Amelia snorts into her wine, choking on a laugh.
I shoot her a playful glare. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten, traitor.”
Bradley groans, dragging a hand over his face. “Here we go again.”
“Hey,” I point at him, grinning. “Don’t act like you didn’t win the lottery. You should be thanking me. If it wasn’t for me, Amelia would’ve been free to date literally anyone else in town.”
Amelia bumps my shoulder, laughing. “And we all know how wellthatwould’ve gone.”
Bradley mutters into his glass, “Should’ve kept my mouth shut.”
I lean back in my chair, smug. “Yep, and now you’re stuck with us.”
The room hums with a comfortable tension. Amelia defends me, Bradley interrogates me further, and I deflect with sass until Amelia’s laughing and Bradley’s sighing dramatically. Somewhere between the laughter and Bradley’s death stares, my mind wanders.
Straight to Sebastian Daniels.
He’s always been there. In the distance. Bradley’s intimidatingly yet silly right hand, the bloke who’s been around since the day my brother started working as a rookie at the station at eighteen. A harmless crush, the kind you tuck away with the rest of your daydreams. Now, I see him differently. I see him with Teddy. I see him with his walls up so high, you’d need climbing gear to scale them. And suddenly, the crush doesn’t feel harmless anymore. Suddenly, I want to dig. To push. To know why he’s so withdrawn now.
The rational voice in my head is screaming.No. Off limits.But that’s also exactly why I can’t stop thinking about him. Because when you’re told a line can’t be crossed? That’s when you want to cross it most, right? It’s annoying. He’s annoying.
Because he shouldn’t matter, and, more importantly, he’s notmineto figure out.
11
Olivia
I’ve got Amelia on speaker and a tea towel over my shoulder, walking laps between the lounge and the kitchen while I stack blocks back into the tub. Teddy’s eaten, bath’s in half an hour, and the house is in that rare, gentle hush stage.
I fill her in on the second date, which, let’s be honest, was doomed from the minute I replied to his text. For starters, I called him Ryan. His name was Terry. Definitely not my finest moment. In my defence, he looked like a Ryan. Not that I was exactly bringing my best self either. I’d left Sebastian’s place still weirdly flustered, swapped my oversized tee for a dress that felt like overkill, and spent most of the night trying to remember why I’d agreed to a second date with a man who described his dream weekend as “sinking cold ones with the boys and mowing the lawn shirtless.”
I’m grinning when it happens. Teddy pads into the lounge, quiet as ever, eyes bouncing from me to the half-packed tub. I keep talking. “Anyway, I told him I can’t date a man who calls his car ‘princess’, so—”
A sound snaps the air, sharp, small, like a wire pulled taut. Teddy’s face folds, not into tears but into something tighter. His hand shoots out, palm flat against the edge of the tub I’ve been filling. He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the space where the blocks were. His breath goes fast and shallow.
“Amelia,” I say, the word thin. “Hang on.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Her voice is wary.
“I… I think I messed up.” I lower the tub to the ground. “Hey, champ,” I say, keeping my voice soft. “Do you want these out again?”
He presses both hands to his ears. Rocking. Not big, just a steady forward-back, forward-back. The blocks I put away suddenly feel like bricks I pulled out of the wrong wall. He nudges the tub with his toes, a quick, repetitive tap like he’s trying to push the whole moment back into place.
“Liv?” Amelia’s voice is small now. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s… he’s not crying. He’s… holding his ears and rocking a little. I packed up his blocks. I do it every afternoon, but—”
“It’s okay. It might be today’s pattern. Can you put them back exactly where they were?”
I nod, my throat tight, so damn grateful she’s on the phone. That I told her. That she knows. Because if anyone is equipped to handle a potential meltdown, it’s Amelia. My hands shake as I tip the tub. Blocks spill out like rain. I try to remember the order—red line, then blue, then the tower he was ignoring, but apparently not ignoring. My heart is a drum in my throat. As I continue, Teddy’s rocking eases, fraction by fraction, but his fingers curl tighter against his ears.
He hums, one note, thin but steady, like a lighthouse in fog.
“What if I can’t match it?”
“Ask him,” Amelia says. “Point. Wait. But don’t rush him.”
I crouch, hands open. “Teddy,” I say, barely above a whisper. “Do you want this here?” I hover a blue block over the spot I think it belongs.
