Benjamin hit the floor hard and didn't even try to get up.His hands came up in front of him instead, shaking, his whole body shaking, and the words started pouring out of his mouth the way water pours out of a broken pipe, fast and desperate and completely out of control.“I'm sorry,” he said, his voice cracking on the first word. “I'm very, very sorry for everything, for all of it, every single thing I ever said to you, every bad word, every nasty thing, I'm sorry for all of it.” He swallowed hard, his throat working. “And what happened between me and Emily, that wasn't my fault, I need you to understand that, it wasn't me, it was Emily, she was the one who came to me, she was the one who pushed for it, she kept saying things about you, terrible things, that she was just managing you, that you were useless, that you were worthless, that you had nothing to offer her. I tried to push her away, I did, but she kept coming back and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, and whatever my brother did a

Liam went quiet.The silence sat between them on the line like something with actual weight to it, pressing down on both ends of the call in different ways. On his end it was the weight of everything he had seen today, everything he was carrying, the faces and the voices and the image of that collapsed shaft and the knowledge of what was waiting for him when he finally had to stand in front of an old man and a little girl and say the words that would break their world apart. On her end, he imagined, it was just the weight of not knowing, of sensing that whatever was coming was not small and not simple.He knew he had to say it. He had known since before he even dialed her number. But knowing you have to do something and actually doing it are two completely different things, and for those few seconds he just stood there on the line with the words sitting in his chest like stones, not quite ready to let them go.Penelope's voice came through again, gentle but clear, the way she always

At that moment the tension in Liam's shoulders dropped just slightly when he heard her words settle into place, real and solid and trustworthy the way very few things in his life had felt recently.He nodded, even though she couldn't see it. “I'm very, very happy,” he said, and his voice carried the kind of genuine relief that doesn't need to dress itself up with extra words. “Thank you. Truly. Thank you for stepping in without hesitation. You don't know how much this means, not just to me, but to those families. To people who have never had anyone in their corner before.”There was a warmth in his voice that hadn't been there at the beginning of the call, something that had unlocked the moment she said she would help, the way a room feels different when someone finally opens a window and lets air in.A few seconds passed between them, comfortable this time, nothing pressing or heavy about them, and then Penelope voice came back carrying something lighter in it, something that had a

Emily went quiet for just a second on the other end of the line.Not the kind of quiet that comes from hesitation or uncertainty, but the kind that comes from genuine shock, from hearing something so unexpected that your brain has to take a moment to catch up and process what was just said to you.When she spoke again, her voice had shifted, climbing higher, sharper, carrying disbelief and something that might have been the beginning of actual concern underneath the anger."Really?" she said, the word coming out fast and incredulous. "What the hell are you talking about? What the hell are you saying right now? You are threatening Benjamin? Is that what you are trying to do? Are you seriously standing there threatening Benjamin?" She let out a short, sharp laugh that didn't sound amused at all. "Do you have some kind of death wish or what? Out of everybody you could possibly think to threaten, it's Benjamin? You must be crazy. Something is definitely wrong with you, because I cannot th

Emily sat in the car for a moment longer than she needed to, her eyes still moving over the scene outside, her mind still turning everything over and trying to make it fit into a shape she could understand.And then the other thoughts came back.The ones that had nothing to do with what was happening outside that house and everything to do with what had been building inside her for longer than she had been willing to admit.Benjamin didn't regard her.She said it to herself quietly, not with the sharp fury she had been carrying for the last hour but with something slower and more honest, something that had the particular sting of a truth you have been avoiding for a long time finally catching up with you.If he regarded her, genuinely regarded her, she would have known about this. Whatever this was. She would have received a call, a message, something. She would not be sitting outside his family home in her car finding out that something significant was happening by accident, by showi