Ethan forgetting my birthday until almost midnight and showing up with a gas-station cupcake, looking proud of himself like it counted.
Ethan sleeping through our plans, more than once.
Ethan kissing me like I was the center of his universe…
and then vanishing into silence whenever responsibility came into question.
He was exhilarating and exhausting.
Beautiful and impossible. Lightning in human form, bright, unpredictable, and gone before you could make sense of it.
And now…
Now he’s sitting on Lily’s tiny bed, carefully trying to turn a page because her little fingers are in the way.
The contrast sits in my heart.
Something tightens low in my chest, small but unmistakable.
I don’t want this reaction. I don’t want to feel anything for him.
Not after everything.
But watching him try this hard for Lily…it shakes something loose in me.
A part of me that remembers the boy he was and sees the man he’s trying to be.
???
Lily falls asleep halfway through laughing at one of Ethan’s ridiculous dragon voices. Her small hand lands on his knee like she’s done it a hundred times.
I watch him tuck her in, pushing a curl from her forehead with a gentleness I don’t think I’ve ever seen from him.
“Goodnight, bug,” he whispers.
Something pulls tight in my throat.
It’s unfair, the way he gets to be this now, steady and present.
When he looks at me, it’s not the old Ethan at all. No swagger, no heat, no boyish charm covering a hundred insecurities.
Just… quiet gratitude.
It disarms me. A softening I don’t want to acknowledge.
I gather my bag to leave, needing distance before this feeling grows legs. I’m almost at the door when he says my name.
“Claire.”
I turn.
“Thanks,” he says. “For helping.”
For a second, I can’t read him.
And that’s what scares me.
that he’s becoming someone I don’t know how to protect myself from.
