Page 131 of Unclench Me Softly

My name is written in soft cursive on the largest one.

I open it with hands that already know this is going to hurt.

Inside is pillows.

Five of them.

Small, soft, hand-sewn plush animals. Each one a different totem.

A fox, clever, sharp, watching me like he knows too much.

A hawk, wings out, stitched with thread that looks like it could lift me.

A bear, solid, steady, grounding.

A wolf, eyes golden, expression fierce, a little protective.

A wolverine, small but feral, like it would burn the world down for me.

I press them to my chest and collapse onto the floor in a pile of spiritual plushness and dangerous feelings.

“You didn’t,” I whisper to the universe. “You absolutely did.”

And then I hear them.

Footsteps, soft and slow, not sneaking, not charging, just existing, steady and inevitable, like a tide coming in to claim something it was always meant to take.

I sit up, pulling the squishy animal pillows tighter around me, just as they enter the dome, one by one, a procession of memories I haven’t even had the chance to lose yet.

All five of them.

They see me wrapped in their stand-ins, a chaotic little shrine of foxes and bears and wolves, and they don’t laugh, don’t question, don’t do anything but move to their mats, silent and sure like they already know what’s coming.

Each man finds his box, opens it, and pulls out the same thing.

A lynx. Quiet. Wild. Beautiful. Rare.

For a heartbeat, no one says a word.

They just look at the lynxes in their hands, then at each other, then, finally, devastatingly, at me.

And I know they know.

I clear my throat, voice barely there, barely holding, and ask, “Why the lynx?”

Miles is the first to answer, his voice soft enough to crack something open inside my ribs. “Because it sees what others miss.”

Jonah speaks next, low and certain like he’s been carrying the truth in his chest for days. “Because it doesn’t need to be loud to be powerful.”

And then Asher, sweet, filthy, quietly devastating Asher, adds, “Because it watches from the edges… but still holds the center.”

I nod, because it’s all I can do, because if I try to speak again, I’ll fall apart in a way I can’t come back from. I clutch the pillows tighter to my chest, like maybe if I hold on hard enough, I won’t lose everything at once.

I ask the only thing I can. “What did you leave behind?”

Jax steps forward. “I couldn’t,” he says. “I walked the whole damn loop and didn’t leave anything. I think I reclenched. Spiritually. Possibly physically.”

I laugh, wet, hiccuping.

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