"Or you could just kiss and make up. That works in movies."
I was going to die. Right there in Brad's car, I was going to spontaneously combust from mortification.
Inside, we performed an elaborate ballet of avoidance—Brad checking locks, me cleaning already-clean counters, both of us using Finn's bedtime routine as a buffer zone.
Finally, we stood in the hallway where it split toward our bedrooms, the darkness making everything feel more dangerous.
"Goodnight," Brad said, not moving.
"Goodnight," I replied, also not moving.
We stood there like idiots, gravity and fear fighting for dominance.
"Serena—"
"Don't." If he said anything real, I'd shatter. "Please."
He nodded, understanding too much. "Yeah. Okay."
I lay in bed later, pressing my fingers to my lips where I could still feel him, still taste champagne and catastrophe. Down the hall, his footsteps paced—back and forth, back and forth, like he was trying to walk off whatever was burning through both of us.
We could blame the wine until our tongues fell out, but the truth was simpler and so much worse: that kiss had been building since the moment I'd walked through his door, and now that we'd let it happen, we were both just waiting for everything to explode.
The only question was who would light the next match.
Chapter 14: Serena
The return to regular life after our storm bubble felt like surfacing from deep water—disorienting and slightly painful. The roads had cleared, school had resumed, and suddenly I was back to being Miss Voss, the inclusion specialist, instead of just Serena who made breakfast and built blanket forts.
"If the noise gets too big, what do we do?" I asked Timothy, my second-grader with sensory processing issues, while we sat in the calm-down corner I'd built with yoga mats and fairy lights.
"Turtle breathing," he demonstrated, sucking air through his nose. "But Miss Voss, how come Finn Wilder gets to see you all the time? My sister says you live in his house now. Like,livelive."
Nothing traveled faster than elementary school gossip except maybe elementary school germs.
"I'm temporarily staying there because a tree fell on my home," I explained, adjusting his weighted shoulder wrap. "Like camping, but with better wifi."
"My mom saw you at the grocery store with them," Sophie piped up from her reading nook, apparently eavesdropping while pretending to read about dinosaurs. "She told my aunt you looked like a family. Then she said a bad word about how hot Finn's dad is."
"OKAY, who wants to help me reorganize the feeling cards?" I interrupted desperately.
The day continued with similar comments from students, raised eyebrows from colleagues, and one particularlyuncomfortable conversation with Principal Harrison, who managed to mention three times that he was single and "understood how difficult displacement could be."
By the time I picked up Finn from the elementary wing and we headed back to Brad's home—when had I started thinking of it as home?—I was exhausted from navigating the sudden scrutiny.
Brad was attempting one-legged squats when we got home—because apparently professional athletes couldn't just ice and elevate like normal humans—his face twisted in concentration and pain.
"Daddy's trying to hurt himself again," Finn announced cheerfully, dropping his backpack like a bomb. "Also everyone at school wants to know if Miss Serena is my bonus mom yet."
Brad nearly fell over. "Your what now?"
"Matthew says when adults live together and make breakfast and do bedtime stories that's basically married but without the kissing part." Finn paused thoughtfully. "Unless you do kiss. Do you kiss?"
"No," we said in perfect, damning unison.
"You should practice. Matthew's mom practices with her husband."
"Hey buddy, why don't you—" Brad started.
