After we complete the paperwork, a nurse brings us a wheelchair to get Declan out to my car. They offer to help me wheel him outside, but I don’t want him out of my sight and he seems anxious too, so I decide to do it myself. As we reach the exit, he reaches behind himself for my hand.

“What is it?”

“I don’t really want to be alone.”

“You won’t be,” I promise. “I was planning to stay with you anyway. I don’t think you should be alone either.”

His shoulders relax. “Can we go to your place instead? It feels more like home there with you and Ralph.”

His words wrap around my heart like a warm embrace. “Of course we can.”

He’s still a little woozy and unsteady on his feet, so getting him from the wheelchair into the passenger seat takes some maneuvering, but we manage. We drive with our fingers intertwined on the center console, neither of us wanting to break the comfortable silence with words. We’ve said what matters most—everything else can wait.

At home, I hear Ralph jumping down from the bed and dashing into the living room as soon as we walk inside. She starts meowing for food until she realizes Declan is with me and charges over to him to start rubbing her face all over his legs. Laughing, Declan bends over to pick her up, and I keep my hand on his back to steady him just in case the blood rushing to his head makes him unsteady. But he seems unfazed.

“There’s my little fashion girl,” he says cradling her against his chest. She starts purring like an engine almost right away, and he carries her back to the bedroom where he lies down with her right on top of his stomach.

I’m sure before the night is over, he’ll have her modeling all the new hats and sweaters he’s crocheted for her, but I’m not jealous. Not even a little bit. I love that Ralph seems to have gotten as close to Declan as I have, and that we already have this little family going.

I climb into bed with them and rest my head on his shoulder, closing my eyes to the soothing sound of Ralph’s purring. Declan tilts his head to rest on top of mine. “I’m right where I belong with both of my girls.”

Warmth blooms in my chest. But now that he’s safe and we’re lying here still, a sense of anxiety prickles in my stomach. Our relationship so far has existed in a bubble—a perfect, amazing bubble, but a bubble nonetheless. And what happened yesterday burst it, letting real life come rushing in.

And as much as I don’t want to think about it right now when everything feels so right, a thought sits in the pit of my stomach like a weight.