Not just with Lucy. With this life. With midnight feedings and crib assembly and the way Lucy looked at me when I showed up with diapers without being asked. With the sound of Gabrielle's cries and her weight in my arms whenever I picked her up to soothe her despair, and the particular exhaustion of caring for a newborn, the kind that left you wrung out and strangely happy at the same time.
With the family we were building, even though neither of us had meant to. Even though we'd never said the word out loud.
I was in love with all of it. The guilt still surfaced sometimes—that whisper about building happiness on Mateo's grave. But it was quieter now than it used to be. Maybe Liam was right. Maybe forgiveness wasn't something I had to earn, just something I had to accept. I wasn't there yet. But I could finally imagine getting there.
Because this should have been Mateo's life. Mateo's family. It should be Mateo walking the hallway at 2 AM with a baby against his chest, assembling cribs and making bottles and watching Lucy smile in a way she hadn't smiled in years.
Mateo should be here. Should be the one falling inlove with his fiancée all over again, building the future he planned with her, raising children with her. Instead he was six feet under the ground, and I was in his place, and no matter how many times I told myself he’d want this for us. Yet, because he couldn't be there, some part of me couldn't stop feeling like a thief.
I was building a life on my best friend's grave.
And I didn't know how to stop. Didn't know if I wanted to stop. Didn't know anything anymore except that when Gabrielle wrapped her tiny hand around my finger, impossibly small, but strong, my whole world narrowed to that single point of contact.
Mateo should be here.
The thought was a knife in my chest.
Mateo should be the one holding his daughter, building his family, loving Lucy the way she deserved.
Instead, it was me.And I didn't know if that made me the luckiest man alive or the worst kind of traitor.
CHAPTER 13
Lucy
Three weeks with Gabrielle,and I'd forgotten what silence felt like.
Not in a bad way. In the way you forget what hunger feels like after a good meal, or what cold feels like once you've found shelter. The silence I'd been living in for years, that hollow quiet that echoed with everyone I'd lost, had been replaced by something else entirely. Crying at 2 AM. The soft sounds of a baby breathing. Cal's footsteps in the hallway, his voice low and steady as he walked her through another fussy spell.
My life had structure and routine then. Feedings every three hours, like clockwork. Cal's coffee appearing on my counter before his shifts, still hot, fixed the way I liked it without me ever having to ask. The weight of Gabrielle in my arms as I brought her to the station, the crew gathering around like she was the most fascinating thing they'd ever seen.
Joanna had told me not to worry about shifts fornow. "Maternity leave," she'd called it, waving off my protests. "Unofficial, but real. The café will survive. You focus on that baby."
I'd tried to argue—I needed the money, couldn't afford to just stop working—but she'd fixed me with that look she had. "Cal already talked to your landlord. Rent's covered for the next two months. Before you get mad at him, I told him it was a good idea. You can fight with him about it later."
I hadn't fought with him about it. I was too tired, and too grateful, and somewhere along the way I'd stopped keeping track of what I owed these people. The list had gotten too long to carry.
I was sleeping in fragments, two hours here, three hours there, catching rest whenever she did. I should have been exhausted. In truth, I was, but underneath. But underneath the tiredness was something I hadn't felt in years.
I’ve found a purpose.
Gabrielle needed me. Not in the abstract way that customers at the café needed coffee or Joanna needed help with the morning rush. She neededme, specifically, in a way that was terrifying and wonderful and exactly what my mother would have wanted me to find.
I changed her diaper at 6 AM, talking to her the way I'd started doing, narrating everything like she could understand. "Okay, little one. Clean diaper. Then breakfast for both of us. Then maybe we'll go see the guys at the station, what do you think?"
She stared up at me with those dark, unfocusedeyes, her tiny fist waving in the air like she was considering the proposal.
"I'll take that as a yes."
The station had become a second home.
I hadn't planned it that way. The first time Cal suggested I bring Gabrielle by, I'd hesitated. The firehouse felt like Mateo's space, a place full of ghosts I wasn't sure I was ready to face it. But Cal had that look in his eyes, the one that said he knew I needed to get out of the apartment, needed to be around people, needed to remember that the world was bigger than four walls and a crying baby.
So I went. And the crew had adopted us both before I'd even made it through the door.
"There's my girl!" Liam appeared the moment we walked in, abandoning whatever he'd been doing in the kitchen to crouch in front of the carrier. He had this thing he did with Gabrielle, this series of increasingly ridiculous faces that somehow always made her smile. Today he crossed his eyes and puffed out his cheeks like a blowfish, and she rewarded him with a gummy grin that made his whole face light up.
"She smiled! Did you see that?" He looked up at me like he'd just witnessed a miracle. "That's three days in a row. I'm telling you, she's a genius."
