Richard is still talking as we leave, his voice dripping with irritation, but Julian doesn’t slow.
“Lunch is on me,” he says over his shoulder.
Julian stays by my side through everything, and that act alone feels like it changes everything. He doesn’t check in and leave. He doesn’t make calls from the hallway and disappear. He settles in beside me at the facility like this is where he’s meant to be.
Claire brings clothes, food and chargers. A blanket for Emily.
Julian works from the chair in my mom's room when he has to. Pushes everything else aside.
When I fall asleep against his shoulder at three in the morning, he doesn’t move.
When my mom stabilizes again, he exhales like he’s been holding his breath the entire time.
Days pass.
Then weeks.
Time stretches and folds in strange ways, marked by medication schedules, Em's school exams, and quiet dinners at home. Spring creeps in through the windows. Emily finishes her first year of med school, exhausted and glowing, and we plan a celebration like it’s a promise.
Mom improves, not enough for her to be able to leave, but enough that the doctors are happy and are back to telling me to be patient.
Julian keeps saying, “We’ll get there.”
He encourages me to take the job with Graham.
“You’re good at this,” he says one night, when we’re eating dinner on the couch, my legs draped over his lap. “And if it ever becomes too much, we’ll adjust.”
“We?” I tease.
He smiles. “We.”
Later, half-asleep, he jokes about me being too busy raising his babies to run foundations, and my heart stutters so hard it takes me a full minute to breathe again. Because Julian made ajoke, and that in itself feels monumental, but he is openly talking about our future,our babies. Not in numbers or agreements or terms. But with joy in his voice and a softness in his eyes that does things to me.
Spring settles in fully, and we settle with it. And somewhere in all of that, between hospital visits and shared calendars and the way he still kisses my forehead before bed, I realize I’m no longer waiting for this to end. I’m building something with him.
Chapter 41 - Lucy
Six months.
It feels strange to think about it like that, as a number, because nothing about this has felt measurable. It hasn’t unfolded in neat increments or predictable milestones. It’s been quiet moments stacking on top of each other until one day I realized I was standing somewhere different than where I started.
Julian surprised me with Paris.
He told me on a Tuesday night, over dinner, like it was nothing more than a casual thought that had occurred to him between meetings.
“We leave Friday,” he said, glancing up from his phone. “Back Sunday night.”
I stared at him; fork suspended halfway to my mouth. “Paris?”
“Yes.”
Just like that.
He apologized immediately, like he thought he knew the first thing I’d think. “I am sorry that we can’t stay longer. There’s an acquisition coming up that needs my attention. I’ll be busy for a while after this.”
Busy was Julian’s default state. But the fact that he’d carved out this weekend, thisspecificweekend, meant more than the trip itself.
"What about my mom?" I asked slowly, not wanting to ruin the moment.
