanked him into her.

Jamie made a sound he couldn’t control. Something between a gasp and a broken sob. She held him like she’d been waiting four years to do it properly, arms locked around him, chin tucked over his shoulder.

“I missed you,” she said into his hair, voice shaking.

“I missed you so much it made me physically sick.”

Jamie’s hands hovered like he didn’t deserve to touch her, then settled on her back, gripping tight.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know,”

Lena whispered.

“I forgive you.”

Jamie’s chest hurt.

But it wasn’t the sharp, lonely kind anymore. Lena pulled back just enough to look at him, still holding his hoodie like she didn’t trust reality not to steal him again.

Her eyes were red-rimmed. Stubborn. Then her expression snapped into brisk, determined action, like she couldn’t stand being tender without doing something with it.

“Okay,” she said.

“Cuddle uniform. Now.”

Jamie blinked.

“Lena—”

“No arguing.”

She spun to her dresser, rummaged fast like she’d rehearsed this moment, and tossed him a soft, worn tee.

“Put that on.”

Jamie caught it on reflex. It was Sailor Moon—Usagi with Luna perched smugly on her head, the print a little cracked from age.

Jamie’s throat tightened.

“You still have—”

“Obviously.”

Lena’s voice wobbled, and she made it sound like she was mad at him for noticing.

“Shut up and change.”

She flung a pair of yellow Soffe shorts at him, then immediately added a second option like a negotiator: pink joggers, soft and cozy.

Jamie caught those too, cheeks burning.

The choice felt stupidly huge.

He picked the pink joggers because they felt safer. Less skin. Less… everything.

But also because the color made his chest do something traitorous and hopeful.

Lena nodded once, satisfied, and turned her back with exaggerated dignity.

“I am giving you privacy. Do not make it weird.”

Jamie’s laugh escaped, small and surprised.

“You’re the one making it weird.”

“I am making it correct,”

Lena said, and then, softer, almost to herself: “I missed you.”

Jamie changed with shaking hands.

The Sailor Moon tee was old and soft from a thousand washes.

It fit him like it always had, and he hated how right it felt. Hated how easy it would be to admit why his heart was doing backflips over a stupid shirt.

He knew what was wrong with him.

He just didn’t have the spine to say it. Lena changed fast too; when she turned back around, she was in an old Sailor Jupiter tee and shorts, hair still a mess, face blotchy around the eyes. She looked at him—really looked—and something in her expression shifted, like seeing him like this hit a place words couldn’t reach.

Her eyes filled again.

Jamie panicked.

He still didn’t know what to do with Lena crying. Fourteen-year-old him had handled it by turning mean. Older him had no better plan.

Lena solved it for him. She crossed the room, put both hands on his shoulders, and shoved him gently but decisively backward onto the bed.

“Hey—”

Jamie started, breath hitching.

“Shh.”

Lena climbed in after him like it was automatic, like it was muscle memory.

She didn’t ask.

She didn’t negotiate. She just swung a leg over, positioned herself behind him, and pulled him back against her chest. Cuddle lock. Immediate.

Her arms wrapped around his waist.

Her chin settled near his shoulder. Her whole body fit against his like the last four years had been a mistake someone could correct by force.

Jamie’s body unclenched on impact, like it had been waiting for permission. In the hallway downstairs, he could hear adults talking in low voices, the careful sound of people trying not to cry too loudly.

Lena kissed his temple, quick and soft, like it was normal. Like it was theirs.

“We’re okay,” she murmured.

Jamie closed his eyes.

He didn’t know if that was true yet. But Lena was warm behind him, solid and real, and her arms didn’t loosen even when he trembled. And after a long minute—after his heartbeat stopped trying to claw its way out of his ribs—Jamie let the nickname rise up from somewhere old and safe.

Not because he was ready. Because he needed a railing in the dark.

“Lele,” he whispered.

Lena made a broken sound against his shoulder.

Her arms tightened until it almost hurt.

“Yeah,” she whispered, voice shaking.

“Yeah, Princess. I’ve got you.”