Chapter Twenty-Seven
CHASE
“Then the T-Rex said,‘I can’t tie my shoes because I have stubby arms!’” I kept my voice at a soft, appropriate tone for inducing sleep.
Finn’s room was quiet except for my voice and the hush of the ocean breathing distantly. I sat cross-legged on the braided rug, reading from a battered, obviously loved dinosaur book as a tropical-fish nightlight illuminated the colorful pages. Superheroes battled fish along one wall. The rest of the room glowed blue, scattered with pirate ships, plastic sea creatures, and the faintest scribble of green crayon at the baseboard—a guilty memory or unfinished masterpiece, I couldn’t tell.
Harper perched on the edge of his bed. For a moment, everything in my life funneled down to this—the soft weight of Finn’s trust, her steadying presence, the hush before a promise. I turned the page and smiled at the wide-eyed expression on the struggling T-Rex’s face.
She reached over and set her palm against my shoulder.Warm, light, solid in a way that felt like an invitation and a benediction rolled together. I startled a little.
“He’s asleep, Chase,” she whispered, her smile gone soft and private. Her fingers lingered in Finn’s curls as he sprawled in the center of the shark-print sheets, his face slack with sleep.
I looked at the kid. The red tool belt was slung around his waist. He’d insisted on sleeping in it, the safely empty pouches bunched sideways over his hip. At his age, everything important had to come to bed, and in that tiny grip, I saw something impossibly fragile and unbelievably strong.
Trust.
Blind, bottomless, not something I ever thought I’d carry with a child. But there it was, smashing through me so hard it nearly winded me. It wasn’t just that I loved him. It was being awed by how much I needed to get this right.
Harper caught my eye and held it. No need for words. There was gratitude in her gaze, but something steadier beneath it. Relief, faith, a dawning realization that the load wasn’t only hers anymore. For the first time, maybe, she let herself share the burden.
She eased herself off the bed, barefoot and quiet as dusk. I slipped the book onto the nightstand beside his Captain America figure as he made a small, sleepy sound. The kind you want to pocket for when things get ugly, proof that gentleness exists.
Harper waited for me in the hall, framed by the buttery spill of kitchen light. I watched Finn’s chest rise and fall one more time before tugging the door shut with exaggerated care. The click barely sounded, but the feeling hung there between us—something shifting, settling, and binding me more deeply to this little, enclosed world.
Back in the kitchen, the two pizza boxes had been stacked neatly, and the extra pieces were in the fridge andready for tomorrow’s lunches. Harper moved with the kind of practiced calm that made everything feel safe, unspectacularly real. She removed two wineglasses from the cabinet and poured us each a glass of white wine.
“Living room?” I asked, and she responded with a nod.
We settled on the couch that Finn had tried to repair with his tool belt earlier, and I stretched my legs across the threadbare ottoman. The space felt real. Not staged, not curated. Just Harper, just Finn.
And me, if I let myself believe it.
Somewhere in the hollows of this room, I could still feel the echo of Finn’s laugh, high-pitched, half-feral with glee when I’d handed him the tool belt, almost holding my breath in anticipation. He gasped, just full-body lit up, like I’d given him the moon. He strapped it over his shorts (backward), spun three times, and announced he was going to fix everything. Declared he couldn’t wait to show it to Uncle Eli. Meanwhile, Harper watched it all with a smile on her face.
In that instant—Finn’s arms around my waist, Harper’s gaze—a truth had snapped into place. The immaculate house, the old life, none of it compared to this. To them.
Zero regrets.
She sipped her wine and leaned her head against the back of the couch, eyes closing for one long beat. The silence felt earned.
“Was there anything else that brought about your decision to sell the house?” Her tone was light, teasing. She poked me in the shoulder, smirking. “Or was it all the termite apocalypse?”
I grinned, swirling the wine in my glass. “Eli might have stuck a cattle prod up my ass, but he wasn’t wrong. I ended up verbally vomiting up all the overwhelm and panic I was feeling. And he didn’t even run out of theroom, so he really is growing. At the end of it all, I knew what I had to do. Selling the house wasn’t that tough of a decision.”
Harper’s nose wrinkled—equal parts apology and amusement. “Yeah, well. I might have had something to do with that prod. There was a… let’s call it a minor Coleridge event after you left the meeting room yesterday.” She kept her voice light, but her cheeks flushed. “Eli found me sobbing over the table. I gave him the full tear-streaked Greatest Hits—why would Chase shut me out, is it my fault, what am I doing wrong… Very dignified, you can imagine.”
I reached for her hand, thumb grazing over her knuckles. Her fingers twined through mine, almost automatically, the kind of touch that grows out of shared nights and mornings. The fact that Eli—Mr. Duct Tape and Beer—had bridged this for us seemed like some cosmic joke.
I squeezed Harper’s hand, grounding myself in her warmth, in the simple truth of this moment—no pretense, no noise. Then I let go to cup her cheek in my hand. “That conference room meltdown? That’s on me, and you won’t have to go through it again. You lean on me now, and we tackle it together. Always.”
The promise was more than words. I meant every word, every syllable written in the air between us.
She blinked hard, mouth curving into a tremulous smile. It was the look you gave someone at the exact second the weight dropped from your shoulders. I saw relief there, but something braver too—a hope that she could finally let herself depend on another person. She let out a breath like she’d been holding it for years. “Chase…”
But I didn’t want gratitude or anything she felt obligated to say.
I only wanted her, fully, right now.
