The sky was a slow, aching collapse of gold into bruised violet by the time they returned to Hope Haven. The last fingers of daylight clawed at the cracked rooftops, catching on the torn edges of clouds before slipping away entirely, leaving the world dim and shivering.
The kids raced ahead. Liam bounding up the broken stone steps two at a time, his shoelaces trailing like wild banners behind him. Mikey trailing after him, giggling breathlessly as he clutched a tattered library book to his chest like it was treasure. Sam shepherded them with weary patience, barking orders that no one listened to. Even Rosie broke into a quiet jog, her book hugged tight to her side. Their laughter split the thickening evening air, sharp and bright against the slow dark.
Elias and Mira lagged behind.
Neither in a rush. Neither speaking much.
Mira dragged her fingertips along the rough brick wall as they walked — not idly, but almost like she was trying to anchor herself to something real, something solid.
Her scarf trailed behind her, the ends snagging on chipped mortar. She looked smaller in the fading light. Softer around the edges. As if she was being slowly worn thin by things no one else could see.
Elias noticed.
Of course he did.
He noticed everything about her now, whether he wanted to or not.
The slight hitch in her breathing after too much laughter — the way her hand would hover for a second at her ribs before she forced it down, smiling like nothing was wrong. The faint tremble in her fingers when she thought no one was watching — quickly hidden, quickly denied. The way she gave away her laughter and light so generously, as if she wasn't slowly burning through what little she had left.
It gutted him in ways he didn't know how to name. And he hated it. Hated how powerless he felt. Hated that his entire life — the billions, the empires, the goddamn legacy — meant nothing here. Meant nothing to her.
Couldn't buy her more time. Couldn't fix the cracks already running too deep.
And yet, he still wanted her anyway. Still wanted this broken, beautiful, stubborn girl who smiled at the world like it couldn't kill her if she outran it fast enough. He wanted her in a way that scared him more than losing everything else ever had.
When they reached the porch, Mira paused. Her breath clouded the air between them in faint white bursts. The old wood groaned beneath their weight.
"You go in," she said, tossing him the keys in an easy, underhand throw.
He caught them automatically, frowning before he could stop himself.
"You okay?"
The words slipped out rougher than he intended.
Too full. Too obvious.
Mira's smile was immediate — bright, careless — but her eyes didn't quite follow.
"Yeah," she said.
"Just need a second to catch my breath."
She tapped her chest lightly, making a joke out of it. An exaggerated little thump-thump against her ribs, but Elias wasn't laughing.
Not this time. Not when he could see how carefully she was leaning back against the railing, like if she let go she might fall through herself. Not when he noticed how her shoulders sagged once she thought he wasn't looking.
The dusk swallowed her edges, pulling her into itself. She looked like something fragile left out in a storm.
He stood there for a beat longer than he should have.
Wanting to stay. Wanting to ask. Wanting to fix it, even though he knew he couldn't.
But something in the way she folded her arms tightly across her chest — in the stubborn, solitary set of her jaw warned him off.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
So he nodded once.
Silent.
And turned toward the door. Each step up the porch stairs felt heavier than the last.
Inside, the orphanage was alive with noise. The thudding of small feet, the clatter of mismatched dishes, the hum of an ancient heater trying gamely to fend off the creeping cold.
Elias stepped inside, shutting the door softly behind him. But he couldn't stop himself from glancing back through the narrow crack in the curtains.
Mira hadn't moved.
She was still standing there, head tipped back, staring up at the bruised sky like she was asking it for something it had already decided not to give her. Something twisted painfully under Elias's ribs.
A slow, helpless fury.
At fate. At time.
At the stupid, broken unfairness of a world that would let her burn so brightly only to burn out so soon.
He pressed his hand against the doorframe, grounding himself against the swell of it.
Borrowed hours.
The words haunted him. Coiled around his throat.
Borrowed hours spent laughing, running, reading in the sun. Borrowed hours he wanted to steal more of.
Even if he had no right to them. Even if he had no right to her.
He stood there until Mikey barreled into his leg, demanding a bedtime story with wide, unblinking eyes. Elias ruffled the boy's messy hair with a trembling hand and let himself be pulled toward the couch, the storybook, the noise. But a part of him — the part with cracks spiderwebbing through it, letting all the light in — stayed on that porch.
With her.
With the girl who was teaching him — too fast, too late — that living wasn't something you bought. It was something you chose.
Even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.
And Elias knew, as surely as he knew his own name, he had already made his choice. He just hadn't said it out loud yet.
Not yet. But soon. Very soon.
Because some things deserved to be said. Before the borrowed hours ran out. Before the dusk swallowed everything. Before it was too late.
****
The house was warmer now, a different kind of warmth, soft and stubborn, stitched together from small, human things:
The hum of soup simmering low on the stove. The slow clatter of dishes being stacked away, one by one, each chipped plate a survivor of a hundred careless hands. The tired creak of the wood floors under careful, practiced footsteps. Hope Haven didn't wear its battles proudly, but it didn't hide them either.
It endured. And somehow, so did the people inside it.
Mrs. Carter stood at the sink, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her hands submerged in soapy water. Her back was straight despite the weight of the years stitched into her bones.
When Elias entered, she didn't turn. Just kept scrubbing a plate with steady, worn hands. And said casually, almost like an afterthought:
"She's a stubborn one, isn't she?"
The words slipped into the room like a stone dropped into still water.
Elias blinked, caught off guard. It took him a moment to realize who she was talking about.
And when he did, something inside him twisted.
Yeah.
Mira.
Stubborn in the way the last flame is stubborn before it goes out.
He cleared his throat, the words scraping up rougher than he intended.
"Yeah," he said finally.
"She is."
Mrs. Carter rinsed the plate, set it aside carefully, and wiped her hands on a battered dish towel. When she finally turned to face him, the sight almost startled him.
Her face lined with years of hard roads. Griefs survived and small victories hoarded like precious stones. But her eyes were still sharp.
Still young. Still alive.
"You're wondering," she said simply.
Not accusing. Not intrusive.
Just a quiet truth dropped into the space between them.
"How much time she has left."
Elias swallowed.
Hard.
The words hit harder than he was ready for, though some part of him — the part that had been watching Mira out of the corner of his eye, counting the quiet cracks in her armor — had known all along.
He opened his mouth to deny it.
To lie. To pretend he wasn't desperate for the answer. But the truth tripped out before he could stop it.
"Yeah," he whispered.
Mrs. Carter leaned back against the counter, folding her arms across her chest, the dish towel twisted between her fingers.
"There's no chart to read," she said after a moment.
"No number you can circle on a calendar."
She looked at him then, long and deep.
Not the way businessmen looked at each other — assessing, weighing — but the way people looked at a house that was about to fall and wishing they could hold the walls up with their bare hands.
"Mira's cancer isn't curable," she said softly.
"Hasn't been for a while."
The world tilted a little. Just enough to make Elias reach out and plant his palms flat against the scarred wood of the kitchen table, grounding himself.
"But she's..."
He forced the words out, "She's walking around. Laughing. Teasing. Acting like—"
"Like she has all the time in the world?" Mrs. Carter finished gently.
Elias nodded. The knot in his throat nearly choking him.
Mrs. Carter smiled sadly — not pitying, but with a deep, terrible kind of love.
"People think dying looks a certain way," she said.
"They think it's beds and machines and quiet, slow endings."
She shook her head, a tiny, weary motion.
"But sometimes..."
She looked past him, her voice low, steady.
"Sometimes it looks like living harder than everyone else around you. Laughing louder. Running faster. Loving deeper. Because you know how little time you really have."
The words cracked something open in Elias's chest. He closed his eyes briefly, feeling the sting at the back of his throat.
"You wouldn't know," he said, voice raw.
"You wouldn't know, looking at her."
Mrs. Carter's smile turned soft and fierce all at once.
"That's the point, son. She doesn't want you to know. She doesn't want you to look at her and see a ticking clock. She wants you to look at her and see her."
Elias stared at the scarred wood beneath his hands until the lines blurred. Until the whole world felt like it was sliding sideways.
Mrs. Carter moved closer then — not threatening, not pitying — just there.
Solid. Real.
"You care about her," she said quietly.
Again, no judgment. No assumptions. Just a truth so bare it almost hurt to hear.
Elias opened his mouth.
To deny it. To laugh it off. To build walls faster than she could tear them down. But the words caught in his throat like broken glass.
And maybe she saw it too. Maybe she saw everything.
Because Mrs. Carter smiled — a small, tired, terribly knowing smile — and reached out to squeeze his shoulder.
"Be careful with her," she said, her voice dropping even lower.
"She doesn't have time for half-truths."
She gave him a squeeze — brief, firm — and then she stepped past him, moving toward the living room where the distant echoes of the children's laughter spilled out into the hallway like light through a cracked door.
Leaving Elias alone. Alone with the too-big, too-terrible truth pressing against his ribs:
He was already falling.
Falling for her — for her laughter and her stubbornness and the way she held broken things together like her own hands weren't bleeding. Falling without armor, without parachute, without a goddamn plan. And there was no ground beneath him anymore. Not in the way he used to believe.
Only her. Only this. Only now.
And now — now mattered more than anything else in the world.