“I’m not asking you to come home today,” he says. “I’m asking if I can start earning a spot in your life again. One honest day at a time.”
His hand hovers, like he wants to reach for me but waits.
I nod once and whisper, “Okay.”
He steps forward and presses his forehead to mine. I close my eyes and lean into it. It’s not a kiss. Not yet. But something more important. The beginning.
One month.
That’s how long it’s been since I stood in the barn and let Liam into my heart again—not all the way, not yet—but enough.
And somehow, beginning has turned into something more.
In the first week he shows up every morning with chamomile tea and a different kind of muffin—blueberry, chocolate chip, banana walnut. Each one wrapped in a paper towel like he packed it himself. I suspect he doesn’t actually make them, but it’s still a sweet gesture.
He brushes the horses while I sit on an overturned bucket nearby, boots tapping softly while I sip and watch. We talk about easy things. Weather, crops, baby names. We laugh a lot.
One morning, he kneels down and ties my sneaker when I can’t reach it. He doesn’t say anything. Just looks up at me with that soft smile like this,right here, is exactly where he wants to be.
In the second week he teaches me how to throw a lasso. I’m terrible at it. Like, really terrible.
But he stands behind me anyway, hands guiding mine, breath warm on my cheek as he whispers, “Loosen your wrist.”
I feel every inch of him pressed against my back, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe let alone throw.
The loop falls wide and crooked. I curse. He laughs.
Then he presses a kiss to my shoulder, gentle and quick, and doesn’t say a word about it.
Later, he sends me home with a bouquet of wildflowers in a mason jar. I find a sticky note in the middle that says:Day by day, Olive. I’m not going anywhere.
In week three we go for a drive out near the ridge, the sky impossibly big. He brings snacks and we sit in the tall grass with the sun on our faces, not saying much at all.
At one point, he reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, fingers grazing my cheek.
I lean into his palm without thinking. He smiles, like maybe he needed that more than I realized. That night, he walks me back to the bed and breakfast and kisses my forehead before I go inside. It’s the kind of kiss that makes my knees weak. And for the first time in a long, long time, I don’t cry myself to sleep.
By week four we’ve moved on to spending time in the house. The twins kick while he’s reading out loud to me. It’s some silly rodeo magazine, but I don’t care. I’m lying with my head in his lap on the couch, and he’s rubbing circles on my belly when he feels it.
He freezes. Looks down at me.
“Was that…?”
I nod. He drops the magazine, stunned. Then he bends over and kisses my stomach like it’s holy ground.
“Hi, babies,” he whispers. “It’s me. Your dad.”
Something in me splinters. I realize I’m not afraid anymore. Not of him. Not of this. Not of staying.
And just like that, we fall.
Not all at once.
But day by day. Laugh by laugh. Touch by touch.
And it’s deeper than before.
Not shiny and new but real. Lived in. Fought for.
