“Tori...”
“Daddy!” Maisie’s voice echoes from the hallway. “I can’t find my pajamas!”
We spring apart like teenagers caught making out.
“Check the dryer!” I call back, my voice only slightly strangled.
“Oh! Found them!”
Tori lets out a breath that’s half laugh, half something else. “That was close.”
“Story of our lives lately.”
We finish the dishes in charged silence. Every accidental brush of shoulders, every time our hands touch while reaching for the same thing—it all feels significant. Weighted. Like we’re both holding our breath, waiting for something to happen.
The dishwasher hums to life, and Tori dries her hands on the kitchen towel.
“I should go,” she says. “Let you guys get to bath time.”
“You could stay.”
The words come out rougher than I intended. She looks at me, startled.
“Stay,” I say again, softer this time. “I’ll put her down, read her a story. It takes maybe thirty minutes. And then we can... talk. About everything.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I can see her thinking, weighing her options. Wanting to say yes but afraid of what yes might mean. “I can’t,” she whispers. “Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I stay...” She swallows hard. “I’m trying to have some boundaries here. And being alone with you, in your home, after dinner with your daughter—” She shakes her head. “It’s too much. I’ll say yes to things I’m not ready to say yes to.”
I want to convince her. But I look at her face and see the genuine uncertainty in her eyes—and I make myself step back.
“Okay,” I say.
She stares at me for a long moment. Then she rises on her toes and presses a kiss to my cheek—soft and quick, her lips warm against my skin.
“Goodnight, Zayden.”
“Goodnight.”
Maisie comes barreling back into the kitchen carrying her dinosaur pajamas, her hair a tangled mess.
“Is Tori leaving?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. She has to go home.”
Maisie’s face falls for just a second before she recovers. “Will you come back? ... another time?”
Tori crouches down to Maisie’s level—something I’ve noticed she does every time she talks to her, meeting her as an equal, not speaking down from above.
“I hope so,” she says carefully. “I’d like that.”
It’s not a promise. I can tell she’s choosing her words, protecting my daughter from the kind of guarantees that might not hold. And somehow that makes me fall for her even harder—that she cares enough to be careful with a little girl’s heart.
Maisie considers this for a moment, then throws her arms around Tori’s neck. “Okay.”
Tori hugs her back, one hand smoothing over Maisie’s hair. “I had a really good time with you today.”
