“Not put pressure on the situation. She’s my boss. I’m her contractor. A friend, maybe. I’m helping her get custody of this baby, and that’s it. The engagement thing—it’s just for the caseworker. None of it’s real.”
Mum studies me with the expression of a mother who is choosing to let reality correct her son in its own time. “Of course, love. Whatever you say.”
“I’m serious. After October, once the baby comes, we’ll need to move. This arrangement has an expiration date.” I pause, because the next part is harder. “But I was thinking—if I could put some money together—would you want to live somewhere like this? Out of the city. Suburbs. Ground floor. A yard.”
Mum barely answers. Her eyes drop to her own body—the crooked posture, the hand that’s drifted to her hip where the pain lives, the legs that carried her three steps across a kitchen and are already trembling from the effort. “I hate being this burden on you, Saylor.” Her voice is quiet. “You should be planning a future with someone you love. Not your mother.”
“You are someone I love, Mum. We’re a package deal. Maybe one day some woman will understand that. But for now, one step at a time, yeah?”
She nods. Pats my cheek. Retreats to the counter and her tea with the careful choreography of a woman who has learned to make pain look easy.
I turn back to the stove. There are steaks marinating in the fridge, pasta dough resting under a towel, and a bruschetta situation happening on the cutting board that I’m quietly proud of. I’ve been cooking since four—not because the meal requires this much time, but because my hands needed something to do besides check my phone for the fifteenth time to see if Celeste has texted that she’s on her way.
She texted an hour ago. One word:Coming.
I’ve been marinating in that word ever since. Coming. Present tense. Active. A woman in motion, pointed in my direction.
The doorbell rings and I almost drop the knife.
“She’s knocking?” Mum asks from the counter, amused. “On her own front door?”
“Apparently.”
I wipe my hands on the towel, check my reflection in the window above the sink.Why am I checking my reflection?I never check my reflection. I’m a bloke who invented rugged nonchalance and masked it as style. My hair is unruly like this, not because of gel, it’s because I’m a side sleeper.
I open it, and Celeste is standing on her own porch holding a bottle of wine and wearing an expression that’s halfway between determination and terror. She’s in jeans. I’ve never seen her in jeans. Every version of Celeste I’ve encountered has been in structured trousers or blazers or that uppity cream blouse she wore to the caseworker visit. But today it’s dark, fitted jeans and a soft gray sweater that falls off one shoulder in a way that might be intentional or might be the sweater’s own rebellion against symmetry. Her hair is down. Minimal makeup. Flat shoes.
She looks like a person. Not a CEO, just a person who got in a car and drove forty-five minutes to knock on her own front door because she wanted to be here.
I let my eyes travel the full length of her—slowly, deliberately, not hiding it—from the flat shoes to the jeans to the exposed shoulder to the face that’s watching me watch her with an expression that dares me to comment and hopes I will.
“Did you forget the code?” I ask.
“It felt weird to just walk in.”
“It’s your house.”
“I know it’s my house. But it doesn’t feel like my house anymore. It feels like—” She pauses. Tilts her head. “Your home. I feel like a stranger walking intoyourhome.”
“Well, we can’t have that.” I step aside, holding the door wide. “Stay the night. You’ll feel less like a stranger after a few hours. I promise.”
“Stay the night?” She raises an eyebrow. “Bold opening, Saylor. I’m just here to help…and eat of course. What smells so good?”
“I’m grilling steaks.”
“You’re grilling steaks.”
“Marinated since this morning. Pasta from scratch. Bruschetta that I will humbly describe as life-changing.”
“Life-changing bruschetta. That’s quite a claim. You know bruschetta is a whole food group to me and I will indeed give you my honest opinion.”
“That honest opinion better be,heavenly, magical, orworld wonder.”
“Oh, no, no, my friend. Deep down, I’m mean-spirited like an undercover food critic. If there isn’t garlic confit in the bruschetta, I’ll have to remove a star. You’re going to have to take it like a man.”
“I have no idea what garlic confit is, so I’m going to assume I’m in trouble. But don’t worry, I can take it. I’m quite a man.”
She rolls her eyes, but I earn a soft chuckle as she steps around me and inside. Suddenly this house—the house that I’ve been rebuilding for weeks, that I’ve painted and sanded and wired and furnished—finally feels like what it’s been trying to become. Complete. The missing piece just walked through the front door carrying a bottle of wine and wearing what she probably thinks are casual jeans.
