But they move the coin with a gentleness that doesn't match the rest of him, the way his hands were gentle on Wrenleigh's face in the ER, the way they're always gentle with things that matter.
We sit in silence for a while.
Not awkward—earned.
The kind of quiet that happens when two people have been in the same space enough times that the pressure to fill it has worn away.
Then he says, "Sadie Jo asked about you today."
"About me?"
"Asked if you were coming over tonight. Before school. At breakfast." He pauses. The coin turns. "She doesn't ask about people, Leah. She just doesn't."
The way he says it—like he's handing me something fragile and hoping I understand the weight of it—makes my throat tight.
"She's a special kid," I say. "They both are."
"They're everything to me." He says it simply. No drama, no emphasis. Just fact. The sky is blue. Water is wet. My daughters are everything. "I used to think that was enough. That being their dad was enough to fill... all of it." He gestures vaguely—at the house, the porch, the dark yard beyond. "The rest of it."
"And now?"
He's quiet for a long time. The coin turns. The porch creaks under us as the wood contracts in the cold.
"Now I don't know," he says. "I've been doing this alone for a decade now. And I got good at it. Efficient. I can make breakfast, pack lunches, sign permission slips, check homework, and break up an argument about the bathroom—all before seven a.m." The corner of his mouth twitches. "But there's this thing that happens at night, after they're in bed, when the house goes quiet. And it's just me. And the quiet isn't peaceful. It's... loud. The wrong kind of loud."
I know that quiet.
I live in that quiet every night in my apartment—the kind that presses against the walls and reminds you that no one is coming home, no one is going to ask how your day was, no one is breathing in the next room.
The kind of quiet that makes you turn on the TV just to hear a voice that isn't your own.
"I know exactly what you mean," I say.
He looks at me. Those blue-gray eyes, catching the porch light, seeing more than I want them to see. "Yeah. I think you do."
Something shifts. Not in the air, not in the space between us—in me.
Something I've been holding at arm's length since the night I watched him carry his daughter out of my ER takes a step closer, and I don't push it back.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"You can ask. I might not answer."
"Fair enough." I touch my scar without thinking about it—the raised line above my eyebrow, the one I've been carrying since I was four. "Your scar. You know about mine. Garrett probably told you."
"The fire," he says. Quiet. Respectful. "You were four. He pulled you out."
"I don't remember it. Not really. Just... heat. And Garrett's arms. And then Ellie's kitchen, and my forehead wrapped in bandages." I trace the line of the scar with one finger. "I used to hate it. When I was a teenager, I tried to cover it with makeup. Spent an hour every morning with concealer and foundation trying to make it disappear. And then one day I just... stopped. I don't know why. I just looked at it in the mirror and thought,this is where I started.Everything I am came after this scar."
He's watching me.
Not just looking—watching, the way he watches everything, with that full attention that makes you feel like you're the only thing in the room.
"What about yours?" I ask. "Garrett said a fight. When you were a teenager."
He almost smiles. "Garrett talks too much."
"Garrett has said maybe forty words to me this month. That's practically a monologue for him."
