The Heart Ring

Chapter 8 – Shared Light

Kimi found her behind the gym, where the cinder block wall kept a sliver of sun and the wind pooled in a corner like a stray dog. The buses were already gone; the lot hummed with the after-sound of engines, a low vibration in the pavement. Abby hugged her backpack to her ribs like it might keep all her pieces where they belonged.

“Something happened,” Kimi said. No hello, no warm-up. She stepped into Abby’s shadow and tilted her head. “You look… chewed.”

Abby tried to breathe normally and failed. The ring sat on her finger like it had weight beyond metal, like a small planet with its own gravity. “I thought I could help,” she said. “I didn’t push. I swear I didn’t. But it grabbed me anyway.”

“Who?” Kimi asked, voice soft but steady.

Abby stared at the cracks in the blacktop, the way weeds forced their way through. “Randy.” The name felt like admitting a crime. “I just… leaned. Like putting a hand on the door. And something on the other side grabbed back.”

Kimi’s mouth shaped an Oh without sound. She glanced at Abby’s hand. “And the ring?”

“Burned.” Abby lifted her palm, and the faint dent from the little heart-shaped stone showed pale against her skin. “It said things. No—thought things. In my head. It felt like lies wearing my brother’s face.”

Kimi’s jaw tightened. “Tell me the lies.”

“That he hates me. That he always did.” Abby swallowed. The words tasted like pennies. “That I’m a parasite. That I want to fix him because I like being the hero.”

Kimi didn’t flinch away from the ugliness. She took one small step closer. “Do you believe any of that?”

“Some days I don’t know what I believe,” Abby said, and the truth of it cracked something open. “I’m scared I’m making everything worse. I’m scared Grandpa gave me a curse and called it a story. I’m scared—”

She stopped because her breath had turned into wire. Tears came too fast for her to blink them back. She pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose, like she could pinch everything back into place. “I don’t want to be a pry bar, Kim. I don’t want to be the person who hurts people in the name of helping.”

“You’re not,” Kimi said, gentle, like coaxing a skittish animal. “You’re not a pry bar. You’re a person. You’re my person. Look at me.”

Abby did. Kimi’s eyes were steady and brown and maddeningly kind.

“Try this,” Kimi said. She opened her arms. “Let me carry a corner of it.”

Abby’s first instinct was no. The ring would flare. The pain would come. She’d drown Kimi the way she’d almost drowned herself.

Kimi must’ve seen the refusal forming, because she added, “You carrying it alone is what’s drowning you.”

Abby moved before she could talk herself out of it. She stepped into the hug.

Warmth.

Not searing. Not the burn of Jenna’s unraveling or the sticky pull of Randy’s shadow. A light that rose from the small of her back and unfolded through her ribs like a lantern being lit behind her heart. The ring warmed in answer—not demanding, not dragging, just… agreeing. Kimi’s scent—shampoo and winter air—settled her. Abby felt, at the edge of her vision, Kimi’s colors flare and steady: lake-blue deepening, green threads bright as grass after rain, gold sparking through like sunlight broken into coins on the surface of water.

Abby’s breath went from wire to ribbon to breath. She didn’t realize she’d started crying again until her cheek dampened Kimi’s jacket. Kimi didn’t say anything about it. She just held tighter.

“This,” Kimi murmured into Abby’s hair, “feels right.”

Abby nodded against her shoulder. The ring answered with a small, sure pulse. Not power. Presence.

They stayed that way until the light changed on the wall and the afternoon leaned toward evening. When they finally parted, Abby felt wrung out and refilled, both at once.

Kimi searched her face. “Better?”

“Yes.” The word surprised Abby with how true it was. “I didn’t know… it could be like that.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Kimi said. “Not to look, but to be with.”

Abby huffed a wet laugh. “You sound like my grandpa if he’d done group therapy.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Kimi angled her body so her shoulder bumped Abby’s. “Tell me the part you’re not saying.”

Abby looked across the parking lot toward the road that ran past the school, toward the long row of houses behind the bare trees, toward one house with a thin seam of light under a bedroom door. She felt the ring thrum once, like a reminder.

“I have to try again,” she said. “With Randy. Not leaning. Not prying. Just… loving him. Holding on.”

Kimi didn’t hesitate. “Okay. What do you need from me?”

Abby wiped her face with her sleeve and thought about it. It wasn’t a trick question—Kimi would actually do whatever she asked. The certainty of that slid into place like a puzzle piece she’d been hunting for.

“If I don’t come back right away, don’t come barging in,” Abby said. “But don’t disappear either. Wait for me. And if I text you nonsense, call Mom.”

“Nonsense code received.” Kimi’s mouth pulled into a crooked smile. “I’ll sit on the curb like a tragic movie heroine with fries.”

“Please bring fries,” Abby said. “In case of success or failure.”

“Fries are multipurpose.”

They stood there a moment longer, the day thinning around them. A couple of leaves skittered across the asphalt, making high, papery sounds. Somewhere near the gym, a door banged and a coach shouted something about hustle in a voice that was mostly wind by the time it reached them.

Kimi nudged Abby’s elbow. “Before you go be a hero—one more thing. When you hugged me, I felt… something. Not just warmth. It was like you and me made a third thing between us. Steady. Like a bridge.”

Abby’s throat tightened again, but in a different way. “That’s what it felt like to me, too.”

“Then build that,” Kimi said. “Not a pry bar. A bridge.”

Abby looked down at the ring. The little red heart blinked once with a sliver of sun. She slid the band so the stone pressed to her palm, a reminder not to lead with her eyes.

“Rule #1,” Abby said, half to herself. “Doors are for knocking.”

“Rule #2,” Kimi added, “if it hurts, stop.”

“Rule #3,” Abby tried, and thought of the way Randy used to bandage her scraped knees without making fun, of forts and bike lessons and stolen cookies. “If love can carry it, let love carry it.”

Kimi’s smile gentled. “That’s the whole game.”

They started walking, slow at first. At the fork where the sidewalk split—one way toward Kimi’s neighborhood, the other toward Abby’s—Kimi caught her wrist and squeezed once.

“I’ll be right here when you’re done,” she said. “Text me either way.”

Abby nodded. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being the part that isn’t the ring.”

Kimi let go like it was the easiest thing in the world, because maybe it was, when you loved someone. “Go. Before I start monologuing and ruin my reputation.”

Abby turned down her street. The houses lined up with their own evening rituals: porch lights clicking on, a dog barking, the smell of dinner escaping through someone’s open window. The ordinaryness steadied her more than any pep talk could. The ring warmed against her skin—not tugging, not hungry. Ready.

Halfway home, her phone buzzed. Kimi: fries on standby. hero cape not required. proud of you anyway.

Abby typed back, no capes. rules say so. She added a small red heart she would’ve been embarrassed to send anyone else and tucked the phone away.

At her front door, she paused. Through the wood came the familiar house-sounds: the dishwasher thrum, TV murmur, the tiny tick of the hallway clock. She put her palm flat against the door and matched her breath to the ring’s pulse until her chest stopped feeling like a fist.

She stepped inside.

“Hey, honey,” Mom called from the kitchen. “Want spaghetti?”

“Later,” Abby said. Her voice didn’t shake. “I need to talk to Randy first.”

Mom looked up, eyebrows arched in soft surprise. “Okay,” she said, as if Abby had asked for a pencil. “Be kind.”

“Working on it,” Abby said, and headed for the stairs.

The hallway carpet muffled her steps. At the top, she stopped in front of Randy’s door. A thin seam of light cut the dark. The air was heavier here, like always, but tonight she felt the difference: not a warning so much as weather. Not a monster. A storm.

Abby lifted her hand and knocked.

Three slow taps, like a rhythm she and Randy had made up when they were little: shave-and-a-haircut, pause, two bits. It felt ridiculous and sacred at the same time.

From inside: a rustle, a sigh. The shadow shifted under the door, curious.

“Go away,” Randy called, automatic and tired.

Abby swallowed. “It’s me.”

Silence. Then, grudging, “What.”

“I’m coming in,” Abby said, and twisted the knob.

The door opened on the same mess as always—clothes on a chair, cans on the desk, a stack of game cases slouched in a corner—but the room felt different now that she knew how to name it. The air was thick, yes, but the thickness wasn’t a monster’s breath. It was grief and fury and some unnamed pressure that had been allowed to fill the container for too long.

Randy sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on knees, head in his hands. He didn’t look up.

Abby stepped in and shut the door behind her. She kept her eyes soft. She didn’t reach with her attention. She didn’t push. She remembered Kimi’s warmth like a map.

“Can I sit?”

Randy shrugged without shrugging. Abby sat beside him, leaving exactly as much space as a truce needs. For a few breaths she did nothing but breathe the same air.

“I don’t have advice,” she said eventually. “I don’t have a fix. I have a hug.”

Randy snorted, but it broke halfway through, like a plank with a crack in it.

“I’m not asking you to like it,” Abby added. “I’m asking you to let me love you for a minute.”

He didn’t move.

Abby turned her palm so the heart-shaped stone pressed into her skin again. She felt the ring answer, warm and steady, like a friend putting down a second shoulder under a weight.

“Okay,” she said into the quiet. “I’m going to hug you now.”

And when she leaned in, she led with the thing Kimi had shown her how to find—shared light, not leverage—and the ring met her there.

(What happened next would split them open and stitch them up in the same breath. But that was for another chapter.)

She held on.

And the room breathed.