She tastes like the orange she snagged from the fruit bowl earlier with a faint trace of the honey she puts in her tea—tartand sweet, with that bright citrus zing that lingers on her lips. I love kissing her. I love that she makes this tiny, shocked noise in the back of her throat every time, like she’s still surprised I want her this much. I love that she melts into it a beat later, her fingers fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer. And I love the way her tongue meets mine—hesitant at first, then bold, like she’s deciding to own the moment.
She breaks away, just far enough that her lips brush mine with every shaky exhale. “You’re going to be late.”
“I’ll cancel,” I murmur, nipping at her lower lip. “It’s fine.”
“Leo.” Her laugh is a warm puff of air. She plants a hand firmly on my chest, creating a few sacred inches of space. “Go.Do the terrible, hard thing. Then come back.”
I release a long, dramatic sigh, my forehead resting against hers. “Fine. I’ll go.”
Then I lower my voice, glancing toward the living room where Barbie is currently being evicted from the Dreamhouse. “Remember what we talked about? About not bringing this up to Emma?”
Annie nods, her expression turning solemn. She mimics turning a key at her lips. “No premature hopes. I remember.”
“I just don’t want to set her up for…”
“Disappointment,” she finishes, the word soft.
I nod. My stomach is a nest of live wires. It’s really not about Rebecca, not in that way. The love I had for her is a fossil now—brittle, preserved, part of another geological era. This is about a deeper, more corrosive fury. That she left. That she looked at our daughter—at Emma’s trusting eyes and sticky-fingered hands—and chose somewhere else. It’s about a sadness for Emma so profound it feels like a physical cavity in my chest. And beneath it all, a grinding fatigue from nine months of being the only anchor in the storm.
“How are you doing?” I ask, searching her face. The morning light from the window catches the gold flecks in her hazel eyes.
She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m good.”
She’s a terrible liar.
“What’s the nervousness for?” I tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear, then another, my fingers lingering.
“Who says I’m nervous? Do I seem nervous?”
I stare at her.
“Well, shit.” She picks up the knife again, gesturing with it like a conductor’s baton. “Okay, fine. The scenario is this: you see her. Gorgeous, accomplished, the mother of your child. And you have a lightning-bolt moment of clarity. You realize I’m just the quirky, emotionally-stunted nanny you hooked up with during a vulnerable time of your life. You and Rebecca reconcile in a wave of poignant music, ride off into a sunset made of healthy co-parenting schedules, and I am left to evolve, naturally, into a bitter old woman who yells at pigeons in the park and collects stray cats, remaining alone forever.”
A grin spreads across my face, a real one, born of pure, unadulterated affection for the magnificent weirdo in front of me. “That’s incredibly detailed.”
“I’ve had time to think about it.”
“A little too much, I think.” I gently pry the knife from her grip and set it aside. My hands find hers, linking our fingers. “How could I possibly look back,” I say, my voice dropping, “when I’m so completely, utterly—”
The words are out before my brain can run its usual diagnostics.
“—in love with you.”
Silence floods the kitchen. Both of our eyes go wide, and I can feel my own pulse drumming in my fingertips.
Oh, fuck.
I didn’t mean to say that. Not here, not now, sandwiched between layers of turkey and a fraught meeting with my ex. It’s too soon. It’s been weeks, not years. In the grand timeline of the universe, we’re a blip. Telling someone you love them after a few weeks is the kind of reckless, cinematic nonsense I usually scoff at. My internal panic is a five-alarm siren:Retract it. Qualify it. Make a joke. Say ‘in love with your sandwich-making skills.’
But as I look at her—really look at her—the impulse to retreat vanishes, because it’s the truth. I don’t want to take it back.
I love how she negotiates with Emma as if she’s a tiny, powerful union leader. I love the philosophical debates we have at midnight about whether free will is an illusion, her hands waving, her eyes lit with passion. I love the courage it took for her to run toward something, not just away. I love that she makes me think and feel and want things I thought I’d given up on. I love that when I picture the future—the messy, ordinary,realfuture—she’s in the frame. Not as a placeholder, but as the focal point.
But more than that, I love how she’s slowly, methodically dismantled the walls I spent years reinforcing with logic and skepticism.
I’m a man of data. I like evidence and controlled variables. For most of my life, I believed that was the only way to navigate the world—to reduce its messiness to a manageable equation. Then I met Annie, the ultimate outlier. The variable that refused to be controlled, that dismantled the very premise of my experiment.
What I first labeled as impulsiveness, I now understand as something else entirely: a profound, reckless faith. Not necessarily in outcomes, but in the inherent possibility of things. My skepticism would meet her stubborn, radiant hope, and it wouldn’t be a battle with a winner and a loser. It would be asurrender to a deeper logic. She didn’t defeat my way of seeing; she expanded my vision.
