I pressed my palm against the door, feeling the solid wood between us.
Don’t open it,I told myself.Don’t let him in.
But my hand was already moving to the deadbolt.
I opened the door just wide enough to see him clearly, keeping the chain lock engaged.
“Kat.” His voice was rough, raw. Like he’d been screaming or crying or both.
“What are you doing here?” I asked quietly.
“I’m showing up.” He lifted his chin, meeting my eyes with an intensity that made my chest ache. “Every day. I’m going to show up every day and prove to you who I am now. Not who I was. The man I’ve become. The man I’m still learning to be.”
My throat tightened. “Derek—”
“I’m not asking you to let me in,” he interrupted gently. “Not today. Not until you’re ready. I’m just asking you to let me show you. Let me prove it.”
I wanted to say yes. Wanted to throw open the door and pull him inside and tell him I believed him, that I trusted him, that I was ready.
But I couldn’t.
Because Frankie’s words kept echoing in my head:You always say people deserve second chances. So why doesn’t Derek get one?
And beneath that, Haizley’s voice from our conversation weeks ago:What are you really afraid of, Kat?
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Not yet.”
Derek nodded slowly, like he’d expected that answer. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” he said simply. “And the day after that. And the day after that. For as long as it takes.”
He turned and walked down the porch steps without waiting for a response.
I watched him climb into his truck, watched him sit there for a moment with his hands on the steering wheel, his head bowed. Then the engine started, and he drove away.
I closed the door and locked it, my hands shaking.
What am I doing?
Over the next four days, Derek showed up at seven o’clock sharp. Each morning, I opened the door with the chain lock still engaged, and each morning he found an excuse to talk to me with an offer of something small to fix—the flickering porch light, the dripping bathroom faucet. He never pushed. Never demanded entry. Just offered to help and accepted my refusal with quiet grace.
Frankie noticed, of course. She watched me soften incrementally, saw me stop slamming the door quite so quickly. “He’s showing up,” she said over her cereal on the fifth morning, smiling into her bowl. “Just like he said he would.”
She was right. And that terrified me.
By the seventh day, I couldn’t ignore the dripping faucet anymore—or the voice in my head telling me I was using Derek’s past as a shield against my own fear. I grabbed my phone and dialed before I could talk myself out of it.
“Haizley? It’s Kat. Can I make an appointment?”
Haizley’s office was in her living room—a comfortable couch against one wall with a matching chair across from it, a small side table between them holding tissues. I sat across from her, my hands twisted together in my lap.
“Derek’s been showing up at my house every morning,” I said. “He says he’s proving who he is now.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
“Terrified,” I admitted. “Confused. Hopeful. All of it at once.”
